The Edmonton International Fringe Festival is in full swing and for theatre-lovers, this next week is the place to see and be seen.
The Edmonton International Fringe Festival is in full swing and for theatre-lovers, this next week is the place to see and be seen.
This madcap adventure, located primarily in Edmonton’s Strathcona area, is the full experience of food, shopping and an eye-popping parade of characters leaping straight out of the imagination.
Amazonian cross-dressers, ripped supermen, metallic painted aliens, a Roaring ’20s Gatsby party and a cluster of sexy, corseted women – it’s a role-playing street party and visitors are out to have fun.
Inside the different venues, productions cater to every taste from the irreverent and sweet to the more thought provoking and funny. Here is a sample:
Polite Boys
5 stars
BYOV #19
Metterra Hotel
10454 82 Ave.
Staged in a room at the Metterra Hotel, Polite Boys is a brilliant, fast-paced drama that should get your reservation and your return business.
The play is a well-written, tightly staged and stunningly performed drama about end of life decisions, family and old secrets. On a large stage in front of a 100-person crowd, the show would be intense and riveting, but in the confines of a small room the show is exceptional. St. Albert's Olivia Latta directs the piece along with friend Molly Staley and set out purposely to bring a show to a small space.
Six chairs for the audience are arranged against the far wall, but the tight space means the performance will come right up to your knees. The play opens with a phone call from the front desk, as Sam reluctantly agrees to let Nell into the room where he’s been hiding to avoid a difficult decision around his brother, Nell's fiancée, who is in a coma.
Nell pleads for him to make a decision, and in the course of a tense conversation, she delves deeply into secrets that Sam and his brother had worked hard to bury.
Both Kristov-Kully Martens, playing Sam, and especially Bonnie Ings, playing Nell, deliver electric performances. The intimate setting means neither performer can stray out of character for even a moment, because the action unfolds virtually on top of the audience. They perfectly walk the line, making it seem as though the audience is watching the show through two-way glass.
While having such a small audience is one of the play's greatest strengths, it is also one of its great weaknesses – with just six seats a show it will be hard to come by a ticket.
– Ryan Tumilty
Fatboy
3 stars
BYOV #39
Upstairs at the Armoury
10310 85 Ave.
Fatboy is a demented, bizarre and particularly dark comedy that will please some audiences and horrify others.
Starring former Sturgeon County resident Fred Zbryski in the title role, the play is a twisted look at everything that is wrong with society and where it could go if left unchecked. Fatboy goes from destitute and hungry to emperor of everything in three acts, bribing himself out of a guilty sentence along the way.
Fatboy and his equally grotesque wife murder, cheat, steal and curse more than you would have thought possible. Zbryski verbally attacks the audience, his wife, society and he physically attacks the rest of the cast at various points in time.
The play is a crude look at what happens when humanity's darker sides are indulged to the extreme. Fatboy, who constantly demands more – more pancakes, more money and more respect – is the height of excess. There is nothing he doesn't want and nothing he won’t do to get it.
The play is extremely well-acted and good for a few laughs, but by the third act the script begins to wear a little thin. If crude humour isn't your sort of thing then by all means take a pass on Fatboy.
– Ryan Tumilty
Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson
4 stars
Venue 6
Catalyst Theatre
8529 103 St.
If Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, were alive today a world tribunal would most likely accuse him of exterminating a race.
A controversial figure, Jackson hated Indians, stole their lands and forced relocation programs that drastically reduced aboriginal populations.
Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson is a musical mash-up of history and emo punk rock that re-envisions this historical figure through a pop culture prism. And it’s one you won’t quickly forget.
As a series of historical vignettes (some that take substantial license) interwoven with ballads and rousing rock, it is irreverent, shocking and completely engrossing.
Mounted by St. Albert’s newbie troupe called No Tomatoes, it delivers an electric energy and excitement that far outweighs its rawness.
Andrew Boyd, as the rock hero Jackson, swears, sings, dances, jumps on boxes, and belts out the president’s beliefs – values he was prepared to fight for no matter the cost.
At every turn, Boyd delivers a maniacal resilience laced with a roguish swagger that easily commands an army of sycophants. Other strong performers are Dylan Rosychuk as the preening and strutting Martin Van Buren and Bretton Weir as the dignified Black Fox, a man facing imprisonment for his loyalty.
The songs invigorate starting with Rockstar, an explosive full company number to the bloodthirsty 10 Little Indians and Crisis Averted, where Jackson’s tyranny is delivered from his Washington office.
Was Jackson a great president or a genocidal hit man? You be the judge.
– Anna Borowiecki
Resurrected Motifs: the no/w/here project
3 stars
BYOV #30
Phabrik Art and Design Centre
10055 80 Ave.
Resurrected Motifs: the no/w/here project is 70-minutes of four modern dances expressing moods, emotions and beliefs. While three are short dances of transformation, the fourth is the exception with a more linear storytelling format.
In a Modern ‘Grim’ Tale, choreographer Lysa Downey looks at the importance of fairy tales in our culture. Weaving together fantasy and horror in a breadcrumb narrative, Downey magically creates a rather creepy world of stalking masked crows, a wolf and Red Riding Hoods.
Morinville’s Bailey Ferchoff joins this bizarre world as a floaty fairy dressed in a frothy, hooped skirt that only enhanced the lightness of her performance.
Howl, the opening dance, instead reveals a woman completely entwined in plastic, a metaphor for difficult relationships in our lives.
In Exuvia, two dream-like creatures fight over the remains of a porous exoskeleton, and the final piece Awakening is a rose-strewn, one-man journey of grief inspired by the Japanese tsunami.
While easy to appreciate the dancers’ robust athleticism and gentle grace, the average Fringer may find it difficult to understand the complete beauty of these innovative dances without a synopsis in the program as a guidepost.
On the other hand, it’s moody, magical and mysterious, a variety show that has a great deal of appeal for aficionados of modern dance.
– Anna Borowiecki
The Question
3 stars
Venue 5
King Edward School
8530 101 St.
Genetic manipulation – is it right? Does it matter? What’s the aftermath in people’s lives? And how does society treat someone who is different?
These are just a small number of questions that arise from The Question, a 45-minute peek into the domestic life of two gay guys and their daughter.
While Maria, the daughter, dreams about boys, school and her future, her two fathers must face the reality that their dream about having a child using advanced, unproven research has laid out the foundations for a frightening new world.
On a family level, what happens when one partner fails to inform the other partner of all the implications?
Former Morinville resident Greg Cebuliak plays Joseph, a stay-at-home dad who runs a catering service out of his home. When he learns his partner Carlos (Adrian Tanasichuk) has kept crucial details of their daughter a secret, he morphs from a gentle solicitous soul into a trembling, furious man who packs up his belongings and strides out the door.
There’s an awkward jump in storytelling just before the last scene whereby the ending is wrapped up in a neat package. Unfortunately, the ethics of genetic manipulation are not clear-cut. Although the show is well-acted, director Eric Matheson-Jones would have provoked our thoughts more by leaving a few questions hanging in the air.
– Anna Borowiecki
Pest Control
3 stars
Venue 4
Academy at King Edward
8525 101 St.
You know that stereotypical couple who have been married for 10 years, take one vacation a year, have no kids or pets, have boring jobs and an even more boring romance? In Pest Control, James Hamilton and Cat Walsh play that couple.
In this dark comedy written and directed by Gerald Osborn (and stage-managed by former St. Albert resident Catherine Wenschlag), the discovery of a mouse in the house appears to be the most exciting thing that has happened to this couple in a long time.
James Hamilton delivers an excellent performance as the quiet husband, Gordo, who is finally driven to uncharacteristic action by the tiny mouse who invades both his house and his life.
Playing a mouse can’t be easy, but Brett Lemay does an excellent job with the rodent character, especially opposite Hamilton as the husband.
Enter Trent Wilkie as Twitch, an exterminator who is equal parts Bam Margera and Rodney Dangerfield. This brash pest-killer always gets his mouse … and possibly more.
While his wife becomes increasingly enthralled with Twitch’s skills, the mouse helps Gordo discover some skills of his own.
Pest Control is tightly-written and well-acted and Osborn peppers the piece with humour that sometimes borders on cheesy, but thankfully never falls into that trap.
For fringe-goers seeking a slice of humour, Pest Control is the perfect piece.
– Nicole Starker
