Tag Archives: alex forsyth

Upstairs and downstairs at the Fringe

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Kind Hearts and Coronets – I never saw the Alec Guinness movie of the same name, but my father loved it.  The stage version, directed by Ken Brown, is playing at L’Unitheatre at La cite francophone.  John D. Huston plays the Alec Guinness roles as well as miscellaneous servants and executioners, Alex Forsyth plays Israel Rank, the man who grows up poor but knowing he’s only a few deaths from inheriting a ducal coronet, and Julia Seymour plays a variety of other characters including Israel’s love interests, mother, and jailer.  Forsyth’s smug evil leer as Israel’s plans seem to come to fruition is a disturbing delight, a different flavour of bad than characters I’d seen Forsyth play in Deadmonton, Closer, and 7 Ways to Die: A love story.  Last show today, Saturday 2:45

Bella Culpa – Amica Hunter and David Cantor of Portland are A Little Bit Off, the troupe that did the delightful Beau and Aero at last year’s Fringe.  For Bella Culpa, they’re in the Westbury, the big theatre in the Arts Barns, and their stuff is just as engaging and fun to watch in the bigger house.  The two characters in Bella Culpa are servants in a formal household, doing their work of cleaning and preparing for guests, but frequently sidetracked into playful adventures and explorations.   They make clever use of minimal props (buckets, a sponge, a duster, a table) and introduce some impressive acrobatics at beautifully unexpected moments.  They communicate their story mostly through physical expression and action, but occasionally speak a few words in French.  Their tagline describes them as “Downton Abbey meets the Three Stooges”, but I thought afterwards that one of the things I appreciated most about them was that the relationship between the characters was not hostile, not a predictable she-likes-him/he-ignores-her, and not a constant status difference like many physical-theatre/clown duos.  Worth catching (they have two more shows this weekend) and worth watching for in future.

Excessive Fringe

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I didn’t do much else this weekend except hang around at the Fringe Festival going to shows. And sleep. I think I’m getting a cold.  Anyway, here are more shows that I’ve seen. I probably should have bought two frequent-fringer passes (20 shows) instead of the one 10-show pass.

Sexual Perversity in Chicago – This was a sold-out opening show. I had never seen this David Mamet play before, although I had seen the movie “about last night” long ago. Some of the language and attitudes seemed too outdated to be credible, although unfortunately not enough of them. The actors were all good, Jamie Cavanagh, Sereana Malani, Richard Lam, and the fourth whose name I need to look up (edit:  Patricia Cerra). In the lineup beforehand and before the play started, I enjoyed talking to an interesting young theatre student from a small town.

Pushed – I picked this one on the spot because it fit my schedule between the two other shows I already had tickets for. It was both funnier and much much darker than I expected.

Middleton a folk musical – Notes on this one are in a later post with other musicals.

7 Ways to Die: a Love Story – on a recommendation from a friend, I got completely caught up in this wordless masked story. It was like the darker version of Fools for Love – again two characters in different apartments in the same building interact, but in this one it seems that one of them keeps trying to kill herself and the other one keeps trying to stop her.  Alexander Forsyth and Keltie Brown were the creators/performers.

Divide – I was looking forward to this because I liked the song cycle that the artist (Joel Crichton) had written for last year’s festival, and besides because I like having interesting beer at Wunderbar. This was a performance piece that was a mix of storytelling, invoking his dead heroes Jack Layton and Vaclav Havel, imagining dystopic futures with his granddaughter and son in them, looping and beatbox and hiphop, and singing. It worked surprisingly well.

Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Hansom Cab Killer – Three actors played an awful lot of characters. I giggled frequently. It was full of doubles ententres but I think that for kids who know Sherlock Holmes and who don’t mind not getting some of the jokes or parents who don’t mind that they do get them, kids would like it too. I liked one of the main plot premises but I won’t mention it and spoil a friend who’s planning to see it later in the week.

Essay – this play about gender politics in an academic setting was written by young Canadian playwright Hannah Moskovitch. I sort of squirmed uncomfortably all the way through it because the characters were so familiar. The venue was the upstairs of the Wee Book Inn.

Significant Me – a one-woman show with props and occasional audience participation, the sequel to last year’s ONEymoon, by Christel Bartelse, with a manic pace and a lot of amusing asides and stage business. I’m not sure the plot hung together quite as well as last year’s; more of it just seemed like excuses to stick in other funny parts, but I didn’t mind.