Gazette writers give their take on fringe productions with a local flavour.
Game Face
4 stars
Venue 5
King Edward School
8530 – 101 Street
High school sucks and for some angst-filled teens it's a prison that can twist their psyche. The only relief is to hide in another skin.
High school sucks and for some angst-filled teens it's a prison that can twist their psyche. The only relief is to hide in another skin.
In Game Face, Wallace, played by St. Albert actor David Johnston, has been bullied by a group of peers for several years. Since becoming Wally the Woodchuck, the school's football mascot, he is no longer a loser.
Yes, the football star Vince (Brian Bergum) still punches and downs him at every game. But Wallace now has a popular cheerleader girlfriend named Lydia (Elena Porter) who really likes him. Only his acid-tongued best friend Gina (Morgan Smith) is trying to kick a hole into his newfound romantic fantasies.
Smith, along with St. Albert's own Scott Bourgeois, an anchor at 630 CHED and a former member of the comedy troupe Edmonton Sketch Conspiracy, shares the playwriting credits for this breezy summer comedy.
Director Ryan Hughes tightly controls this clever script full of unexpected twists and turns. The comedic action is fast-paced and riveting, the characters are three-dimensional, the dialogue is realistic, and the stock gags are based on costume mix-ups and mistaken identity. Yes, the 75-minute show is light and hilarious, yet the underpinnings are grounded in some painful human truths.
While the play is shameless fun, these human truths reverberate in all of us, and by the end you leave the theatre feeling relaxed and replete. So put your game face on and enjoy the fun.
– Anna Borowiecki
Europe: A Savvy Girl's Guide – The Musical
3.5 stars
Venue 7
Yardbird Suite
11 Tommy Banks Way
Ah, Europe. The romanticism of exploring a land of living history appeals to any age, but there's nothing like that first budget trip of one's youth. It's part adventure and part rite of passage, and as St. Albert's Melanie Gall shows us, the first time doesn't always live up to our expectations.
Gall re-imagines Europe: A Savvy Girl's Guide, a novel she co-wrote with Wendy Gall, and brings it to the stage in a new musical running at the Fringe. Gall stars as Kessendra, a newly independent youth about to embark on her first trip to Europe.
Kessendra's enthusiasm for cities like Paris and Rome are only equalled by her cluelessness about travelling. Fortunately, she finds a guide — herself, from 10 years in the future (Marsha Amanova) when she's a much savvier traveller — with some help from Trish vanDoornum, who plays a host of characters.
Kessendra and her older self successfully navigate many of the pitfalls first-time travellers experience like whether to buy currency, language barriers, overcrowded youth hostels and haggling at shops.
The scenes are delightfully witty and well written, and accessible even for non-travellers. The songs are infectiously catchy and often silly (“There's humping in my hostel”), and Gall's soprano voice nearly lifts the audience across the pond.
– Bryan Alary
My Bollywood Best Friend's Wedding
3.5 stars
BYOV 24
Metterra Hotel
10454 – 82 Ave.
Stand-up comedy isn't exactly theatre, but after a long day of fringing, My Bollywood Best Friend's Wedding just hit the spot. It contains a series of sketches that go from mellow to funny to sad to poignant to hopeful.
In this one-woman show, Barbara North, a former St. Albert resident, gave us an autobiographical, self-deprecating look at the often-humorous cultural clashes that arose in living with an Indian man for 11 years.
North is well travelled on the national comedy circuit. She's interned as a writer for Air Farce and her fringe show, Army Brats, was made into a CBC TV comedy special.
Wisecracking her way through the routine, the comedienne was often the butt of her own jokes, embellishing stories, delivering quick one-liners and parodying relatives on both sides of the family.
And yet the comedic delivery — starting from college to the breakup — had the light, seemingly effortless quality of a friend sitting at the kitchen table revealing personal glimpses of her life.
Partway through, North introduced “Bollywood 101,” a sequence of vignettes and dances that included video clips from India's mega film productions.
By the end, North had dispensed some nuggets of old-fashioned wisdom, a few new moves and grooves, the odd tear and a bunch laughs. It was a gentle rollercoaster, the perfect way to end a long day.
– Anna Borowiecki
Happy Whackin' Jim McCrackin
4.5 stars
Venue 5
King Edward School
8530 – 101 St.
Happy Whackin' Jim McCrackin is a comedic thriller full of intrigue, suspense and of course, ninjas.
The story follows a hit man, played by Jim McCrackin, who is on his last job when everything starts to go slightly awry.
William Bansfield plays Jim McCrackin beautifully as a calculating contract killer with a very odd demeanour.
Unfortunately for McCrackin, everything does not go according to his very detailed plan and he quickly finds himself thinking on the fly and dealing with all kind of unexpected problems.
The show is a blend of a live stage performance with pre-filmed segments, which seems like it should be a recipe for disaster, but worked perfectly.
At times the actors talk to each other on screen, at times they do it on stage and at other times conversations go on between one actor on stage and another on the screen.
The story is fast moving and funny, using a combination of slapstick jokes and some really dry wit. The play also takes a lot of good shots at some standard action movie clichés.
St. Albert resident Amanda Blair takes on the role of the female lead, the calculating villain Victoria and plays it well enough that one might cross the street if they encounter Blair in the real world.
If the play has a failing it is that several of the action sequences and fight scenes seem to drag on longer than they need to without adding anything to the story. The end result is the play starts to slow down a little as it heads toward the end.
The play doesn't really tackle a broader social message, but is pure fun from start to finish and well worth your time.
– Ryan Tumilty
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.
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 exposé 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
