Monthly Archives: August 2023

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?

Charcoal sketch of a person's back torso. They have shadows showing overlapping flesh at their shoulder and waist level.

Hot ticket Tuesday: five strong shows

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On Tuesday i carry your heart with me was dark (that’s Michelle Martin’s intimate and musical story of family and resilience). It’s back on tomorrow at Sugar Swing Ballroom Upstairs at 7:45 pm.

So I had the chance to fit in five shows that have been getting good buzz, and I was not disappointed in any of them.

Tiger Lady. This play by Dead Rabbits Theatre out of the UK drew the audience in immediately to its setting of a travelling circus in the 1930s in the USA, with ensemble members in trenchcoats with musical instruments engaging with the entering audience members. Their accents were appropriate to the characters and era – occasionally a little hard for me to understand but adding to the atmosphere. I was reminded of the Edmonton instance of the musical Hadestown, with its workers’ chorus and storytelling musicians, and I was reminded several times of kristine nutting’s Devour Content Here: Of Love and Wheat. A young woman escapes her Presbyterian aunties to follow the circus, discovering a vocation as tiger tamer and a human love with another circus worker. The characters are a bit archetypical, but not stereotypical – the dancer has agency and supports Mabel, the animal handler Louis confides “I’d want to marry you, if I swung that way”. Some beautiful and impressive acrobatics, puppetry, and excellent use of the large Westbury stage and lighting instruments. Stage 1, Westbury Theatre.

Breaking Bard. Another talented ensemble, this one seven young improvisers from Vancouver creating a Shakespearean tragedy complete with iambic pentameter which sometimes even rhymed, from a couple of audience suggestions (“arrogant” and “mountains”). Right from the land acknowledgement’s nod to improvised Shakespeare being the most colonial of choices, to the spoken prologue delivered in rhyming couplets by alternating pairs of performers, I was delighted. As another playgoer and I discussed afterwards, they touched on all kinds of Shakespearean tropes and plot devices that we hadn’t even realized were classic. The main characters (the arrogant Lord Peckington and his betrothed Olivia) each had a best friend/supporter, who also end up pairing up. There were shepherds who gave us some backstory about life around the mountain lord’s domain, mountain elves playing tricks like the fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Mountain Men miners trying to protect their territory and livelihood. Partway through I remembered that they had promised us a tragedy and wondered if they would follow through, but oh they sure did. Clever and entertaining. Stage 4, Walterdale Theatre.

muse: an experiment in storytelling and life drawing. Someone I met in another lineup told me that for her it was a calming experience in a rushed day. Two other people told me I would like it, though one of them is a trained visual artist. I am not. But I showed up where the assistants were handing out charcoal and sketching pads, and the performer Cameryn Moore told us to leave the chairs where they were so everyone could have elbow room. Then she disrobed (literally – she had a great satin robe!) and performed a series of poses as she would do when modelling for a life-drawing class. Once she was holding longer poses, she told some of her story of how she got into modelling for art classes and how it affected her, and the Fringe audience asked questions as we drew. Apparently artists and life-drawing classes are excited about drawing diverse bodies such as Cameryn’s plus-sized middle-aged one. At the end, there was an optional “gallery” with our work on the floor to show each other and our muse. This was a surprisingly profound experience for me. I do not know which was more empowering, the reminder that it is okay for me to draw, or the reminder that it is okay for me to enjoy my own body the way it is. I loved that the other audience members were un-self-conscious enough, or at least quiet enough, that I didn’t hear other people’s self-deprecation or embarrassment about being bad at drawing. (Like in exercise classes – some of them have a culture of commenting on one’s own inadequacy, and some really don’t, and the latter is refreshing.) Stage 5, Acacia Hall.

Charcoal sketch of a person's back torso. They have shadows showing overlapping flesh at their shoulder and waist level.
Drawing of Cameryn Moore, muse, by Louise Mallory, posted by permission of both.

Old God. Alex Jones-Trujillo prances onto the stage in an ornate jesterish outfit and pantomime whiteface, poking gentle fun at audience members and giving a character backstory so vague that it sets them up to do anything. Which the character then pretty much does. Some of it is crude, some of it is thought-provoking, some of it is delightful physical theatre, and all of it is funny. The performer steps out of character. Literally – they had explained earlier that the decorative floor lighting bounds the “stage” for “theatre”, so when he steps out of it and takes off his headcovering, he becomes Alex the performer speaking to the audience rather than Old God the character. Both of them are great – creators of discomfort in the best bouffon traditions, but including the audience in the laughter and agreement. Stage 20, The Sewing Machine Factory. (This is a Fringe Shuttle stop, if you’re en route to or from La Cite. )

Sweet Jesus (the gospel according to felt). I did not know before this that filmmaker, director, and actor Randy Brososky was also a puppeteer – but he’s a good one! His Jesus was in the Muppet tradition, with one hand manipulating his head/mouth and the other embodying one of his arms. It was easy to watch the puppet instead of the puppeteer, and interact with him – because there are a lot of conversations with audience members. He even shook my hand! I was completely engaged with this narrative and I didn’t disagree with any of the things he said. His version of Jesus was in the tradition of angrily overturning the ripoff merchants’ tables – he swore a lot, but it seemed to me he was swearing about the right things. The present-day parables were great, including the subtle detail that all the characters in them had non-Anglo names or (for the ones represented by Barbie dolls) were non-white. Stage 29. Lorne Cardinal Theatre at The Roxy.

Music and laughter: Scoobie Doosical and Die Nasty

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On Monday at the Fringe both shows I caught were comedies. Comedies with lovely original music and clever lyrics and amusing choreography and movement. There are a lot of funny people around this festival.

Scoobie Doosical is an original musical by Rebecca Merkley, a tribute to the well-known 1970s cartoon television about the ghost-debunking gang and their Great Dane. Merkley’s company Dammitammy Productions did something similar a few years ago with River City: The Musical, parodying the Archie comic-book characters.

Live accompaniment (Yvonne Boon and Robyn Slack) enhances the lyrics both goofy and touching, and the impressive singing voices of cast Cameron Chapman, Bella King, Natalie Czar, and Andrew Cormier. Cormier plays the villain Professor Gigglepuffs (“Riggleruffs” in Scoobie’s dialect) with a flair evocative of Frank N. Furter in Rocky Horror (Picture) Show – and also plays Velma. Czar plays the villain’s sidekick/cat and also plays Daphne. (Imagine some wig-quick-changes). Chapman and King play the Shaggy and Scoobie characters, building on the source-material expectations to create lovable caricatures. The plot was also reminiscent of the source material, confusing at first but all falling into place with happy and fair resolutions. Stage 4 Walterdale Theatre, selling quickly.

Die Nasty is “an Edmonton comedy institution for 30 years” according to their program blurb. At the Fringe, the long-form improvised soap opera has an episode every night that takes place at the Fringe, with some familiar characters and some archetypical ones. The night I saw it, it was directed by Peter Brown with live music by Paul Morgan Donald, and there were 16 performers on stage, including guests Joel Taras and Jake Tkaczyk as well as Stephanie Wolfe, Jacob Banigan, Kirsten Throndson and other ensemble members. Characters I remember from previous years included Kristi Hansen’s version of Liz Nicholls, this time skating off across the grounds with Jesse Gervais’ Robin Fairweather, the tin-whistle-playing Edmonton institution. I particularly appreciated the acknowledgement of this character’s mixed reputation, and I think other audience members did too. Mark Meer’s Hunter S Thompson-esque podcaster wasn’t in the episode I saw, but his gum-chewing colleague Kalyn Miles was. The Mormon elder missionary (Jason Hardwick) was successful in converting hot dog vendor Fat Frank (Gordie Lucius), and for some reason this involved switching the missionary’s white dress shirt and nametag with the hot dog vendor’s apron. Murray Utas made an appearance (as portrayed memorably by Jake Tkaczyk). When given the directorial challenge by Brown to speak about his secret wishes, we find out (in an original musical solo then enhanced by a dancing ensemble) that Murray would really like to leave paperwork behind and perform his own Fringe autobiographical solo piece, complete with embodying three characters, the young Murray, the woman who coaches him, and … I’ve actually forgotten who the third one was, because I was laughing so hard at this point.) Die Nasty continues every night at 10 pm at Varscona Theatre, Venue 11. You do not need to have seen previous episodes to enjoy it.

After the accident: Sea Wall and Flicker

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Yesterday’s plays both explored the aftermath of awful accidents, in very different styles.

Sea Wall is a solo play written by Simon Stephens and directed by Belinda Cornish. Jamie Cavanagh’s character slowly enters his kitchen, turns off the room’s air conditioning, puts on the kettle, and begins telling the audience about the events of his life that left a hole through his stomach, as he puts it. There were no lighting shifts or sound effects that I noticed, no props except for the tea makings. And we were silent and on the edge of our seats for the whole 45 minutes. In a few lines each, the character describes three significant family members and his relationships with all of them. The shift to telling about a particular event is subtle. And none of it – his joy, his pain, his questions about God and the universe – is any louder or more external than it needs to be. Brilliant. Venue 34, Roots on Whyte building, elevator access.

Flicker, a new script by Shawn Marshall, shows what happens to a young hockey prospect (Ike Williams) after a car accident. The story is not linear, the ensemble players (Riley Smith, Michaela Demeo, Carys Jones, Angie Bustos) all seem to be playing James’ memories and parts of his psyche, and it uses the symbol of a buzzing flickering lightbulb to jump from memory to memory. One of them reminded me disturbingly of Cylon Six in Battlestar Galactica, the Tricia Helfer character. The direction makes good use of the whole wide stage at Sugar Swing Ballroom Upstairs. My favourite bit was the father-son fishing trip with an awkward sex-talk agenda. Venue 27, Sugar Swing Ballroom Upstairs. Air conditioning, bar, no elevator but advance access for anyone needing extra time on the stairs.

Forest of Truth and Bathsheba …

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Putting all the show titles in the post title makes weird mashups. Especially these two, which some from very different shared mythology cultural referents.

Forest of Truth involves the same people who brought the inspired weirdness of i’m lovin it to Fringe a few years ago, Theatre Gumbo of Japan. It’s set in a fairytale milieu with some familiar tropes, and references to characters like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White. There’s a problem to solve – the Queen of the forest needs some True Love Extract to preserve/extend her beauty – and an adorable sidekick. But the unfolding action includes some parts that are very much not for children! I loved it that the plot did not stick with the Man being the romantic pursuer and the Woman wanting marriage for other reasons – the Woman was also checking out (climbing on?) several audience members as potential partners, with clearly physical intent. As in i’m lovin it, there were some visually-delightful bits with props, and a diarrhea joke. Forest of Truth would also have been funny if it were slightly less heteronormative. Venue 28, Roxy Theatre on 124 Street.

Bathsheba and the Books is a straightforwardly ridiculous comedy. I was familiar enough with the source material to find extra humour in the details, but even without, I think Aimée Beaudoin’s sex symbol of the ancient world, as costumed by Trevor Schmidt with exactly the right kind of gown to seem credibly period and suitable enhancement for the character’s … endowments … was just so fun to watch and listen to. She’s obviously in control of her world, a scholar who manages the men of the household after the death of her husband King David. Chris Fassbender and Jeff Halaby are her collaborators and servants, and Jake Tkaczyk is equally larger-than-life as her son, a young King Solomon. Directed by Davina Stewart, the pacing is good, the laughs are frequent, and the canon-consistency is left at “it coulda been”. Lots of dramatic-irony asides which are funny if you have some ideas how the Bible is treated in 21st century cultures and religions. I have to admit that I was a tiny bit distracted by the costume practicalities of how they got sparkly gold Birkenstock-type footwear. Venue 1, Westbury.

Fringe Day 2: Anatomica, rain, Late Night Cabaret

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Maybe the rain should come first. It was definitely the start of a lot of conversations – where were you when the hail hit last night? what all did they shut down? how are they managing the flooding and cleanup? Friday there were no outdoor performances, on stage or in busking pitches. There was no KidsFringe, no North Beer Tent, no Wine Tent. There was a very busy and competent Squeegee Crew – I am sure they have another official name, but I always saw them with squeegees. And it kept raining.

Anatomica is Amica Hunter’s solo show. I think they said it was their first solo? I remember them from the two-handed A Little Bit Off physical theatre performances of previous Fringes, Beau and Aero, and A Grave Mistake. Anatomica was different in some ways – it was all a conversation with the audience – but it employed similar absurdities, exploring odd ways of moving and expressing the performer’s body and discussing the idea of having different kinds of bodies. The performer represents a lobster or crab at one point, and a worm at one point, both in weirdly-credible ways. There’s enough narrative thread to feel satisfying, some honest reflections on the performer’s life through the first pandemic years, and some very funny prop business that worked. (Sometimes I wonder about physical-theatre creators and their process. Do they walk through Home Depot with a shopping list but get distracted by picking up things and saying “this would make a great megaphone! this would make great nipples for a meatsuit! if I put these things together could I build a toilet-paper shooting cannon?”). I think that people who like Very Weird Theatre would like this, but also, people who don’t like Very Weird Theatre but just like stories, people who want to hear various bodily frailties represented on stage, and people who liked watching Amica and their performance partner in the earlier shows. Venue 22: Holy Trinity basement, whatever that is called.

Last night was the first Late Night Cabaret of this year’s Fringe. Joleen Ballandine and Sydney Campbell were hosting, and Zee Wee Punterz were the house band. Lots of the usual traditions, from Writers Row jokes to Free Shit giveaways, cameo glimpses of several shows in the festival all of which I want to see now, and a happy crowd coming back together. I don’t actually know the premise of Shakespeare’s Sirens so I’m not entirely sure who the characters were supposed to be who were having a gladiator-style single combat complete with dueling pasty-twirling … and I don’t know the etiquette of mentioning performer names when I’m not sure of their burlesque stage names … but let me say, that was memorable and probably unique. And I have a ticket to see it again tonight. Stage 2: Backstage Theatre.

I’m also hoping to catch Forest of Truth at the Roxy (by Theatre Gumbo, the Japanese troupe who did I’m Lovin It at King Edward School a few years ago), and Bathsheba and the Books (Journal 4-stars) at the Westbury.