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The festival fusion of Freewill (Shakespeare) and Fringe

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Normally the Freewill Shakespeare Festival happens at the end of June, beginning of July, with two of Shakespeare’s plays running in repertory at the big amphitheatre in Hawrelak Park. Big crowds enjoying beer and popcorn, squirrels and thunderstorms, along with a professional company of about 12 actors performing in both shows. That wasn’t a good plan for 2021, so the festival pushed back to August and scaled back to two separate cohorts, doing small cast versions suitable for touring to community league spaces and large backyards. Macbeth is coming to my own community league in Ritchie Park on Saturday August 28th, at 2pm, for pay what you Will, for example.

Both of this year’s productions, directed by festival AD David Horak, started with previews outdoors at Louise McKinney Waterfront Park, and are now joining the Edmonton Fringe Festival for performances this week in a convenient overlap of two traditions.

Much Ado About Nothing is being performed in the tent in Light Horse Park known as Vanta Youth Stage. The cast of five (Troy O’Donnell, Ian Leung, Sarah Feutl, Christina Nguyen, and Fatmi El Fassri El Fihri) runs through a fairly traditional adaptation of the romcom in a bit under 75 minutes – traditional except for having the five of them play all the roles. So, for example, Sarah Feutl is great as the quickwitted loyal Beatrice taking pleasure in banter with her cousin Hero and with Benedick, but she also plays Claudio (Hero’s love interest) and the old Sexton taking down the criminal charges. There was also a framing of the five actors arriving at a tour destination under Covid precautions, cut down from a company of 15 for an unexplained reason, and deciding which play to perform. A few times through the performance the actors reminded us of this layer, making the character-shifts amusing rather than clumsy. The funniest shift was when O’Donnell-as-Leonato-the-accuser was confronting O’Donnell-as-Borachio-the-accused, eventually frog-marching himself away.

I saw Macbeth in the preview, but at the Fringe it’s playing in the air-conditioned space known as Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre, just north of the streetcar tracks and new crosswalk on Gateway Drive. It’s a less conventional adaptation, using just three actors (Nadien Chu, Rochelle Laplante, and Laura Raboud), skipping over many of the details in favour of exposition (with a bit of editorial) delivered by one or another. It sticks to the Shakespearean text for most of the familiar scenes and monologues, but adds in some ukelele-accompanied songs at some of the most brutal moments (Banquo’s murder, Lady Macduff’s murder) for a bizarre touch. Raboud is disturbingly good in the title role. Laplante plays Lady Macbeth and Malcolm among others; Chu covers King Duncan, Banquo, Macduff, etc.

Before the narrative started, the three performers occupy themselves in bouffon fashion, picking out a new leader from the audience, affirming the choice, then chorusing that their time’s up, nothing personal, but your leadership has come to an end, and then moving on to another selection. This was entertaining at the time and seemed to lead in to the action at the start of the play with Duncan being replaced by Macbeth and then being tormented by the idea of not being able to pass on the crown to his child.

At the end, the young Malcolm is crowned King of Scotland. The bouffon voice appears again reciting something about the cycle continuing. Suddenly I realized that in my whole long acquaintance with this play, since studying it in Grade 12, seeing two Stratford productions while living in Ontario, and more recently productions of Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan, Theatre Prospero/Thousand Faces Festival, Akpik Theatre’s Pawâkan Macbeth, and The Malachites, I have always thought of the end of the play as getting back to normal, a sigh of relief for the rightful ruler on the throne and an assumption that the new regime will be wise, kind, and stable, a time to shudder and shake myself for the end of the nightmare brought about by two people’s ambition. It had honestly never occurred to me that I don’t know nearly enough about Malcolm and his advisors to assume a happily-ever-after. Just as when a self-serving government has been voted out or overthrown, or when public-health measures and community co-operation are getting a pandemic wave under control, we cannot congratulate ourselves and walk away.

And maybe I’m not the only one who needs to hear that.

Two samples of local history, the macabre and the hopeful

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Already this theatre season, several great productions have been seen on Edmonton stages.  The Colour Purple at the Citadel was a powerful tale of resilience, with really great music and an inspiring performance from Tara Jackson.  Silent Sky at Walterdale was based on the true story of early-20th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt.  Teatro closed their summer season with Vidalia, which was confusing and ridiculous and very entertaining.

This week I was able to watch two performances with local roots and seasonal resonances, and I enjoyed both.

Dead Centre of Town XII is this year’s version of Catch the Keys Productions’ annual exploration of historical horror by Megan Dart and Beth Dart. This one is set at Mellon Farm, the 1920s-era farm property at Fort Edmonton Park.  Attending the Hallowe’en event is one of your few chances to get a look at the Park while the renovations are continuing.   The horrifying stories out of local history feel more intimate this year, with an audience of only 25 for each performance encountering the characters in the farmhouse and yard.   Fans of previous Dead Centre of Town shows will recognize the hench/guides played by Colin Matty, Christine Lesiak, and Adam Keefe.  Other characters and stories are unique to this year’s production, and there are other surprising and disturbing design elements.  Dead Centre of Town XII plays until November 1st, tickets here.  Wednesdays through Saturdays it’s part of the bigger Hallowe’en event Dark, and Tuesdays and Sundays you can experience it on its own.

I could tell you a lot more about it, but not without spoiling things – and in Dead Centre of Town, it’s better when unexpected.

E-Day, by Jason Chinn, opens tomorrow at Roxy on Gateway, a Roxy Performance Series offering by Serial Collective.  I got to see a preview show last night.  I try not to review previews because it seems not-quite-fair, but my calendar is quite busy this month and last night was my chance.

I loved it.  And I cried.  It was a little like Kat Sandler’s The Candidate / The Party, which were large-scale views of behind-the-political-scenes of a national leadership campaign and election.  But it was more like 10 out of 12 by Anne Washburn, the peek into technical-rehearsal week at a theatre company which Theatre Network produced a few years ago.    And for me it was … you know how Badlands Passion Play has the huge advantage of starting out with an evocative plot and characters that most of the audience not only knows but cares passionately about? Like, when I arrived on site, before I found my seat I looked around at the hills and saw the three crosses, and it took my breath away because I knew what was coming and it was going to be right there.  Yeah, like that.

E-Day takes place during the 2015 provincial election campaign, from E-28 to E+1.  The whole play is set in a campaign office for a local candidate, Candace Berlinguette (all the characters are named after the performers), who was unsuccessful in the 2012 election.  With credit to set/costume designer Beyata Hackborn, it looked like any campaign office I’ve visited or volunteered in.  The table of donated food, the phone bank of mismatched phones, the signs on the fridge, the beautiful coded maps,  the coloured floor tiles and alphabet squares left over from the daycare previously in the space.  Audience was seated on all four sides, and there was always lots to watch – the office manager in the corner (Amena Shehab), the teenagers on the phones (Asia Bowman and Shingai David Madawo), the comings and goings out the various doors and the mission-control of the voter contact organizer (Sheldon Elter) and his assistant (Kiana Woo).   As in The Candidate/The Party, the candidate has a same-sex partner who has limited patience for the compromises of politics (Beth Graham).

What I loved about this play was twofold.  First, the specifics felt so right.  I had been a little disappointed in the Kat Sandler scripts being about an imaginary electoral system that resembled the American one, because I felt hungry to find humour and hope within our own Canadian system that I work within.  (Like Michael Healey’s Proud, with its slightly-different-outcome of a real election, and the Parliamentary seating diagram with the red, blue, orange, and pale-blue post-its).   But this one was so believable and so local in scope – everything I knew about election volunteering, about identifying supporters and pulling the vote, about why people volunteer and who runs a campaign – it all fit.

And in E-Day, it all mattered.   Characters remind each other that the hard work and insight from the previous election loss are helping them run this campaign, and when they despair of winning this one, they repeat that every supporter gained this time makes things easier next time. Plot details are consistent with this.  And in the middle of the discouragement, someone with a laptop whoops and they cluster around to the voiceover and music of the announcement that their party will be forming the government.  And that was the other thing I loved – the message of long-term hope, that whether or not any particular campaign goes the way you want, it’s all worth it in the long term.   And this week, I appreciated getting those reminders.  They made me cry.

Dead Centre of Town tickets are here.  Many of their shows sell out, so get yours early.

E-Day tickets are here.

I’m off to Banff for the Community Theatre Summit, which I’m sure will inspire me with theatre ideas and make me a better artist and board member.  And when I come back, I want to see Baroness Bianka’s Bloodsongs, and Fight Night, and The Roommate, all opening soon on local stages.

The other mysterious island

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The Island was the main setting of the 2000s-decade JJ Adams tv show LOST.  It didn’t have a name.  Groups of attractive castaways found themselves on its shores, explored, encountered mysterious others, and were threatened and assisted by unexplained supernatural phenomena.  And the 5-season series had an epilogue or attempt at explanation that I never did understand.

And so, Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  Un-named island.  Old castaways, new castaways split up in the crash, magic and supernatural elements, backstory and old enmities, and a quick wrapup that I wasn’t quite sure about.

Until this weekend, I don’t think I’d actually seen a full production of The Tempest anywhere.  I’d known something about it because of references in other stories, notably the children’s book Roller Skates (Ruth Sawyer’s 1937 Newbery Medal winner) and the Robertson Davies classic Tempest-Tost and more recently John Lazarus’s play Rough Magic.  I’ve read the play, I’ve seen part of the movie version with Helen Mirren as Prospera (it’s on Netflix), and I’m familiar enough with it to recognize the same plot used in Forbidden Planet (the 1956 science fiction film mentioned in the Rocky Horror Picture Show theme song).

The production I saw this weekend was at the University of Alberta, directed by Ian Leung and featuring the actors of the penultimate year of the BFA Acting program.  (It’s got performances today, Sunday at 2pm and 7:30 pm, if I get this posted in time.)  Jaimi Reese plays Prosperine, usurped Duke of Milan, magic-user, and mother to Miranda.  Miranda is double-cast. I watched both Emma Houghton’s and Sarah Culkin’s interpretations of the isolated teenager, Culkin’s more dreamy and Houghton’s more sulky, and enjoyed seeing two versions of the girl’s first glimpses of the eligible young prince Ferdinand (Marc Ludwig).  The king’s (Jacob Holloway’s) wise old counselor Gonzales (Chayla Day) and the king’s sibling Bastiana (Emily Howard) were both switched from male characters of the traditional script, Gonzalo and Sebastian.   Having Bastiana be female added a convincing nuance of attraction to the snickering and scheming with Antonio (Jordan Buhat), Prosperine’s usurper brother.  The sequence where the two of them slouch on the auditorium stairs, muttering cynically about everything Gonzales says, was particularly good.

Prosperine has used her magic to compel two slaves, Ariel (Sarah Ormandy) and Caliban (Jake Tkaczyk), until her epilogue speech sets both of them free.   Tkaczyk’s Caliban was hunched over, growling and cowering and resentful like a larger version of Gollum.  I pitied Caliban and I was afraid of him and was amused by him.  In his version of the story, Prosperine and her daughter had nurtured him and taught him and then later began to exploit him harshly as a slave.  In Prosperine’s version, Caliban had been a trusted member of the household until he attempted sexual assault on young Miranda, and his bad treatment since then was a consequence of that.   I was reminded of the colonialist/xenophobic trope of needing to protect white daughters from the uncontrolled urges of savage others.  But Caliban’s salacious gesture and leer made me shudder and look away, convinced of his evil intent and unrepentance.

But the one who caught me by surprise was Ariel.  Somehow, the representations I’d encountered in the past led me to picture Ariel as sort of ethereal, a graceful gowned being singing gently, the young Griselda Webster in Tempest-Tost.  But this Ariel was a different sort 0f non-human.  Ormandy’s portrayal never let me forget for a minute that the spirit was powerful beyond her master Prosperine, gentle only by choice, and beyond human sentiment.  Her awkward postures, standing on one leg, never pointing her toes, and her blue morphsuit costume and face paint helped to place her more in the tradition of Puck than of Tinkerbell.  And her singing was strikingly powerful.

Stephano and Trincula (Philip Geller and Alex Dawkins), part of the king’s retinue who get separated from the rest of the ship’s company in the cast and spend most of the play sharing a butt of sack with Caliban, are the Shakespearean version of comic relief. Their first entrances, where Trincula discovers Caliban hiding from the storm under a tarp and decides that he must be a fish because of his smell, and then when Stephano sees both Trincula and Caliban with their feet sticking out from the tarp and concludes that they’re a four-footed monster, are particularly well done.  It is easy to see that students in the U of A BFA Acting program get a good grounding in the skills of clowning and physical theatre.

I loved the first scene, the choreography of the sailors and passengers aboard the ship.  I have been on sailboats in rough weather (and on a tall ship in calm weather) and I found it a convincing portrayal of struggling to work and hang on as the decks lurched and the sails flapped.  The simple staging customary for Corner Stage shows was sufficient to support good performances.  A few well-chosen design details stood out memorably (especially Prosperine’s ornate and heavy magical cloak) as I still remember the chilling shadow of the cross on the stage floor two years ago in Merchant of Venice when Shylock is forced by the court to give up his religion and abandon his Torah.  Like Merchant of Venice, some aspects of the story are uncomfortable for me as a 21st-century feminist trying to be conscious of colonialism and patriarchy (a parent’s investment in a daughter’s virginity is super-creepy, for example) but the language and imagery and character studies make it worth being uncomfortable.

Sunday April 10th, Corner Stage (second floor) in the Fine Arts Building at U of Alberta, 2 pm and 7:30 pm, admission by donation.

 

 

Michael Healey’s Proud

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Tonight I saw a preview of theatre no. 6’s presentation of Proud.  Director Ian Leung said ahead of time that there might be technical glitches, but I didn’t notice any.   Parking around La Cité Francophone was unusually challenging, probably due to the Alberta NDP leadership debate taking place across the street at Faculté St. Jean, and afterwards I found that a cheering thought.

Proud is a story about politicians and about some parts of the political process, and about beliefs and emotions and what kind of government people want.  I hated some of what I saw on stage because I think it might be true and I don’t want it to be, and I loved how they showed it. The premise of the story started by imagining that the federal election of 2011 had generated a much larger majority for the Conservatives, if they had won seats all over Quebec by very slim margins over the NDP.  (That this is completely feasible to imagine is thoroughly depressing in itself.  See Fair Vote Canada for more.)   As the Prime Minister says addressing his newly expanded caucus, “We have broad but thin support.  If this was ice, I couldn’t recommend we play shinny on it.”   There’s a funny early scene where the Prime Minister and his Chief of Staff are examining a large seating chart of the House of Commons trying to plan who should sit where.  All one side and about half the other side are coded Conservative-blue.  There are 28 orange cards and 25 red ones, and I couldn’t be sure but I think then 4 BQ baby-blue and one green one.  That wasn’t even the point of the scene, just a fun detail I got distracted by.  The point of it was more to show the Prime Minister being petty and demanding about not wanting certain caucus members to be in his line of sight because he held grudges, and his Chief of Staff trying to find solutions that would keep his boss happy and not make any other problems.

Dave Horak was a perfect Chief of Staff, down to the low voice and the way he expected to fall on his metaphorical sword.  Brian Dooley was disturbingly good as a non-ideological Prime Minister who doesn’t make eye contact.  And Melissa Thingelstad was — I think this is my favourite role that I have seen her in so far.  She played a rookie MP from Quebec, a single mother who had been managing a St-Hubert Barbecue (cultural note: that’s a Quebec chain much like Swiss Chalet only with tarte au sucre.)   Her character had a wonderful mix of ferociousness and naiveté, sexuality and practicality and honesty and pragmatic ambition in which the Prime Minister seemed to have met his match.  “Why do you insist on mis-underestimating me?” she asked at one point.   When her character first appeared, I worried that she was going to be used as a sort of sexist shortcut and comic foil, making fun of young women in general and of the 2011-era rookie NDP MPs from Quebec like Ruth-Ellen Brossard.  But she got more interesting.

Richard Lee Hsi (formerly billed as Richard Lee, last seen in the Toy Guns Dance Theatre shows at the Fringe and in the feature film Rock Paper Dice Enter) had a small role as a character from the future being interviewed about the events of the play and about his own political aspirations.   His interview/monologue alluded to some very discouraging outcomes that would follow easily from the present-day of the play, which is not so different from our own, (a powerless consolidated Left and the Conservatives with a longest-serving Prime Minister very similar to Harper), but also gave the audiences some hopeful prospect in the way he spoke about his own ideals and ambitions.

On my way home from work, before I went to the performance, I heard a CBC Radio interview with David Moscrop, a doctoral candidate in political science at UBC.  His research focuses on the way people choose how to vote with their emotions rather than their reasoning.  This was echoed in the play, in which the Prime Minister and his Chief of Staff explain to the new MP that they address people’s feelings rather than their beliefs.

Ian Leung’s Director’s Note in the program says “save all that heavy stuff for after.  Tonight, it’s a comedy.  Enjoy!”

I did enjoy it.  I’m not sure it’s a comedy though.  I didn’t think the British TV series “House of Cards” was a comedy either.  (I haven’t seen the Netflix one with Kevin Spacey.)   I guffawed several times, and I also squirmed in my seat and winced quite a bit.  I wished it wasn’t quite so credible, but at the same time I was enthralled by the ways it was.

Proud is playing at L’Unithéâtre, La Cité Francophone, until October 19th.  Tickets are at, of course, Tix on the Square.

Fatboy, redux

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I first saw the Edmonton Actors Theatre production of John Clancy’s Fatboy at the Fringe festival in 2012, on the recommendation of a new friend.  That seems like a long time ago, in my history of exploring Edmonton theatre.   I liked it at the time, but I think I was confused by not knowing what to expect in the unfamiliar genre.

Two years on, I was excited to hear that Fatboy was going to be part of the Roxy Theatre’s Performance Series, with Dave Horak directing the same cast (Frederick Zbryski, Melissa Thingelstad, Mathew Hulshof, Tim Cooper and Ian Leung).    Knowing more about what to expect, and having seen a bit more bouffon and other kinds of odd theatre in the interim, I did not feel as uncomfortable this time around and I enjoyed it more.  It was funny that I felt closer to the action in the auditorium of the Roxy than I had upstairs at the Armoury.

The eponymous Fatboy (Frederick Zbryski) and his wife Fudgie (Melissa Thingelstad) have that kind of affectionate and acrimonious relationship that is central to a lot of comedy, but taken to extremes and excesses.  Their struggles and adventures take them through three scenes, in their home, in a courtroom, and then in a throne room, with some funny addresses to the audience and musical interludes in between.   The stock characters of courtroom and throne room (Mat Hulshof, Tim Cooper, Ian Leung) were funny, particularly in a sort of shared delayed guffaw,  but I was most entertained by Mat Hulshof’s first-scene Tenant.   I was also amused by some occasional breaking the fourth wall and conventions of theatre to comment on a double-cast character going to change costume, a comment about the Sterling awards, and so on.

Partway through, I found myself completely startled by how much this over-the-top obscene ridiculous farce was actually relevant to current government and politics.  I think that in 2012 I was too busy trying to make literal sense of what I was seeing to pick up on the ways that it was saying familiar things “more truthful than fact”.

It ran about an hour and a half, which I think was a bit longer than the Fringe version.  Mostly they made good use of the extra time, although a couple of bits of business dragged a bit.  The costumes (Melissa Cuerrier) added to the exaggeration.

Two new Alberta works: En anglais, sil vous plaît, and Fugly.

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I only watched two shows yesterday, with a long beer-tent volunteer shift and some other Fringe hanging out in between.  I enjoyed the cooler weather.  Not so much this morning’s rain, but it’s not supposed to last.

En Anglais, s’il vous plaît, at the Strathcona Library, is a new play written by local actor Vincent Forcier, starring Kristi Hansen, Steve Jodoin, and Ian Leung.  It’s performed partly in French and partly in English, with all the French being translated in supertitles projected above the stage.  I like to think that I didn’t need the supertitles at all, but I can reassure you that they were easy to see without being distracted from the story. 

Because I haven’t lived in Alberta very long, and because my study of French and exposure to francophone community was mostly in Ontario and eastern Canada, I didn’t know much at all about the history and politics of francophone Alberta.  I found this play fascinating.  It interwove the familiar story of a typical young Alberta couple, Amour (Steve Jodoin), raised by francophone parents and attending French schools, and Douce (Kristi Hansen), of Ukrainian background and grown up in an English milieu, with the political narrative of Leo Paquette, the first Alberta MLA to speak in the legislature in French.  Ian Leung played Leo Paquette and also played Amour’s father.  As the narrator addressing the audience at the start, he speaks clearly and slowly in French and in code-switched French and English, engaging the cautious audience and reassuring us that we’d be able to follow.  As M. Paquette, his formal speeches in the legislature are equally clear.  And when he shifts to playing Amour’s father, resentful of his Anglophone daughter-in-law, his speech is much faster and more idiomatic.  I had to work to understand him and it was easy to put myself in Douce’s place, feeling unwelcome and unappreciated for the effort I’d been making.

There were clear parallels between M. Paquette’s political initiatives and his determination not to apologize for exercising his rights in order not to set a precedent diminishing those rights, and Amour’s ongoing efforts at home to get his wife to speak enough French to expose their future child to the language.  “I’m pissed off that it’s easier for you!”, she exclaims, illustrating some common misconceptions of language-majority privilege.  I was surprised that the political story took place as recently as 1986.  One of my favourite parts of the play was the scene where Leo Paquette is in the legislature, addressing the Speaker of the House (played by Kristi Hansen) and Steve Jodoin is playing all the other MLAs addressing the house, each with his or her own facial expressions, accents, and voices.

At the end of the night, I went to C103 to see Fugly.   Their show programs are attached to wooden sticks so that you can use them as fans more easily, which is clever in warm weather in C103.  Returning the fan/program meant that I can’t tell you for sure who was playing which character, but the Fringe program has Joleen Ceraldi, Heather Falk, and Helen Knight, in a company from Calgary called The Janes.  The elliptical storytelling in a fantasy setting seemed to be conveying the story of a woman who is searching for her mind, while caught up in various encounters with body image and conformist expectations.  The sharp lines and clear colours of the design helped to build the not-quite-real world full of mirrors.  The rhymed couplets at the start of the performance cued me immediately that this was going to be some kind of allegory or poetic impression rather than a more natural dialogue in which I should understand everything immediately.  This made me more comfortable with just watching.

Tonight is Sonder‘s turn for a late-night performance (11:30 pm at King Edward School).   The Edmonton Journal gave us 3.5 stars, with “Kudos to the high-energy cast who deal with some pretty intense material, using mime, movement and minimal props”.  We have two more shows after tonight: Thursday at 4 pm and Saturday at 6:45pm.