This year's Edmonton International Fringe Festival is a madcap romp of moving statues, tottering acrobats, devilish clowns and busking musicians. There's even a grand Ferris wheel heightening the carnivalesque ambience.
But the real Fringeopolis lies on the darkened stages that come to life with cautionary stories, morality tales, kooky experimental works, touching comedies and poignant tragedy.
Below is the St. Albert Gazette's glimpse of the 30th annual Fringeopolis.
Mothership Down -★★★
(Stanley Milner Library Theatre, 7 Sir Winston Churchill Square)
Anyone that has ever had a bellyful of politicians may find a kindred spirit in the premiere of Mothership Down.
Penned by Morinville-raised Marty Chan (The Bone House), this clever satire compares politicians — especially Tories — to aliens that have landed and overtaken the voting public.
In this one-man show, Ted (Taylor Chadwick) is a fiery young cynic that sets out to unmask political agendas.
He stirs up voter apathy by spinning stories, flinging out stats and setting up a debate. To really tug at the heartstrings, he even fabricates a poignant yarn about his dying father.
And it's all a clever manipulation of the audience, much as influential politicians manoeuvre the public into a corner.
In a nod to technology, as Ted delivers the straight goods to the audience, a screen behind him pops up with clever punch lines. And during one fun segment, the audience is asked to pull out its smartphones and call or text friends. When was the last time that happened to you in a theatre?
A less skilled writer than Chan would have turned this send-up into a ham-handed propaganda machine. As such, it elegantly lampoons politicians while reminding voters they can make a difference.
— Anna Borowiecki
Not-Evil Stepmother -★★★1/2
(PCL Studio, TransAlta Arts Barn, 10330 84 Ave.)
In the gilded world of fairytales, The Not-Evil Stepmother is a refreshing take on good and evil.
In this reversal of stereotypes, the beautiful Princess Constance is the shallow, vain, power-hungry de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Detachment.
She is engaged to Prince Conrad, a dandy who would sell his mother for a nickel. To prop up their lavish nuptials, the greedy princess proposes to increase taxes by cutting social programs. Unemployment is already at 45 per cent.
To maintain her popularity, the princess searches for a stepmother-for-hire to take the political fallout of raising taxes. Her scapegoat is Dracen Downright, an articulate woman of the streets that possesses a strong moral compass, a spirit of kindness and true leadership potential.
Although the outcome is fairly predictable, director Derrique DeGagne keeps the pace moving swiftly and maintains a good balance.
St. Albert actress Arielle Ballance gives her strongest performance to date as the evil Princess Constance, a figure the audience simply delights in hating.
Laura Burdett is equally powerful as the downtrodden, but feisty Dracen. And Brian Bergum shows off dual characters of the ego-inflated Prince Conrad and Barney Hodgepodge, a street musician with an acerbic wit.
Although rated as a family show, the audience in the show I attended had about 80 per cent adults, a surefire indicator of multi-generational appeal.
— Anna Borowiecki
9 Months to Mars – ★★★
(Yardbird Suite, 11 Tommy Banks Way)
If you are looking for lighter fare at the Edmonton Fringe, 9 Months to Mars is good for a few laughs.
The story is, as you would expect, the tale of two astronauts bound to be the first two men to land on Mars and jumps back and forth through their training, their long journey and the eventual landing.
The two astronauts picked for the mission are a good odd couple. Simon is a career astronaut with degrees on top of other degrees and a serious dedication to the mission. Alongside him is Brent Armstrong, whose main qualification for this ambitious journey is his lineage dating back to his great-great-grandfather Neil, the first man to land on the moon.
It seems, in the future, NASA has been forced to rely on corporate sponsorship to touch the stars and a member of the Armstrong clan was seen as good publicity.
The premise of the show is funny and, sadly, not entirely impossible to believe. However, over the course of the hour-long show, the joke begins to wear thin. I am inclined to think a mission to Mars would offer more comedy and more drama than the writers found.
After a while, the idea that Armstrong is unqualified and Simon is frustrated gets more than a little tiresome.
Matt Alden, one of the play's four writers, is an alumnus of St. Albert Children's Theatre. The play he has written has the right stuff, but not quite enough of it.
— Ryan Tumilty
The Book of Jobes – ★★★
(Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre, 8426 Gateway Blvd.)
The Book of Jobes is a biblical allegory inspired when playwright Heidi Janz became the victim of a violent home invasion.
In this one-hour saga, a multiple offender with a grudge against his mother attacks Rachel, a university-educated young woman with cerebral palsy. This is one final obstacle the wheelchair-bound scholar cannot face and she loses the will to live.
While the gut-wrenching beating drives the action, it occurs towards the end. To tantalize us, Janz drops hints throughout the script that is larded with a coating of religious providence.
Most of the production deals with Rachel's early home life, her development living in a hospital and the respect she garnered at university.
Rebecca Starr as Rachel is a riveting performer and has established the vocal mechanics and mannerisms of cerebral palsy to the point where one man sitting behind me wondered if she was actually disabled.
And St. Albert's Lori Mohacsy, as Rachel's loving German mother, was a delight to watch as she dispensed time-honoured folk wisdom in a gentle accent that never slipped.
While Janz's script was inventive, Jan Taylor's direction was bold and the acting was spot-on, the play's major flaw was that we never find out how Rachel deals with this violent attack. She ultimately accepts it as "providence."
The real story is how a brilliant young woman with cerebral palsy deals with a horrific attack that destroys the spirit. I hope Janz will write that story in the future.
— Anna Borowiecki
Firing Lines: Journalist Beatrice Nasmyth Covers the First World War – ★★★★
(Strathcona Branch, Edmonton Public Library, 8331 104 St.)
The setting is the Canadian Women's Press Club in 1939. Journalist Beatrice Nasmyth, the first Canadian woman to cover the First World War in 1914, is invited to speak about her wartime experiences reporting on the "women's perspective."
She plies her audience with stories of bloody trenches stinking with dead bodies, shell-shocked soldiers treated with electroshock therapy and bombs exploding near parks.
She speaks about knitting socks for soldiers, collapsing from malnutrition, and intense romances with soldiers kindled by brief meetings and speedy partings.
Firing Lines: Journalist Beatrice Nasmyth Covers the First World War is completely riveting.
Playwright Debbie Marshall has telescoped 20 of Nasmyth's wartime letters into a drama that tugs at every emotion while director David Chereos skilfully navigates the flashbacks and keeps the momentum flowing.
Perfectly cast, St. Albert's Jenny McKillop plays the younger Beatrice — an idealistic, passionate and curious young woman. Veteran actress Heather D. Swain instead takes on the role of the older Beatrice, an astute, pragmatic woman that saw the bloodbath for what it was and refused to gild the lily. Randy Brososky fluidly moves in and out of various soldiers' roles.
Amongst the Fringe froth, Firing Lines is a one-hour play with considerable substance and sympathetic characters that survived a horrific ordeal, something worth thinking about.
— Anna Borowiecki
Notes from a Zombie Apocalypse – ★★★1/2
(King Edward School, 8530 101 St.)
It seems zombies are everywhere these days. Not literally, of course; that would be terrible. But, in popular culture, they have spread across movies and television.
Notes on a Zombie Apocalypse is a very interesting attempt to bring that formula to the Fringe stage.
Unlike a lot of zombie fare, Notes doesn't go for the big laughs or the gory ending.
Instead, the play looks into the lives of two men, Brian and Morgan, who are attempting to find their way in the end of days.
The pair was separated in the early days of the undead uprising and, in back-and-forth monologues, they offer updates to each other on their progress in a world torn apart.
Both are intensely focused on their survival, plotting and planning ways to stay alive while civilization ends.
Brian comes across as the more focused of the two, planning a new zombie-free and zombie-proof city, while Morgan seems to struggle with the emotional toil of living at the end of the world.
The play was well directed by director Jamie Cavanagh, who has taught improv with the St. Albert Children's Theatre.
While the play is well acted and well staged, it rings a little hollow simply because it is an intense brooding drama about zombies. It is hard to take the play as seriously as it appears to take itself.
Still, if the idea of walking masses of the undead excites you, then don't hesitate to see this offering.
— Ryan Tumilty
