The Edmonton Fringe Festival is back with nearly 1,600-programmed shows. Reading the program guide is just like shaking a tree and watching the apples fall. Which do you pick? Yes, it's big. It's confusing.
The Edmonton Fringe Festival is back with nearly 1,600-programmed shows. Reading the program guide is just like shaking a tree and watching the apples fall. Which do you pick?
Yes, it's big. It's confusing. So if you're thinking of taking a trip to the regions' largest arts festival and don't know where to start, read these three reviews.
Never Swim Alone
Blarney Productions/Cowardly Lion Productions
Venue 41
Rutherford School
8620 91 Street (Rue Marie-Anne Gaboury)
5 stars
Frank and Bill are the best of friends. They're practically brothers.
As the two leave their teenage years behind, a childhood secret shapes their masculinity and locks them into constant rivalry.
Never Swim Alone explores the trope of the perfect man, the perfect marriage, the perfect life through a masterfully written text by acclaimed playwright Daniel MacIvor.
Simple, yet complex, the play places the troubled men in a highly rigid and structured contest arbitrated by a mysterious lifeguard (Sarah Feutl).
Actors Ben Stevens and Oscar Derkx give poignant performances – their comedic sparring interspersed with dark truths (about the other) and flashing teeth, as each attempts to win the audience over and prove that he is the better man.
Never Swim Alone is one of the Fringe's meatier plays – not shying away from the darker side of humanity, but still managing to make you grin from ear to ear.
Director Luc Tellier is a former St. Albert Children's Theatre alumnus who has been able to carve out a triple-threat career in the city as an actor-singer-dancer and now, with Never Swim Alone, he's adding director to his resume.
But who's keeping score?
– Michelle Ferguson
Red Shirt Diaries
Red Shirt Co.
Venue 3
Walterdale Theatre
10322 – 83 Ave.
4 stars
The Red Shirt Diaries explores the final frontiers of comedy.
“Improv: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Improvise. It's continuing mission: to improvise strange new audience suggestions, to seek new life and new improvisations, to boldly go where no improvisers have gone before.”
This is an opening quote from a balding Captain Patrick Richard (St. Albert's Matt Alden) just before the starship hits warp speed. Its mission – to spoof Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Staffing the starship is Starfleet officer Lt. Commander Datum (Paul Blinov), a shade-wearing first engineer Lt. Georgie La Forgie (Josephine Heinrick), the empath Commander Rihanna Tryker (Tara Koett) and chief medical officer Dr. Beverly Cleary (Kristen Welker).
In this show, you don't need to be familiar with the improvised form or the Star Trek series. It's not strictly necessary. It just helps.
On opening night, an audience member suggested using “puberty” as the theme and the cast ran with it – the rollercoaster emotions, a broken romance, open rebellion, drinking and smoking weed offset by Datum's quiet confusion.
Live improv can sometimes fall apart. This is a tight group that has an easy chemistry, excellent timing and is quick on its feet.
Director Matt Schuurman added a multi-media giant screen that creates a backdrop of motion-activated scenes ranging from the Milky Way, holodeck and bridge to the ship's medical clinic, a tropical paradise and incoming visuals from Starfleet Command.
The Red Shirt Diaries is silly. It's fun and every evening is a new mission.
– Anna Borowiecki
Jesus Master Builder - A Divine Comedy
Walk on Water Theatre
Venue 1
Westbury Theatre
10330 - 84 Ave.
3 Stars
After its premiere as a new work at the Walterdale Theatre a year ago, Jesus Master Builder has undergone renovations, tightening up what was already an amusing premise. An upfront disclaimer: if you don't take well to religious-based humour, this brand of funny may not be for you, though there's nothing offensive 'a la Book of Mormon in this work. The guffaws, groans, silly puns and play on words in this benign piece are tame – no problem for my Catholic sensibilities –and pretty funny for anyone who knows their bible stories. And if you're a condo owner dealing with contractors or a renovation gone wrong, you'll have a good laugh too.
You see Jesus, yes, Son of God – that Jesus – happens to also be a lousy carpenter, creating plenty of disgruntled homeowners in Galilee. His shoddy and unfinished work is understandable – there's turning water into wine, and feeding loaves and fishes to the multitudes to deal with. After all, Jesus has bigger things on His mind.
But that's no matter to members of the newly-formed, first-ever condo association board, a band of unhappy Israelites determined to bring Christ back into their lives to fix His unholy mess. Edmonton actor Bradley Bishop is Jebediah, leader of the condo association (though nothing happens without due process and proper seconding of every motion, as noted by his fellow condo owners). In pursuit of Jesus to give him the dream home he paid for, Bishop is fittingly frazzled and frustrated, and harangued by a nagging wife. Bishop joins a team of misfits hoping to regain a roof that doesn't leak or drywall that isn't buckling.
St. Albert actor Josh Languedoc plays Micah, the dim bulb of the bunch (which he does with great glee) and Monica Maddaford does a likewise fine turn as Elizabeth, whose hunt for a husband is even more important than getting her tile re-grouted.
Jesus Master Builder won't convert you. It sometimes still feels like a work-in-progress, but there are more than enough laughs to make it a worthwhile stop on your Fringe schedule.
– Lucy Haines
