Anne Abducted
4 stars
Venue 31
Varscona Theatre
10329 – 83 Ave.
Anne Abducted is one of those fringe shows that is pure entertainment — a silly but extraordinarily well-crafted production that meshes mystery, sci-fi madness and romance.
Surprisingly, all these disparate elements interlock beautifully into a fizzy comedy, and as the lights go down, you are left wishing the curtain would rise on a second act.
Written by former St. Albert resident Matt Alden, a playwright who transitions with equal ease from television to stage, Anne Abducted is loaded with fanciful characters.
The one-hour production directed by Murray Utas starts with Jordan (Matt Busby), an Everyman anguishing over being kidnapped by a chirpy, but slightly robotic female alien who performs scientific experiments on him.
Later at the bookstore, Jordan sees Anne (Jenna Dykes-Busby) an overly introverted bookworm. Thinking she’s the alien, he accosts her. Anne screams and the police are called in. Next thing you know, Jordan is seeing a female therapist.
While Dykes-Busby and Busby are finely tuned romantic leads, the show stealer is Alden. One of Edmonton’s sharpest improv actors, he’s taken small character roles to a high art. Dressed in drag, he first swoops in playing the vampy, man-eating Dr. Broderick and later as Eric, a hyperactive stoner dude whose every second word starts with “f.”
Utas keeps the pace moving at warp speed and Alden cleverly inserts a few unexpected spirals that propel the audience into the unknown. All in all, it’s a shipload of laughs.
– Anna Borowiecki
Fairforall
1.5 stars
BYOV Venue 12
Avenue Theatre
9030 – 118 Ave.
Fairforall reads more like the first draft of a script, let alone a finished production designed to grab attention and win over a crowd.
Edmonton lawyer Mac Walker has penned a political propaganda piece with smack-in-your face liberal/socialist views. And goodness knows Alberta’s conservative mindset needs more than a few jabs poked at it. Unfortunately, while this production was written with the best of intentions, it collapses under its one-sided agenda.
The play centres around two university students (Josh Languedoc and Ecko Goffic) who videotape a philosophy project about the merits of a fair society. They ruminate on heavy topics and in the space of an hour fly off on unconnected tangents discussing determinism, freedom, poverty, capitalism, homelessness, Christianity, pollution and Quebec separatism.
But rather than set up a debate loaded with friction and tension, Walker’s script allows both to agree with each other, and within a half hour, the production slips into a snooze-fest.
Languedoc and Goffic deserve kudos for appearing fairly natural in dealing with a stilted script that lacks any form of theatricality. But they alone cannot save the work.
The script has some solid ideas, but there’s just too many to absorb. As it stands, Fairforall needs some serious editing and rewrites. And that’s fair for all.
– Anna Borowiecki
Ankles Aweigh
4.5 stars
Venue 31
Varscona Theatre
10329 – 83 Ave.
A hush-hush marriage to a Hollywood starlet, naval secrets and old flames collide in the hilarious musical caper Ankles Aweigh, based on the 1950s musical.
Kate Ryan stars as Wynne Winters, a Hollywood actress whose star is on the rise under the close protection of sister Elsey (St. Albert Children’s Theatre alumna Bridget Ryan). The sisters are in Italy where Wynne is filming her latest movie when a U.S. naval ship docks and the starlet reveals she secretly married Lt. Bill Kelly despite a no-marriage, no-scandal clause in her movie studio contract.
Wynne and Bill try to complete their union by holding an impromptu honeymoon, but it’s easier said than done. The pair receive some help from Elsey and navy seaman, the ever-frisky Dinky Logan (Ryan Parker) but have to navigate around a suspicious commander (Donovan Workun), conflicting schedules and a recurring threat of a court martial.
Another wrench is thrown into their plans after Kelly’s past comes back to haunt him, thanks to old flame Lucia (Linda Grass) and her new boyfriend Joe Mancini (Workun), a villain that’s a cross between Tony Clifton and Chef Boyardee. Bridget Ryan and Workun deliver the saltiest scene that involves some titillating elbow massage, but the entire cast brilliantly delivers comedic pratfalls and song-and-dance numbers to an appreciative audience.
– Bryan Alary
Hoboheme
4 stars
Venue 5
King Edward School
8530 – 1010 St.
Is Hoboheme a musical, melodrama or farce? It’s all of those and more.
Produced by a cadre of former Grant MacEwan theatre arts students, this show is very loosely based upon the Depression-era on-to-Ottawa trek of unemployed men in western Canada who hopped rail cars and headed east to present their grievances.
Chester (Ted Sloan) is a Vancouver lumber baron whose fortune was stolen by his insane, money-hungry wife, Retralda played by Legal’s Joelle Prefontaine. As the villain, her unforgettable maniacal cackle screams of the demented.
Now penniless, the elegant Chester boards a rail car where Whiskers Fenway, an old-timer who was born in a boxcar, initiates him into the world of hobos. He gives Chester a pass to Hoboheme where he meets a monopoly of unemployed characters including the suffragette Penelope (Vanessa Lever), two wacko brothers Dog (Nikolai Witschl) and Mad Dog (Joleen Ballendine) and the scary Switchblade Tomlinson played by St. Albert improv instructor Matt Schuurmann.
Switchblade is the hobos’ captain and the arrival of a city boy disrupts his leadership. Penelope’s feminine attractions spark off a fight between the two. But after settling differences, they amicably head east to see Prime Minister Bennett where all hell breaks loose.
The characters utterly charm, the plot is fresh and full of twisty, melodramatic turns, and the songs accompanied by a three-piece jug band are corny but fun. Best of all, the 12-piece cast’s full-throttle energy is an invigorating look at what the fringe is all about.
– Anna Borowiecki
The Tornado!: A Musical Prairie Tragicomedy
4 stars
BYOV Venue 32
Strathcona Branch Edmonton Public Library
8331- 104 St.
The Tornado!: A Musical Prairie Tragicomedy has one beautiful love story, one sad one, some teenage romantic angst, a CBC reporter, several very amusing songs, and puppets — very, very odd puppets.
The story focuses on the town of Red Pine, Alta. and a tornado that tears through it while a mildly repugnant CBC reporter comes to the small community to film a small-towns-of-Canada segment.
She meets and has a quick one-night stand with the town’s mayor, who is devastated when the fling collapses, and then, in a disturbingly awkward way, the mayor’s son hits on her as well.
She also stumbles across the town’s sweeter side, which is the beautiful love story of the mayor’s grandfather and his loving wife, who founded the community.
Confused yet? Well, the next morning the tornado hits.
Former St. Albert resident Sarah Sharkey plays the female characters, including the obnoxious reporter. Her musical numbers are energetic and impressive and she holds her own with the two leading men on stage, including a stand-out performance by Rob Mitchelson.
None of the puppets are built on the same scale and the cast uses full-size puppets, finger puppets, hand puppets and sock puppets. The puppets shouldn’t fool you — this is not a family-friendly show.
The play’s one weak scene is an interlude where the cast recounts various tornado facts and safety tips. The facts include details about some of Canada’s most devastating storms, and, while surely unintentional, verges on inappropriate.
Overall though, much like the puppets, the tornado will leave you in stitches (their jokes are much funnier).
— Ryan Tumilty
Call Me a Liar
4 stars
Stage 9
TELUS - Telephone Museum
10437 83 Ave.
None of us like it, but we all do it anyway so we should just accept lies as a part of our collective human truth.
That’s essentially the horrible message behind the otherwise pretty humorous production of Call Me a Liar, part sketch comedy, part musical and also part sad and tragic exposĂ© on the human condition. If you came here for laughs then you’ve got them, but you’ve also got to take the bitter and brutal sequences of joyless suffering, too.
I suppose that we shouldn’t expect a play examining the world of lies and liars to be entirely amusing. Consider that it starts off with a jaunty tune (by St. Albert raised Doug Hoyer) immediately followed by a rapid descent into the ninth level of hell where a sweet-voiced young girl recants an innocent childhood lie that angered her mother. The confession ends by her saying that she got leukemia and died the next year. And then Hitler makes an appearance!
Still, the play offered more than enough to hold my interest even for the late performance. I loved the variety show format with its smooth transitions and musical interludes, but mostly I dug the clever writing. Sometimes it was just a little too clever, though, and completely lost sight of the line where amusing veers into the territory where the audience itches with the uncomfortable recognition of our own desperate faults, like the skit about the homeless woman. It was laughable but not really laughter-inducing. However, all of that weirdness was made up for by the two actresses’ rendition of a late-night chatline commercial. Hilarious!
– Scott Hayes
Bloom
4 stars
BYOV Venue 32
Strathcona Branch, Edmonton Public Library
8331 – 104 St.
There’s a whole lot of reefer madness and subterfuge going on in the usually quiet town of Stony Valley. Even seniors, usually baking for the lodge’s weekly tea, are wearing trench coats and sunglasses.
In what could be one of the sweetest plays at the fringe, Bloom tests the decades-long friendship of two widows and their naïve and unusual way of dealing with unexpected hurts and a potentially criminal situation.
In this two-hander, Alice (performed by St. Albert’s Lori Biamonte-Mohacsy), is a spunky senior who has just lost her husband to cancer. A super-organized woman, Alice has all her thank-you notes written within 48 hours of the funeral.
Close friend Olive (Rebecca Starr), a more spontaneous, dreamy sort, suggests Alice take up exercise classes to de-stress from impending money problems. Alice visits her old farm, now run by a son and discovers a flourishing pot operation.
Playwright Leeann Minogue’s script is larded with rural touches and her dialogue expertly evokes small town issues and gossipy personalities. Director Jan Taylor keeps the action moving at a brisk pace, playing each laugh to the hilt.
But it’s the perfectly matched Biamonte-Mohacsy and Starr that give us two warm-hearted souls reminiscent of our mothers, aunts and grandmothers — intelligent women loaded with grit and humour. By the end, we see it is possible for two friends to overcome adversity and find new things to enjoy in each other’s lives.
So move over Betty White with your ditzy schemes. At the end of the day you have nothing on Alice and Olive.
– Anna Borowiecki
