Two actors portraying youth in goth clothing, one male one female.

Candy and the Beast

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Jake Tkaczyk, as Kenny, and Jayce Mackenzie, as Candy, in Candy and the Beast. Photo Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography.

One of my Facebook correspondents called Candy and the Beast “this weird little play”. And he’s not wrong.

Trevor Schmidt’s latest original script on stage at Northern Light Theatre is disturbing and kind of delightful, both. I was thinking that it’s not quite like any of his other work that I’ve seen, but it takes advantage of a lot of things the writer/director/designer is good at. He’s good at poignant; he’s good at macabre; he’s clever at creating designs that enhance the mood and message of a production. He’s very good at the humour and dramatic-irony of naive child narrators, as we saw in Shadow Theatre’s recent production of Schmidt’s Robot Girls, about junior high school students in a science club making sense of families and friendship and growing up.

Candy and the Beast demonstrates all these strengths, in a performance a little over an hour long. The audience enters the Arts Barns Studio space in the fog and gloom, to be seated on low risers along one of the long walls and wonder what the menacing lumps on poles are, upstage. One of my neighbours, opening night, said that the lights were gradually coming up as showtime approached – but they weren’t coming up very much.

The play starts with two characters staring out at the world together through Hallowe’en masks and layers of goth-teen armour: Candy Reese (Jayce Mackenzie) is the main narrator, observing her little town and protecting her younger brother Kenny (Jake Tkaczyk). Younger, but not smaller – she prods Kenny to explain that he has a condition known as central precocious puberty, meaning that his body’s grown up while he’s still a little kid. So they call him The Beast. He says he doesn’t mind. She says he does.

And the town has some issues – not just the classism against trailer-park residents like Candy and Kenny and their parents, and general mistreatment of outsiders and weirdos, but a pack of howling animals in the nearby woods, and a serial killer at large – a killer picking off young blonde women, especially ones the town doesn’t care about. The story and mood reminded me a bit of Twin Peaks.

The sibling relationship between Candy and Kenny was one of the most compelling things about this play. The little boy adopts his tough big sister’s fashions, beliefs, and interests – his big sister beats up his bullies, helps him get to sleep, and reassures him that he’s not too old to trick-or-treat. As an oldest sibling, I found her mix of impatience and kindness easy to connect with. Their parents sound benign, but aren’t significant in the story. The play also says some important things about outsiders in a community.

Other characters brought to life in various scenes include self-absorbed real-estate agent Donna Crass shopping at the ice cream stand where Candy works, Sheriff Sherry Lau (“the long arm of the Lau”) updating townspeople about the investigation and search, a grandmotherly librarian helping Kenny research werewolves, and others. Tkaczyk, a member of the Guys in Disguise theatre-drag troupe, embodies some of these characters with distinctive voices and mannerisms.

The production is enhanced by Schmidt’s set and costume choices, dim and harsh lighting from Alison Yanota, and sound design and original music by Dave Clarke. The menacing lumps seen pre-show turn out to be a row of creepy heads on pikes, with the wall behind showing some graffiti left on the wall of Candy and Kenny’s trailer.

The performance includes several songs by Kenny (Tkaczyk), representing his thoughts, fears, and imaginings. They vary from eerie foreshadowing to a melodic ballad with a few songs reminding me of David Bowie’s 1980s repertoire, with effective use of recorded guitar track and echoey microphone.

I won’t reveal the plot events or provide any explanations of the mysteries, but I found some satisfaction at the end in a shift in the relationship between Candy and Kenny, as they become more honest with each other and give each other more comfort. I don’t know what will happen to these characters next, but I think it’s going to be okay. (And if you don’t think so, don’t tell me, because I really like both of them!)

Candy and the Beast is continuing at the Arts Barns Studio Theatre until next Saturday night, April 20th. Run time is about 65 minutes. Tickets are available here and at the door. (Tuesday Apr 16 is 2-for-1).

Mermaid Legs

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Noori Gill, Mel Bahniuk, Dayna Lea Hoffman, and Tia Ashley Kushniruk in Beth Graham’s Mermaid Legs. Photo by Brianne Jang of BB Collective Photography

When I attended the Workshop West production of Beth Graham’s play Pretty Goblins in 2018, I was struck by how well the playwright (and the actors Nadien Chu and Miranda Allen, directed by Brian Dooley) captured the relationship between two sisters, through years of growing up together, experiencing challenges (some horrific) separately, supporting and resenting and understanding and accepting. After a performance I mentioned to the playwright that some of it had reminded me of my relationship with my own sister, and she said that she didn’t have sisters herself. An earlier play by Graham, The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble, also focuses on three adult siblings, and their differing roles in coping with their aging mother. Again, the relationships as shown were nuanced and easy to relate to.

Skirts Afire, the annual Edmonton women’s arts festival at several local venues this week, is hosting the world premiere of Beth Graham’s Mermaid Legs at the Gateway Theatre. It too focuses on relationships among three sisters, the older ones Scarlett (Noori Gill) and Ava (Mel Bahniuk) and much-younger Billie (Dayna Lea Hoffman). We hear enough about their parents to accept that the sisters are each other’s primary supports. But fascinatingly, in the first scene one character says that this family does not talk about feelings. They show support by problem-solving for each other, by inviting each other for supper, by keeping track of one sister’s schedule and challenging another to ask a divorced co-parent to do his share. And sometimes – that is not enough.

Direction is by Annette Loiselle, and design elements by other contributors enhance the storytelling as well: Narda McCarroll’s set design turns the black-box into a white world of fluttering sheets/wind/waves, uneven rocks, and shifting furniture. Ainsley Hillyard’s choreography for the three sisters and an ensemble of dancers (Mpoe Mogale, Alida Kendell, Tia Ashley Kushniruk) conveys everything from the weighting-down of depression and the struggling to reach through barriers of a broken connection, to the joy of dancing on a beach, alone or at a party. In one scene, tap dance conveys jarring, out-of-context, manic enthusiasm. Rebecca Cypher’s costume design has all the performers in shades of white, conveying their very different personalities in small details. Aaron Macri’s sound design with Binaifer Kapadia’s original music and Whittyn Jason’s lighting design all build the world and contribute to the message.

This play made me realize that many fictional stories about families dealing with the effects of a mood disorder are oversimplified. Sometimes movies or novels make it seem as if getting the right diagnosis, then getting the right medication, are straightforward steps leading to a happy ending — or as if flaws in those steps lead inexorably to a tragic ending.

Mermaid Legs shows that it isn’t that simple. And it shows that the identified patient isn’t the only one who needs to work at becoming healthier.

That it can show these things while being entertaining, beautiful to watch, relatable, and sometimes hilarious, is a tribute to not only the playwright but the whole team. (Oh, and when you think it’s almost over – watch for a very funny physical bit in the game of hairband-keepaway!)

Mermaid Legs is playing at Gateway Theatre (home of Workshop West Playwrights Theatre) until March 10th. Tickets, content warnings, and accessibility information are all available here.

Amigo’s Blue Guitar: thoughts about refugees and migrants

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Sandy Roberts and Aldrick Dugarte, in Amigo’s Blue Guitar. Photo credit Scott Henderson, Henderson Images

I saw four good plays in the last couple of weeks, and didn’t make time to post about any of them before they closed: The Spinsters (Small Matters), The Drawer Boy (Shadow Theatre), Donna Orbits the Moon (Northern Light), and This is the Story of the Child Ruled By Fear (Workshop West / Strange Victory). I love theatre that reflects situations familiar in my community and my life and leads me to reflect on them, whether in a fantastical setting or a mundane one, and the four plays above all did that.

Joan MacLeod’s Amigo’s Blue Guitar, currently on stage at Walterdale Theatre, also portrays some real-world situations, in ways that are worth thinking about. The set (Leland Stelck) is a beautiful evocation of an offshore BC island cabin, with exposed wood and big windows, open to the mountains and the ocean, and a downstage dock. Text projected on the backdrop (director Bob Klakowich provided the projections) sets the context by providing information about the civil war and unrest in El Salvador in the early 1990s, and about refugees in general and their outcomes in Canada. The character Elias (Aldrick Dugarte) appears to the side, speaking Spanish and simple English, shifting from dreamlike musing about his memories to responding to immigration questions. 

The small-scale interactions and byplay among a family living on the island, with early-20s siblings Callie (Crystal Poniewozik) and Sander (Graham Schmitz) sniping at each other and defending each other, draft-dodger-fisherman father Owen (Richard Wiens) holding things together, and grandma Martha (Sandy Roberts) visiting from Oregon, are amusing and familiar. As the action opens, they are scrambling to respond as Sander’s well-intentioned scheme to sponsor a refugee from El Salvador is suddenly becoming real, with Elias due to arrive any minute. 

The action of this play takes place over the first six months that Elias is in Canada. The interactions between Elias (pronounced uh-LEE-uss) and the various family members start out embarrassingly awkward, as they don’t speak much of each other’s language and they don’t know much about each other’s country. It is fascinating to watch the superficial assumptions on all sides break down, as they gradually speak more and ask more questions. We see that Sander’s commitment to rescuing Elias, after hearing an inspiring speaker in his sociology class, was actually based on very little knowledge – “I imagined you every morning, living in a village atop a mountain”. “San Salvador is a large city”. As the other family members each get to know Elias better and appreciate him, Sander becomes distant and almost resentful. Sander is completely unequipped for dealing with effects of Elias’s significant trauma. I have been thinking ever since about good intentions not being sufficient, when dealing with any marginalized individuals. Meanwhile, Elias begins to make his own choices about his Canadian life and his future, not the ones recommended by the host family and immigration authorities. 

Graham Schmitz, Aldrick Dugarte, and Crystal Poniewozik in Amigo’s Blue Guitar. Photo credit Scott Henderson, Henderson Images.

Another theme running through the story is about Owen’s history as a US draft dodger during the Vietnam War. Forty years on, he’s still hurt by the memory of his parents rejecting him, and still dining out on his bravery in crossing the border. He wants to connect with Elias to validate the courage in his own migrant journey, which is both charming and patronizing. 

Richard Wiens and Graham Schmitz in Amigo’s Blue Guitar. Photo credit Scott Henderson, Henderson Images.

The cast and production team for Amigo’s Blue Guitar were supported in their work by cultural consultant Leo Campos-Silvius, a community cultural leader originally from Chile. After this Sunday’s matinee performance (2 pm), there will be a panel discussion with Leo Campos-Silvius, director Bob Klakowich, and discussion moderator David Goa. The audience will have the opportunity to listen and to ask questions of the participants. 

Amigo’s Blue Guitar continues at Walterdale Theatre until Saturday February 17th. Tickets are available here. 

13 actors play clerks and customers in an old-style perfume shop

She Loves Me

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A busy day in Maraczek’s Parfumerie, with Georg Nowack (Russ Farmer, downstage right) gatekeeping job applicant Amalia Balash (Ruth Wong-Miller, in cream figured dress) Photo Nanc Price Photography.

The pre-set for She Loves Me, at Théâtre Servus Credit Union (La Cité Francophone), is simple. A storefront with a bench in front of it, a backstage orchestra visible over the top. But as the stories unfold, the set (Leland Stelck) unfolds more literally, revealing the main set of a parfumerie in 1930s Budapest, and later shifting quickly to create a romantic cafe, a hospital room, and whatever else is needed. The counters, shelves, displays, and stock convey a store filled with luxuries and needs. It felt like it would be interesting to browse more closely – like going to Lush (without its overpowering mix of scents).

The show focuses on the parfumerie’s owner, Mr Maraczek (Brian Ault) and its employees (Andrew Kwan, Russ Farmer, Scott McLeod, Brendan Smith, and Christina O’Dell) along with job-applicant Amalia Balish (Ruth Wong-Miller). Like a Maeve Binchy novel, the script (Joe Masteroff) and clever direction (Melanie Lafleur) convey that all the characters have interesting stories that we want to hear more about. And not just the principal characters – the ensemble makes up a store full of recurring customers, a romantic cafe full of – romances – and other intriguing bits which I won’t tell you.

My two favourite ensemble bits of this show were “Twelve Days to Christmas” – putting a familiar retail spin on the Advent season – and the whole scene in the cafe. The cafe scene made good use of the depth of stage available to them, and with the raked auditorium seating of the Théâtre Servus, the audience could appreciate the performances upstage of the three women dining at the bar-counter and their server. Not having looked at the show program before the show started, I was surprised to see that this white-jacketed cafe server was Brendan Smith, whom I’d enjoyed on local stages since his appearance in Walterdale’s Light in the Piazza. I had been impressed by the enthusiasm and voice of the young shop delivery boy but with costuming and posture I hadn’t identified him as Smith! Other romantic couples are also enjoying drinks and dancing, and playing out their own narratives, while Amalia waits alone at a centre table for her mysterious pen-pal sweetheart. Aaron Schaan and Julia Stanski, spotted shopping together in earlier scenes, seem to have a proposal accepted. Real-life couple Trish van Doornum and Michael McDevitt are snuggling at a side table. Side flirtations are suggested in a fun dance number involving peeping from behind menu folders.

The premise of having couples meet through a newspaper Lonely Hearts Club correspondence column, getting to know each other through letters without revealing mundane life details, was updated to email for the 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail. Dating app experiences in 2023 encourage providing photos early on, so the plot-device of accidentally falling in love with a co-worker based on their text communication seems less timely, but the story is still easy to relate to.

I was pleasantly surprised at the range of sexual/romantic lives accepted among the main characters. Ilona, the woman who spends time at her lovers’ apartments (Christina O’Dell), is not vilified for it. Her co-workers as well as the audience are genuinely rooting for her to find a nice man who deserves her – or to have a nice evening at the library if that’s where she finds happiness now. Georg Nowack (Farmer) is single, so the boss assumes he must be spending his evenings at cabarets and nightclubs with a different woman every night, but no, he prefers quiet evenings at home.

I also appreciated that this story didn’t follow the trope of an independent woman being attracted to a cranky rude man despite herself, and then winning him over. Instead, Amalia is openly critical of Georg when he is being rude, only begins to appreciate him when he does something thoughtful (bringing her vanilla ice cream when she is sick), and then we see them gradually building trust and then affection over the days of a busy Christmas retail season.

White man dressed in 1930s overcoat, hat, and scarf sings joyfully.
“She Loves Me” – Russ Farmer as Georg Nowack. Photo by Nanc Price Photography

The songs and instrumental music (Sheldon Harnick, Jerry Bock) enhance the experience throughout. Elizabeth Raycroft directs an orchestra of 11, and the performers all have good songs for their voices. I particularly enjoyed “Vanilla Ice Cream” and “Try Me” and the harmony in “I Don’t Know His Name”.

Two women with ornately curled hair and form-fitting business wear wrap small presents while chatting.
Ruth Wong-Miller and Christina O’Dell in “I Don’t Know His Name”, She Loves Me 2023. Photo Nanc Price Photography

In 2015, Foote In The Door did She Loves Me as their first mainstage production ever. Since then, Broadway audiences have also had another chance to appreciate this musical, and there’s a cast recording of that 2016 Broadway production – I was delighted to discover that Christina O’Dell’s role of Ilona was played by Jane Krakowski of 30 Rock.

The company has been producing musicals ever since, at the Fringe as well as in their mainstage seasons. I attended opening night of that first production, so it was a treat to watch this one and recognize many familiar names of people who had been with the company from early days or who have joined Edmonton’s musical theatre community more recently. The deeper proscenium stage and more sharply raked seating at Théâtre Servus for this production supported different choices in directing and design to connect the audience intimately with the performers and allow interesting ensemble play. Costume choices for this production (Viola Park) were more subtle than in the 2015 show, with the parfumerie clerks mostly in well-fitting understated grey suits rather than plain green shopcoats, and glimpses of colour being added gradually, particularly in Amalia’s garments and accessories. As is current practice for many local companies now, some program information is displayed on a projection screen before the show starts, with the full program available via QR code. (I don’t have a good system for saving my online programs, the way I have boxes of hardcopy programs for everything from Fringe shows to Broadway.) And of course, in 2023 some of us attend the theatre wearing masks.

She Loves Me is playing Wed-Sat evenings and Sunday matinees until November 26th. Tickets are available here.

The unseen Mob

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Kristin Johnson in Mob. Photo credit Marc J Chalifoux Photography and Video.

I liked seeing Mob, currently on stage at Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre’s Gateway Theatre, without knowing much about what to expect. Afterwards, I wanted to talk about it, but I also wanted to give more people the chance to see it similarly unspoiled.

So, if you don’t want to know what it’s about or what happens, I can still give you several reasons to see it, and then you can stop reading. Starting with the names in the credits:

  • Heather Inglis, artistic producer of Workshop West as well as director of this play, has created a coherent season of challenging work, loosely categorized under the theme Borderlands.
  • Three good performers familiar to local audiences: Kristin Johnston, and Graham Mothersill, and Davina Stewart. Each of them portrays a fascinating complex character, not entirely likeable but sometimes funny and often relatable.
  • Designers include Darrin Hagen (eerie atmospheric soundscapes and original music), Beyata Hackborn (a set that starts out with an Instagram-perfect look and turns out to be both functional and symbolic), Alison Yanota (unusual lighting that escalates the tension), and Sarah Karpyshin (iconic costume design).
  • Program credits for Jason Hardwick (choreography) and Sam Jeffery (fight and intimacy direction) provide additional clues to the content in the show and the skill level with which it will be executed.

The action starts with projections, conveying a woman, Sophie, (Johnston) driving feverishly while voices overlap and reverberate in her head. As she arrives with her suitcase at a remote bed-and-breakfast, she is greeted by Martin (Mothersill), cringingly clumsy and twitchy as he over-explains that he’s at home this time of day because he’s lost his job. The visitor stands immobile on the threshold holding her suitcase, responding to his questions but not progressing the conversation. Is she exhausted? Is she hesitant to enter? Why is she there? She’s not giving anything away. Soon Martin’s aunt Louise (Stewart) bustles in with a limp, all aging-hippie style and colourful cane, to smooth over the conversational awkwardness and remind Martin how to behave with guests. The show is described as a thriller – at first I wasn’t sure whether the characters would be realistic or more gothic, whether there would be overt or psychological violence in the isolated-country-house trope or what. I’ve also seen Johnston play a lot of disturbed and disturbing characters on stage in the past few years, from Death Trap to Destination Wedding, Baroness Bianka’s Bloodsongs to We Had a Girl Before You. But the fears explored in Mob are completely realistic and timely. Which is much scarier.

Mothersill’s portrayal of Martin often made me want to laugh – but the menace conveyed by the soundscape and the unfolding story made me feel uncomfortable about laughing – not so much that I was pitying him, but that it might be dangerous to provoke him.

The performance is a bit over an hour and a half long, with no intermission. The script (written in French by Catherine-Anne Toupin and translated by Chris Campbell) has a compelling directness with no unnecessary dialogue.

Beforehand, I wondered why a three-hander would be called Mob. Isn’t a mob a larger angry group? Then I realized that the three people on stage were not the only ones involved – that the internet posters Sophie quotes, in overlapping overwhelming torrents of abuse, are in some ways present throughout, ubiquitous and inescapable.

Mob has a short performance run, ending next Sunday afternoon, November 12th. Get your tickets soon!

Multi-Vs: a showcase of stage combat in an unfolding story

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When I walked into the Varscona Theatre auditorium yesterday, I saw an exciting number of different objects distributed carefully about the stage. I saw some swords, some short blades, some long and short sticks, shields, and some things that didn’t look like weapons – a shoe? a backpack? It reminded me of when I entered the Citadel’s Maclab Theatre to watch their Romeo and Juliet, and from my seat beside the vom I could see swords laid out carefully in the vom hallway.

The action of Multi-Vs starts with two characters in modern/science-fictional body-armour and police-issue-type cargo pants, Nathania Bernabe and Jackie T. Hanlin. The pair are credited as playwrights, fight and movement choreographers, and performers, for this Affair of Honour production.

The start of the play is all fighting – fighting with various weapons and unarmed grappling. Dialogue and light / sound cues suggest that the two actors are shifting from one virtual-reality to another. I enjoyed not knowing at first why the switches and what their goal was, and then figuring that all out gradually as the action continued.

I don’t know enough about stage combat (or film combat, or video games, or swordplay in general …) to tell you what they were doing or tell you just how good it was. But it was very fun to watch, and very athletic. And when there appeared to be slaps or punches, they all looked real and sounded loud.

Multi-Vs has one holdover performance at the Varscona on August 29th (tomorrow.) Varscona holdovers are listed here, with a ticket link. Official Fringe holdovers at the Arts Barns are listed here. Grindstone hasn’t yet announced a holdover list, I don’t think.

  • 26 unique productions viewed and reviewed
  • 33 total performances viewed (1 more of Die-Nasty, 6 more of Late Night Cabaret)
  • 10 performances as crew
  • 12 venues attended
  • 4 volunteer shifts in the beer tents
  • 2 green onion cakes (one with sour cream, thank you PZ)
  • 0 parking tickets
  • 1 great Fringe Theatre Festival 2023!

A full Saturday at Fringe 2023

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On the final weekend of Fringe, I’m in “just one more!” mood. Saturday ended up including Ken Brown’s Life After Life After Hockey, Natasha Mercado’s Tree, into a black shirt into the booth for a performance of i carry your heart with me, then the last episode of Die-Nasty and the last Late Night Cabaret.

Life After Life After Hockey was a masterclass in solo narrative, with a throughline, clear transitions, and interesting actions. The creator-performer Ken Brown takes us through the creation, performance, and lengthy touring career of his 1980s solo Life After Hockey, and about how it led to the next things in his life, with challenges and joys. There are familiar experiences and recognizable names in the hockey parts of his story, but also in the parts about becoming a theatre creator and inspiring generations of other local theatre creators through his time teaching at Macewan and afterwards. For a solo, it had a lot of special guests – but that is not a complaint at all, they were delightful. Holger Peterson playing harmonica, Dana Wylie singing and playing guitar, Edmonton’s former poet laureate Pierrette Requier reading a poem about Edmonton, etc. Stage 13, La Cité – Servus Credit Union Théâtre.

Natasha Mercado’s Tree was a charming solo about a tree who longs to be human. Lots of low-key audience participation (“now I need a babbling brook through the forest – just this side of the room”) and a bit of a twist that I thought was going to turn into The Giving Tree. (It didn’t – which is good because I can’t stand that book). A game-show “Would You Rather” explored some of the possibilities available only to humans, good and bad. Stage 7, Chianti Yardbird Suite.

Die-Nasty’s Fringe series wrapped up with a few more deaths, everyone in jail exonerated especially Liz Nicholls (Kristi Hansen) who was recognized as the Spirit of the Fringe in an inspiring song, and the traditional port-a-potty hookup between Liz and the gonzo podcaster Fisher T Johnson (Mark Meer). Die-Nasty’s fall season opens its curtain on Monday October 23rd, set in a 1920s circus sideshow, and the first one’s free! (a successful marketing ploy for many substances …)

Late Night Cabaret was crammed full of special guests, stunts, contests, and inside-jokes that include the whole Fringe community as the insiders, which is the best thing about LNC. (@lnc_yeg, as the hosts often remind us.) Last night was also the last performance ever of Zee Punterz, who have been the cabaret’s house band for more than ten years. A slideshow gave us glimpses of many of their performances and paid tribute to the late Brett Miles, saxophonist through most of that time. They ended their last set, and the night, with a great rendition of Stairway to Heaven, along with the musical guest Lindsay Walker. And then they gave us an encore. Before the lights came up and the Fringe technicians started striking the band’s set, as a reminder of what will be happening today and all through the next week, as the Fringe grounds gets returned to its usual uses as a park, an alleyway, a parking lot, a road and bike path … and the theatres go back to being rehearsal spaces and classrooms, music performance rooms, bars, dance studios, lecture halls, a Masonic hall, and … and a lot of theatres preparing for their upcoming 2023-2024 performance seasons.

But that’s for later! For today, I’ll put my lanyards back on and find my sunglasses and head out to watch some theatre before our 5 pm performance of i carry your heart with me (Stage 27, Sugar Swing Upstairs). First stop, Multi-Vs. 2 pm at Stage 11, Varscona Theatre.

Two funny shows on Friday

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On Friday I caught two expressions of humour one after the other, in Yes, My Name is Mohamed Ali – Let Me Tell You a True Story, and then The Method Prix.

Mohamed Ali is my favourite kind of standup comedian – the kind whose stories all feel true, and whose delivery feels like he’s having as much fun telling them as we are having listening to them. I would definitely listen to him again. I started telling one of his anecdotes to someone later in the day and I realized that part of what made it so good was that there were seamless transitions from one story to the next – they weren’t just setup/punchline setup/punchline.

There was a part in the middle where he invited the audience to ask him questions while he had a few sips of tea from a thermos (Earl Grey, according to one answer) – and I was particularly impressed by the way he started from an audience question to telling about a series of events which all ended up connecting. Stage 4, Walterdale Theatre.

The premise of The Method Prix is that Deanna Fleischer and Brooke Sciacca are Hollywood types making a film, and enlisting the audience as clapper-board operator, craft services, makeup, auditioners, and background. All the background, I was part of a mountain range at a couple of points. Vincent Prix is a pretentious creepy cocky director, and Dylan Thruster is the … spit-take double … of a young Marlon Brando, complete with swagger, white undershirt, and open-mouthed bedroom-eye stares. Deanna Fleischer’s previous show Butt Kapinski put audience members into roles in a Raymond Chandler-esque noir detective story – I think it was in the old Armoury venue one year and I think I might have ended up being the murderer (“mow-de-wow”). This one was just as fun. Stage 17, Grindstone Theatre.

Fringe 2023 Day 8

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It’s Friday morning – there are two and a half more days of Fringe shows to come. It’s foggy and smoky right now, but it’s supposed to clear up later this afternoon and be sunny with a high of 26 or 27 degrees on the weekend.

Thursday’s schedule was assorted in style, but all very good.

Lesbihonest – Laura Piccinin from Toronto delivered a one-hour standup monologue about her various comings-out and partners, her personal experience of queerness and the background of changing vocabulary and identity labelling. I loved it – and not just the parts I identified with. One particular bit of it, about meeting a schoolchild who talked matter-of-factly about being a lesbian, brought me to tears. I was reminded a bit of Kimberly Dark’s Dykeopolis in, wow, that was 2013. Stage 5, Acacia Hall.

Lia and Dor – I am so glad I fitted this into my schedule. It was lovely. Cristina Tudor, playwright and perfomer, and director Keltie Brown Forsyth shaped this original work in the small Nordic Studio blackbox with a few props and costume elements, giving the flavour of a Romanian folktale. Tudor and the other performer Alex Forsyth played several characters – a contemporary young woman Lia and her Dor, a Romanian word which “means something like longing, or wanderlust or a soul-calling. It encompasses both melancholy and joy and hope. A feeling that drives you to take a new journey, fall in love, come back home. You know this feeling, we all do. ” but also her grandparents and great-aunt, a wolf, a serpent, etc. A bit of puppetry, a bandanna becoming a kerchief, some shifts of voice and physicality, and the transitions of time and character were easy to follow. I like stories where the mythology and the current reality intersect, with characters speaking in contemporary voice along with archetypes and fantasy. I have appreciated the work of Forsyth and Brown Forsyth since first seeing 7 Ways to Die: A Love Story in 2012, and Tudor’s work was a great fit for their company K.I.A. Productions, now Vancouver-based. I’m also looking forward to seeing David Johnston’s Let’s Talk About Your Death, directed by Alex Forsyth, later this weekend.

Lady Porn – This Whizgiggling Productions threehander was written by Trevor Schmidt, and stars the same three fascinating actors as the Destination Wedding and Destination: Vegas shows of previous Fringes: Cheryl Jameson, Kristin Johnston, and Michelle Todd. The context was a woman-centric porn-film company like the ones that appeared in the 1980s. But the story was just a fascinating look at three characters who start the project with apparently-compatible ideals and goals, but each of them has different constraints and needs, leading to a series of compromises and eventually the question of have they really achieved anything different? Johnston is the producer Jill – after starting as a performer in that industry, she inherited money from a much older husband and is now the one seeking out backers and locations, moving into directing as her goal, announcing each scene with a clapper-board. Jameson’s Bonnie has been born-again as a youth pastor’s wife, returning to the industry because her husband assures him God said it was fine to get money that way for household expenses. Todd’s Denyse is a financial and commercial success as a porn actress. She’s well aware of where Jill is shading the truth or changing her plans, and doesn’t hesitate to call her out. The lights go up on Denyse reclining on a couch poolside at her mansion, regal in a bright yellow pleated dress with snapping fan. As in all Trevor Schmidt designs, the costuming conveys the period, distinguishes clearly among the characters, and blends well with other costumes and the set dressing. There was no nudity – it didn’t need it – and the casual discussion of the on-film blocking made it clear that to the characters Denyse, Bonnie, and Jill, the film is just work, nothing about themselves. More thought-provoking than the Destination plays, but equally entertaining . Stage 2, Backstage Theatre

Agent Thunder: You Only Laugh Twice, is the entertaining improvised spy story which explains why two well-groomed young men have been roaming the Fringe grounds in dinner jackets all week. Matt Ness and Michael Vetsch first brought Agent Thunder to the Fringe in 2019 I think, but I didn’t see it then. It’s a clever setup – the premise is that the shows are a series of agent-training seminars, designed to demonstrate the business to new spies (the audience) by retelling some of Agent Thunder’s past cases. In the one I saw, the audience suggestions led to “The Case of the Fast Alpaca”, but the plotline involving an alpaca of golden fleece resolved quickly and then shifted to a trip to Chile to discover why the Andean mountains were growing more quickly than classical plate tectonics would predict. As in a James Bond adventure, characters included the Director of the Service and the Lab Doctor who endowed Agent Thunder with some new gadgets, then a local guide, a mountaineer, the head of a company with evil aims, and others. Unlike in a James Bond adventure, there was no gratuitous romantic subplot, and I didn’t miss it.

Ness and Vetch practice the type of improv where the two of them switch characters frequently with a tapout, as other duos of long experience often do (Kevin Gillese and Arlen Konopaki of Scratch, Jim Libby and Jacob Banigan of Rocket Sugar Improv, etc). It’s fun to watch them maintain the character traits that they other one started, and it also keeps the story moving along since they often tap out when one has an idea for something the other character can do. Andrew Creswick provided musical accompaniment, and director Corina Dransutavicius was in the booth with near-instantaneous response of a wide range of suitable sound and lighting cues.

Going into the final weekend of The Answer is Fringe, there’s time to fit in a few more shows. Hope you see something great!

Amor de Cosmos, and Puck Bunnies

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It’s a little harder to find a connecting theme for these two – Amor de Cosmos: A Delusional Musical is a fantastical recounting of the biography of a not-very-famous figure from Canadian history. Puck Bunnies is a play about contemporary young women who are hangers-on of a local minorleague hockey team. One’s a new work written by Richard Kemick with music and lyrics by local singer-songwriter-actor Lindsay Walker, and the other is a remount from local playwrighting team Darrin Hagen and Trevor Schmidt.

Amor de Cosmos: A Delusional Musical is not in the printed Fringe programs because it was a late addition off the waitlist. And it’s a little hard to describe, but it’s quirky and charming. Cody Porter, who directed the show for its Toronto-Fringe run, stepped into the performing role for Edmonton, which is a treat for his fans here. I loved the way he changed characters as Walker (accompanying on keyboard and narrating some parts from newspaper headlines) flipped him different hats, with physicality, dialect, and eye-twinkles to match. The elliptical/heightened text recitation reminded me a bit of Jonathan Christenson’s work, and was delivered with such clarity that I didn’t realize until afterwards that a lot of it was iambic pentameter. The main character was born into a mining family in New Brunswick, made his way to California as a photographer, and ended up in BC as a newspaper publisher and then politician. I was fascinated by the way the writers included acknowledgements of where this character stood or would have stood on various issues of the day that now we see as injustices (e.g. Indian Act, Immigration Act) and was cracked up by a throwaway anachronism about the right of homosexuals to give blood. Stage 8: Kick Point OSPAC, in the schedule slots showing as Ruby Rocket in the printed program.

The Guys in Disguise play Puck Bunnies debuted at the Fringe in 2017, and the playwrights won Outstanding New Work Fringe at the Sterling awards that season. In this remount, Jake Tkaczyk is playing Tammy, the new mother bringing her baby to the game as a visible reminder of her claim to the team captain Cliff. Tanya, played by Trevor Schmidt, seems to be the one making the rules for the group calling themselves the Puck Bunnies – providing hair/fashion consultation, relationship advice, and decreeing who can sit where. Newcomer Tina, played with adorable well-intentioned bewilderment by Jason Hardwick, used to sit with the “loser girls” but has been invited into the clique as a replacement for someone they’re shunning. As they watch the intersquad game from the stands (the bleachers are facing the audience) we learn more about their lives and their relationships and a lot of it is troubling. As I probably wrote when I saw the original production in 2017, I knew people like this when I was growing up in hockey rinks in the 1970s, so it’s troubling to see the same “put the boys first” mentality in a setting contemporary enough to have Google and selfies and pussy hats. Like other recent scripts by this writing team or by Schmidt, there’s a layer of poking gentle fun at the characters, but underneath there are some pointed messages about society and glimpses of hope. Even for these young women with their limited outlook and unsupportive environment, by the end we see hints of how things can change for them and for the people around them. Stage 11, Varscona Theatre.

Today I’m excited about catching Lesbihonest, Lady Porn, and Agent Thunder. How about you?