THE AETHERNOMICON
The Watch & Spectacle Puppet Co.
The Playhouse Studio (Venue 3), to July 27

In the beginning ... Asa Nodelman created gothic horror puppet show The Clock in the Lobby for last year's fringe. Inspired by the success of that Best of Fest show -- and by early 20th-century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft's references to a mysterious tome called The Necronomicon -- Winnipeg's Nodelman follows that act with this big bang of a Biblical sci-fi chiller.

The otherworldly marionettes and props are works of genius -- and yes, it's evil genius. However, the visual power of Nodelman's creations is sometimes diluted by excessive showmanship on stage. A trio of primordial beings -- whose appearance gives rise to a truly impressive birth-of-man scene -- wow the crowd with their first water-ballet dance across the stage. By the fourth or fifth pass? Not so much. Given that the mechanics of the show already require a leisurely pace in the storytelling, a little brevity on that score wouldn't hurt. Still, it's hard to complain about getting too much of a good thing.

AFRICAN FOLKTALES WITH ERIK DE WAAL
School of Contemporary Dancers (Venue 8), to July 26

Fringe Festival mainstay Erik De Waal brings his larger-than-life self back to Venue 8 with his familiar cast of South African animal puppets and some exciting new fables to share.

In De Waal's first story, Rabbit is crying because a scary creature with a very big voice is hiding in her house. But this isn't just any creature -- this animal claims to eat trees and step on elephants! How ever will Rabbit get her house back when all the other animals of the veldt are too frightened to do anything? And just what kind of creature is that hiding in the house?

The second story concerns not animals, but children. Little Tembhi is left in the care of her older brother. She slips out the back door and loses her doll in the river. She follows the doll right to the edge of the forest where a horrible man (a cannibal who eats children!) is waiting to pop her in a sack! Can Tembhi's brother get her before it's too late? De Waal will tell you -- but only if you promise not to "scream like a baby!"

Always professional, De Waal enchants and engages his audience with his high energy, sense of humour, and genuine love of his craft. The man just knows how to tell a story. Arrive early -- the very first show was almost completely sold out. Great for all kids up to age 10.

AMERICAN SQUATTER
Aspen Comedy Works
Planetarium Auditorium (Venue 10), to July 26

Barry Smith of Colorado returns with a new episode from the colourful life of Barry Smith. It's an amusing piece of autobiography, complete with a slick PowerPoint presentation.

American Squatter tells the story of a teenage Smith, who goes to live with his father in California after his mother is killed in a car accident. Dad is a nagging clean freak, who is seen in actual family video bagging the wrapping as Smith opens a Christmas present.

Smith rebels by taken up skateboarding, dropping LSD and squatting in abandoned London buildings. Smith's hour-long, coming-of-age story wraps with the idea that he and his father are not so different, a conclusion that is only quietly satisfying.

ANATOMY OF A YELL
Red River College (Venue 11), to July 27

This occasionally amusing one-hander charts the ups and downs of a 30something Colorado blonde who is desperate to find a man.

Johanna Walker, the show's writer and star, might not put it quite so bluntly, but that's what it comes down to. This being the 21st century, her dating club of choice must be online.

Despite being a free-spirited artist and a gal who is not afraid to get dirt under her fingernails, she can't seem to find Mr. Right. She has been brainwashed by her mother, who cries herself to sleep at the thought of her daughter being alone for the rest of her life.

Walker has an attractive and outdoorsy presence. Her production boasts several clever theatrical devices. She uses classical music as the voice of her mother and a teapot as a kind of romantic oracle.

She also employs a picture frame as a visual metaphor, perhaps of her conscience, but exactly what it signifies is unclear.

The main problem with the 60-minute show, though, is that it treads ground that has been worn to dust by a hundred shows before it.

BALLS
Ten Foot Pole Productions
School of Contemporary Dancers (Venue 8), to July 26

Balls is Rob Salerno's theatrical tribute to a close buddy who died of testicular cancer several years ago. He celebrates male testicles with a story about two inseparable boyhood pals who suffer a low blow to their friendship.

The discovery that 19-year-old Paul (played by Salerno) has testicular cancer stuns Bastian, but it does nothing to deter their constant repartee, replete with gallows humour. Bastian (Adam Goldhamer) has a similar health scare but is left to go on by himself to contemplate the nature of masculinity.

What Balls lacks in nuance and subtext is made up for with its heartfelt tone. The image of a saddened Bastian picking up the string-can phone with which he once spoke to Paul as a kid nicely communicates his devastating sense of loss.

BARISTA! A CABARET OF CAFFEINATED PROPORTIONS
Chi Chi Manfred Productions
MTC Backstage at the Mainstage (Venue 1), to July 27

This frothy brew of music and comedy is getting a whole latte love from average Joe fringers, thanks largely to a strong opening number and a hobo who steals the 30-minute show.

The four female cast members -- Katherine Dow, Nikki Duval, Connie Manfredi and Chanty Marostica -- belt out a ballsy rendition of Black Coffee and take it over the top with faux soul-sister shout-outs and a prolonged round of vocal theatrics worthy of Christina Aguilera.

All of the six cast members -- University of Winnipeg theatre students -- get a spotlight song that's at least vaguely in tune with their characters, with varying degrees of success. And each is at the centre of a short scene.

There's a cartoonish villainess who's out to destroy the romantically challenged coffee shop manager (Travis Maclean), a geeky girl who is secretly in love with the hunky latte boy (Tristan Carlucci), and the titular barista who continually drops pop culture references that nobody understands.

The sketches are hit-and-miss, but if a few land off the mark, their short duration is a saving grace.

The one constant in the show, at the fringes of the action, is Phoebe the hobo (Marostica). If the other characters are sugar, she's the cream. A mellow philosopher, the gravel-throated Phoebe is an outsider who knows more about the coffee shop insiders than they know themselves. In a deft performance, she provides sage advice to the characters and narrative commentary to the audience, along with a few slyly funny and profound thoughts about human nature.

BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL
Black Sheep Theatre
Tom Hendry Theatre at the MTC Warehouse (Venue 6), to July 26

Weekly World News (R.I.P.) readers know all about Bat Boy, the half-bat, half-boy discovered in 1992 who made the headlines ever since for all sorts of adventures, from leading police on a high-speed car chase to travelling to outer space. But it's safe to say they've never seen him like this.

The rock opera about his "life" was first staged in Los Angeles in 1997 and now makes its way to Winnipeg courtesy of Ottawa's Black Sheep Theatre. The company gets help from some local talent who only had a week to learn the show, which results in a few bumps along the way.

The plot revolves around the discovery of the Bat Boy in a cave by residents of a small West Virginia town who are convinced the mutant is responsible for the deaths of 23 cows. They want to see the freak of nature dead. The town's veterinarian and his family fall for the strange creature and teach it to speak, dress sharp, do accounting and sing like an angel.

At a lengthy 105-minutes -- and featuring a cast of 12 and a five-member band -- this is one of the most ambitious shows of the Fringe, but it still hadn't found its wings on the second night, as some of the harmonizing and choreography from the chorus was a little off at times. Expect it to get some added bite as the run continues.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
The Little Opera Company
Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 9), to July 27

WHEN I saw the number of young children in the audience for this 45-minute opera by a six-person cast, I expected a performance marred by squirming, talking and crying. Instead, the tots were quiet and attentive -- a great compliment to this appealing production by the local semi-professional company that puts on chamber operas.

The set, including a castle wall, rose bushes and trees, has a homemade look but does the job just fine. The show opens with a useful educational warmup in which two sopranos give an introduction to opera, singing excerpts from familiar arias that could perhaps be shortened a bit.

The Beauty and the Beast tale, sung in crystal-clear English, moves along at such a clip that it misses a key emotional transition: there's no scene that communicates how love blooms between Beauty and the man-beast who is her keeper. Other minor flaws are that the piano occasionally overpowers the singers, and that some cast members seem to think we won't notice they're wearing sandals with fairy-tale costumes. Some of the singers aren't confident actors.

As the Beast, tenor Martin Duke Wilson strains on some high notes. Micheline Girardin, though, is an entrancing, poised Beauty whose lovely soprano is a treat throughout Vittorio Giannini's accessible opera. Overall, this little show is a charmer, much more beauty than beast.

'BETH
Zero-Sum Games
Playhouse Studio (Venue 3), to July 27

'Beth is advertised as Shakespeare's Macbeth as never seen before, but its limp performance is more of a bloody tragedy.

Written by Montreal's Andrea Rosenfield, this hour-long drama follows the recently widowed Elizabeth as she discovers her late husband Harold had a secret life and that his hidden fortune has been bequeathed to another woman. She and her son Andrew embark on a bewilderingly dumb spree of vengeance that is neither gripping or entertaining.

The two-person production seen at the Montreal Fringe Festival was slow and ponderous. The only inspiration in evidence was the use of a mirror to reflect Harold's treacherous double life as well as to allow actors Angela Potvin and Vladimir Cara to carry out conversations with their doubles.

Traditionally, there's a lot of bad luck surrounding the Scottish play and Zero-Sum Games is another unfortunate victim.

BIG EASE, BIG SLEAZE
Rita Shelton Deverell
Exchange Community Church (Venue 12), to July 26

Former Winnipegger and Order of Canada recipient Rita Shelton Deverell (Smoked Glass Ceiling, 2005) brings another socially minded one-woman show to this year's festival.

The solo performer, who now resides in Toronto, delivers a politically inspired collage of events surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Without a glitch, Deverell shapes herself from one Brechtian character to the next, making it abundantly clear that the tragedies of the human spirit transcend age, gender and skin tone.

And when an unlikely friendship develops between an elderly gentleman and a materialistic young woman from Canada, a whole other play unfolds that sheepishly points the finger at less publicized tragedies back home.

Intelligent and thought-provoking, Deverell, under the keen eye of local director Cairn Moore, brings a touch of old Baptist charm to her silky smooth storytelling that is unapologetically seeped in spirited metaphor.

THE BIG STUPID IMPROV SHOW
The Probable Cast
MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to July 26

What we have here is a fine one-hour show that's well-known to experienced Fringers, but hasn't hit its stride this year, at least yet.

This time-honoured Fringe tradition featured a seasoned all-male improv ensemble on its opening night, and included outlandish plot points for which the show's famous, like a vigilante environmentalist gone wild planting trees in suburban Winnipeg and a blind dentist who calls himself the Tooth Whisperer.

Fielding suggestions from the audience, the improv players built comedy that often entertained, but sometimes veered into the incomprehensible.

Some of the impersonations opening night were hysterical -- like a swaggering cop trying to impress two terrified Charleswood residents who found their no-flyers mailbox stuffed with papers.

Others fell flat, like a sketch that involved two heavily accented men trying to grow giant worms. Still, the show's a very worthwhile see that may heat up as the fringe goes on.

BLADE
Theatre Anywhere
Ragpickers Theatre (Venue 13), to July 27

Short, sharp and straight to the point, Yvette Nolan's 1990 fringe drama gets a timely remount in the wake of B.C. serial killer Robert Picton's first trial.

The powerful 35-minute production from Theatre Anywhere director Eileen Longfield (So Far From Eden, 2007; Montana, 2006) is a snapshot of a Winnipeg university student who, following a fight with her boyfriend, makes a fatal decision to accept a ride from a stranger.

Blond suburbanite Angela (Stephanie Moroz) knows there's a killer on the loose, but he preys on prostitutes and most of his victims are aboriginal women on the fringes of society. She should be safe, right? But death puts Angela in the same league with the killer's past victims. The media suggest she was a hooker, which seems to imply that she didn't have the same right to life as women in the social mainstream.

A friend visits a local newspaper columnist in an effort to restore Angela's reputation, only to be asked how many men Angela had in her life. And Angela's grieving mother (Cheryl Soluk) wonders if the killer (Dan Gilmour) would have been caught sooner if police were looking for "a man who killed women instead of a man who killed hookers."

Toronto-based Nolan, who was on the original Winnipeg fringe committee in 1988, wasn't prescient when she wrote Blade. But isn't it a sad commentary that the issues she raised almost two decades ago are still relevant today? Discuss.

BLASPHEMY
Jump the Shark Productions
Planetarium Theatre (Venue 10), to July 27

Even if you haven't met Yukon comic Anthony Trombetta before, you know him. Trombetta is that guy that just winds up at your table at the King's Head, nursing a pint and complaining about everything.

Unfortunately, that's all this show is, and a pub funny-guy does not a comic make. Trombetta is very likable. You want to enjoy his mish-mash of casual standup and skits, but the material just isn't there. His set-ups show promise, but he scuttles them with toothless punchlines; he promises controversy, but shies away from actually eviscerating his targets.

For instance? The Fringe program says that Trombetta will "put the boots" to the CBC. Sure, if a half dozen repetitions of "I hate the f------ CBC" followed by a stilted impression of Stuart McLean counts as verbal curb-stomping.

His best moments are actually his least controversial -- excuse me, "controversial"-- like a cute routine on comic books. But the uncomfortably overdone bits on oral sex and the just-not-funny closing act with the Messiah leave you wishing Trombetta wouldn't try so hard.

BLAST
3 Sticks
MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to July 26

Keira McDonald, a 30-ish singer and actor from Seattle, attempts a one-woman musical based on, of all things, the real-life news story about the notorious American woman astronaut-turned-nut case.

Unfortunately, the effort suffers from a failure to launch.

McDonald, who resembles Sissy Spacek crossed with Reese Witherspoon, wears an orange prison suit and impersonates Lisa Nowak, who was charged in February 2007 with attempting to kidnap the girlfriend of astronaut William Oefelein.

It was a bizarre tabloid-style story, filled with kinky sexual undercurrents, and McDonald wants to explore Nowak's delusional motives.

To accompany her confusing monologue, constructed largely from on-the-record transcripts, she employs tape recordings of other voices, glossy photos of the principals, and a few show tunes with goofy lyrics. But she assumes a level of familiarity with the details of the story that most in the audience will not have. What, pray tell, is going on?

As David Bowie might have sung: "Ground control to Major Tom, you are lost in space."

THE B-LIST
The B-Girlz
MTC Backstage at the Mainstage (Venue 1), to July 26

This broad comedy and musical revue delivers a full bawdy blow from the multimedia opening -- a short film spoofing celebrity bad girls -- to the super-sized encore.

Toronto glitter queens Barbie-Q, Ivana K and Hard Kora wrap the show in a loose theme -- fame and rehab -- taking Dame Edna-style potshots at everyone from Britney Spears to Celine Dion and even sainted songbird Rita MacNeil. They spare no one, least of all each other.

When slutty Ivana K croons, "I wanna live forever," Hard Kora snipes, "It looks like you already have." And there are racy references aplenty to Ivana's adventurous sex life.

There's also a heavy dose of Canadian content that includes an audience-participatory game show and comic versions of hits from Anne Murray, Feist and Avril Lavigne.

They're not the greatest singers in the world, but what the Girlz lack in substance, they make up for in fabulous style, performing lyrically altered songs from the musical Chicago, the disco era and, naturally, Queen. Not every joke hits home, but this trio gives good value for your entertainment dollar, and there's no denying they work hard for the money, especially after their energized encore medley.

BOAT LOAD
Stars and Hearts
PTE -- Colin Jackson Studio (Venue 17), to July 27

Struggling actor Gary Bazman has a $1,000 choice -- pay for his cat's life-saving bum operation or shell out the fee for a talent contest that could kick-start his career and get him out of his lame town.

En route to a decision, he's got to navigate an embarrassing fairy play, a crabby ex-girlfriend and a metaphoric boat captained by a drunk guy that's about to hit an iceberg.

This is the comedic creation of London, Ont., native Jayson McDonald, who brought us fringe fave Giant Invisible Robot last year. It's a one-man-and-a-chair kind of show, a character collage of the people in Gary's dead-end life, and it's a gem. Each character, from his bourgeois parents to the cat, is a precisely drawn little nugget of humanity, and there are lots of laughs and just enough depth to make it moving. It's smartly constructed, especially once it gets really rolling. McDonald weaves all the characters together in a way that keeps the audience just confused enough to stay alert, and there's a funny bit with a cellphone that turns the actor-playing-an-actor-in-a-play-within-a play thing on its head.

Plus, you know it's got boatloads of advance buzz when when fringe gods Keir Cutler and TJ Dawe catch the first show.

BOOM
IL Productions
Onstage at the Playhouse (Venue 4), to Sunday

Boom is a curious one-man show about a bomb-maker who is recruited by a devious multinational constructing a futuristic spaceport. Louis is unemployed and faces eviction from his apartment when an old friend, now a CEO, offers him a job as an industrial saboteur blowing up competing spaceports.

With a 50-minute monologue called Boom, a big finish is expected but the surprise is that it fizzles abruptly without the explosive climax. American actor/playwright Andrew Connor appears to have assembled all the potent ingredients for his stage concoction but forgot to light the fuse.

Not that Boom is a bomb in the theatrical sense. Connor, who cancelled his first three performances to appear at Montreal's Just For Laughs festival over the weekend, fills his stage with distinctive characters like Rosa, the precocious, pig-tailed teenage Louis wannabe who really is the bomb.

A BRIEF HISTORY PETTY CRIME
The Roodie Pancake Experiment
Son of Warehouse (Venue 5), to July 27

JIMMY Hogg has committed every petty crime in the book, from shoplifting pesto to breaking and entering a tea parlour to driving under the influence of cider without a driver’s licence. This guy was bad news. And so was his equally awkward buddy Chili.

Fifteen years later, the U.K. comic not only lives to tell the tales of his misguided youth but also finds the hidden humour in his family's history of not always telling the whole truth.

Hogg is a capable storyteller who delivers more than a few laughs on stage. Periodically, however, he breaks out of character to ask the audience questions and to engage in a familiar back and forth. And while this helps Hogg form a rapport with his audience, it sucks the energy away from his already inconsistent story momentum.

Afterwards, the former lawbreaker encouraged people who didn't love his show to meet him in the beer tent at midnight for a fight. I decided to go home instead and turn on my alarm system.

THE BUSH LADIES
Theatre by the River
School of Contemporary Dancers (Venue 8), to July 26

When 19th-century authors Susannah Moodie, Catharine Parr Traill, Anne Langton and Anna Jameson made their way into the wilds of Canada, they left behind a wealth of writings documenting their struggles in the untamed country. The Bush Ladies takes these words and turns them into invigorating, and educational, theatre.

This is nothing like a high school history skit. Thanks to top-notch production and an experienced cast and crew, The Bush Ladies expertly connects contemporary Canadians to our pioneering past. The period costumes are magnificent, and the four actors' strong chemistry shines as they handle a complex script. Lisa Nelson is especially confident as Moodie, while gorgeous Megan Herkert brings a fresh spunkiness to Parr Traill.

One small quibble: while the material is well-edited and usually brisk, some of the closing scenes feel parenthetical, and the 90-minute run time might benefit from some judicious trims. But this is a small stumble in a very strong play.

BUSTY RHYMES WITH MC HOT PINK
Penash Productions
Ragpickers Theatre (Venue 13), to July 26

There is nothing subtle about Busty Rhymes, who is apparently big in her native New Zealand and everywhere she takes her R-rated fringe act. To prove it, she fits her entire head into one of the G-cups of her bra. Badda-bing, badda-boom.

It's not the first time that Busty, a.k.a. Penny Ashton, is pretty rude in her pink, full-length ball gown. Much of her spoken-word act focuses on her breasts, her Rubenesque figure or her sex life.

So it is ironic when Busty has to significantly pad her hour-long performance in Montreal with some lame audience participation, in which a couple of goofs are pulled up on stage to audition for the role of man-hos. Now there were a couple of boobs.

BUTTERFLY-BEAR
Canto Red Productions
Tom Hendry Theatre at the MTC Warehouse (Venue 6), to July 26

Four aimless young adults hook up somehow on the city streets. Two are aspiring musicians who work in a record shop, one is a street musician and the fourth is a junkie trying to recover from her addiction and become a "healer," modelled after some unnamed aboriginal tradition. The vague storyline, which includes the use of video footage and live music, explores their connections to one another.

There's a bit of dialogue in the play in which one character says they need to have some plans -- the other responds, "F--k plans." This pretty much sums up the approach in the direction and execution of this Winnipeg production, which tends not so much toward navel-gazing as actually climbing right into some hippie's pierced bellybutton and camping out for a week or two.

There was a nice snippet of poetry and Ingrid Gatin has a terrific voice, but neither is enough to redeem this purple haze of a production.

CIRCUMFERENCE
Awkward Moment Productions
The Playhouse Studio (Venue 3), to July 26

Comedic tales of life in the fat lane are Amy Salloway's bread and butter. The Minneapolis-based performer, who brought summer-camp frolic So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz!, to the fringe in 2006, serves up more of the same humour and heartbreak in this well-rounded sequel. Back in pigtails and intentionally unflattering baggy gym gear, Amy recounts a battle of the bulge that began in junior high school gym class and may end on a gastric bypass surgeon's table. As a teen, tormented by a sadistic gym teacher and cruel peers, Amy declares she is divorcing her body, but years later, she still can't shake the fat -- or the self-loathing and public mortifications that accompany it.

Longing for love, but convinced she's unlovable in her current state, she's finally driven to consider an extreme surgical remedy that would stick a knife in the heart of the notion that self-acceptance is the only theatrically acceptable happy ending. But first, she makes a fateful foray to a gym, where she meets a man who is even more physically damaged -- and he's fresh from a coma, to boot. We should all be so lucky. But will this prince save Amy from herself? Will she make peace with her body at last? Stay tuned. The story takes a few side trips, some uncomfortably painful and filled with raw emotion, others painfully funny and filled with raw vegetables.

This is not the most substantial meal at the fringe, but if you're grazing for a tasty one-hour morsel, Circumference is a sweet treat.

COUNTERPART
Saucy Fops
The Gas Station Theatre (Venue 18), to July 27

Sex and the City fans disappointed by the lack of social insight in the recent film, I have some excellent news: you have here an often-witty theatrical play where modern relationships are neatly sliced and diced. For theatre-goers who aren't fans of the romantic comedy genre, however, you might find this overly sentimental and a tad saccharine.

The one-hour play by Cayman Duncan nicely captures a multitude of quirky characters in their quest for coupledom, with some truly comedic moments, like a single woman's sneezing fit when she encounters a pet-loving pediatrician with whom she's smitten. Actress Terri Runnalls is particularly real in her role as a neurotic singleton looking for love with all the wrong men. These winners include a rocker she twists tongues with who promptly forgets her name and a cute journalist who just can't forget his ex-girlfriend, both played by actor Stephen Sawka, who bounced back in Saturday's performance after collapsing on stage earlier last week for medical reasons.

Though the writing is sharp, sometimes delivery of these clever lines by the British Columbian troupe is too quick.

The actors and actresses would be well-served to pause a bit before tossing off the neat turns-of-phrase.

Also, the view of love delivered by the script is an unsophisticated version that lacks the deep complexity true partnerships have.

Oh well, rom-commers, you'll enjoy this guilty pleasure. Too bad you can't watch with a big bucket of buttery popcorn or a bowl of ice cream, and snuggled in your pajamas.

It's that kind of play.

CRIMINALS IN LOVE
Venus.calm productions
MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to July 27

Local George F. Walker specialists (Adult Entertainment, 2006; Problem Child, 2005) are back with another of the prolific playwright's dark comedies, this time his Governor General's Award-winning Criminals in Love.

Junior and Gail are young lovers in Toronto's working-class east end. Junior fears he's doomed to follow in his jailed father Henry's footsteps and live a life of crime. This seems fated to be true when his father informs him that his uncle needs Junior's help with a job, and if he fails to step up, Henry will be killed. What results is partly caper, partly comedy and partly something darker and more desperate.

Walker has a heap of ideas about destiny, class and love that he's trying to cover, and the production doesn't quite get at the heart of all of them. There's something slightly off about some of the portrayals: Eric Magnifico's Junior doesn't really convey his despair at his lot in life -- the sense of "the hanging shadow" of destiny -- while Susan Bohn as criminal mastermind Aunt Wineva neither seems scary nor twisted enough to be the terrifying schizophrenic she's supposed to be. On the plus side, Randal Payne's loquacious turn as the philosophical bum William is uproarious, and Ed Cuddy is utterly believable as two-bit petty crook Henry.

CRUDE LOVE
Big Smoke Productions
PTE Colin Jackson Studio (Venue 17), to July 27

Crude Love looks to a future when the American military is occupying Alberta tar sands in the interest of protecting its oil lifeline. It's 2012 when a rogue eco-warrior named Abbie chains himself to a super-sized dump truck driven by former Newfoundlander Phyllis.

The pair are no strangers, having performed in A Streetcar Named Desire together, and they slowly find common ground -- ground that has yet to be destroyed by strip-mining -- to take a chance on love. Just as the tar-sands development is hazardous to the boreal forests and local birdlife, it also proves a romance killer.

While Crude Love is no theatrical gusher, what the plot lacks in sophistication and originality, it makes up for with appealing performances by the Vancouver husband-and-wife acting-writing team of Russell and Gillian Bennett.

CRUMBS SELLS OUT
CRUMBS
The King's Head (Venue 14), to July 26

In the program for their 2008 Fringe Show, renowned local improv outfit CRUMBS thanks the Winnipeg Free Press for "the five star reviews." I'm pretty sure they're being sarcastic, so I almost hate to ruin the joke.

After 11 years together, CRUMBS are indeed masters of long-form improv, pursuing three stories through three different rounds. Their audiences know and love them. And DJ Hunnicutt has a knack for finding the best tunes to fit a scene -- on our night, a moseying country riff for a soliloquy about Safeway and a New Agey soundscape for Steve Sim and Lee White's spontaneous contemporary dance.

If you're lucky, you might meet some of their friends: on Sunday night, Sim and White closed with a bonus improv featuring comic Ryan Stiles. "You are so lucky to have an improv group like CRUMBS here in Winnipeg," raved the Whose Line Is It Anyway? star.

DEMONS OF THE MIND
Theatre on TAP
Onstage at the Playhouse (Venue 4), to July 26

Fringe veteran Talia Pura (Metamorphosis, 2007) is on a precarious footing with this dark drama about madness, murder and religious fanaticism, and not just because she spends much of the show performing aerial acrobatics.

One false move on her silks could send her crashing to the stage. And when she's on the ground, she treads a fine line in her role as a woman whose postpartum depression has escalated to full-blown psychosis.

A few false notes in the script take her sympathetic mad housewife dangerously close to unintentionally funny crazy lady territory. But for the most part, the Winnipeg writer and actor's disturbing story hangs together. A mother of six who home-schools and cares for the kids with no help from her husband -- their fundamentalist religion is big on adhering to strict gender roles -- she's watching TV one day when Jesus tells her to commit an unspeakable act. Her defence lawyer (Harry Nelken) finds plenty of evidence that Marie is not entirely to blame. Her husband has known for years that she needed help and their cult-leaderish pastor is cruelly critical of her skills as a mother.

There are obvious parallels to the case of American mom Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001, but Pura says only that she was inspired by true events. Her story is provocative and at times poetic, thanks largely to her athletic forays. But while they most often serve the play, some of her antics are distracting. We're betting most of the audience couldn't tell you how this case wraps up. In what may well be the ultimate act of scene-stealing, Pura returns to the silks for a daring display of high-flying acrobatics while Nelken performs his closing monologue.

THE DINING ROOM
Shoestring
MTC Backstage at the Mainstage (Venue 1), to July 24.

This veteran Winnipeg community theatre troupe, in at least its fourth fringe outing, has chosen wisely with American playwright A.R. Gurney's 1981 dramatic comedy about the vanishing American upper class.

With 12 actors, ranging in age from 20-something to 85, playing 40 speaking roles in 12 thematically related vignettes, the 80-minute production radiates ambition and intelligence.

Gurney's original script, which explores both the solidity and creakiness of Episcopalian WASP values, has been pared back from 18 scenes.

But little of its sense has been lost as a series of well-off U.S. Eastern Seaboarders lay out their prejudices and conflicts in the dining room of a grand old house.

MTC did the play in 1984 on its mainstage, which gives you an idea of its pedigree. The acting here is not uniformly professional, but everyone's heart and mind are in the right place. And they've actually found the perfect table to serve as the play's central symbol.

DR. FAUSTUS
The Little Theatre of the Gray Goose
Adhere & Deny Studio (Venue 19), to July 27

Creepy, homemade dolls playing the Seven Deadly Sins a la Christopher Marlowe is worth the price of admission alone.

But pretty much everything is else is just as inventive and funny in this puppet version of the famous tale of the scholar who sells his soul to Satan for knowledge and power.

Local actors-come-puppetmasters Graham Ashmore, Eric Blais and Carolyn Gray give us the Coles Notes highlights of the morality tale and deliver fine voice performances with some puppet physical comedy that gets all the laughs. The Elizabethan language is dense, so it helps to have a passing knowledge of the play, but you'll get the hang of it.

The puppets themselves are works of art.

A little too high-brow for kids. And, at 45 minutes (not 90, like it says in the program), it's exactly enough Marlowe.

EVELYN REESE'S FAMILY ROOM
Miss Reese Productions
MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to July 26

One of the fringe's favourite characters returns to talk about her family, including her gay best friend, her three ex-husbands and her deadbeat dad.

Evelyn Reese, the comedic creation of Toronto's Susan Fischer, is a hoot -- think Roseanne Roseannadanna if she came from Thunder Bay and wore A LOT of lipstick. With a refreshing lack of sentimentality, she whips us through a collection of anecdotes, with the occasional burst into song. As wacky as Evelyn is, she's also non-judgemental about her own messy life and everyone else's, which gives the broad comedy a big heart.

One problem -- the show starts with solid laughs, but it loses a lot of oomph in the middle, and I kept wishing Fischer would speak just a tad faster.

Lots of older folks in the audience, who ate this up.

EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR PICTURE I CRY
www.danielbarrow.com
The Playhouse Studio (Venue 3), to July 27

Helen Keller's artistic yearnings, seedy encounters in men's toilets and a perverse garbage collector on a mission to create the world's most informative phone book unite in manual animation artist Daniel Barrow's provocative and poignant "magic lantern show."

Colourized and augmented with new drawings since its fringe debut in workshop form in 2006, the show has Winnipeg's Barrow manipulating hand-drawn images via overhead projector while he provides live narration. His soothing voice is sometimes at odds with graphic images onscreen, and the script is, at times, anything but gentle as Barrow spins a captivating tale of isolation.

His garbage collector is the ultimate outsider, picking through discarded scraps of other people's lives to glean intimate details for his life's work. It's an effort at making connections because, as in the case of a phone book, we're all in it together. As he works, the collector shares dry insights about the art school experience -- secretly criticizing others was the only skill he mastered -- along with a harrowing and curiously humorous account of a bullied child and daring commentary on anonymous sexual encounters.

Despite the title, Canadian singer Luba's title hit song makes only a cursory, mute appearance. Amy Linton composed music for the show.

And while his garbage collector admits to a lifelong urge to expose himself to public humiliation, performer Barrow is less enthusiastic about bathing in the limelight. At the end of his show, he remains seated, back to the audience, blushing at the applause.

He really should stand up and take a bow. Intricate and slyly powerful, this moving work of art is worthy of high praise.

EVIL DOERS
TLS Theatre
Son of Warehouse (Venue 5), to July 27

This high-concept exploration of evil started with Winnipeg playwright Melanie Murray canvassing friends and strangers for tales of true evil. She turned those stories into (appropriately) 13 shorts that cover everything from an abusive mother to a drug fiend to a troubled soldier.

It's never boring, the performances are polished (if somewhat stilted and actorly) and there's a good variety of humour, drama, creepy tension and little kids, so it isn't all as heavy as the title suggests. The two comic-book parts are a bit tedious and not every vignette makes the audience really think about the moral intricacies of evil doers, but there's enough that's provocative to make this a worthwhile 45-minutes.

FEAR OF A BROWN PLANET
Third Man
Planetarium Auditorium (Venue 10), to July 26

It's not often you see the Rwandan genocide or dictator Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe worked into a comedy routine, but then again, Toronto-based Nile Séguin refuses to be fitted into boxes.

Séguin's incisive remarks about being a bi-racial entertainer in the Canadian entertainment scene are frank, thoughtful and usually laugh-provoking.

Sprinkled with historical and pop-culture references, Séguin mines his jokes from the unlikeliest of places. (Why is Black History Month the shortest month of the year, February? According to Séguin, it's because there's only so much righteous anger society can take -- a nice zinger.)

Séguin's wry observations on the narcissism of the comedy industry and comedians themselves are superb, but the comedian's bashing of the usual political targets like George W. Bush or Condoleeza Rice is less funny. It's been done before. Also, if you aren't interested in hearing some humdrum penis/sex jokes, then you may tune out on Séguin's riffs on his bedroom experiences. Yawn.

A step away from usual fringe fare, Séguin's brave intellectualism in his routine is the meatiest part, even if it sometimes elicits thoughtful chuckles rather than gut-busting laughter.

FEMMENNONITE 2: I MARRIED A JEW
Red River Collete Princess Street Campus (Venue 11), to July 26

It's not quite a sequel to 2006's FemMennonite, but the material is still pulled from Winnipeg performer Leigh-Anne Kehler's real life. This time, as the title notes, Kehler takes us through her whirlwind romance with a Jewish filmmaker, from her first kosher meal to her "Jewonite" wedding.

Kehler, who was a hit at the 2006 fringe (and with consistently sold-out shows, will be a hit at this one), is a sharp performer. She lovingly skewers her own family, her future in-laws, and even her fiance, throws herself into moments of sassy comic abandon and gracefully mines laughs from her own former naivete. Even better are the more heartwarming moments of cultural reconciliation, like her fiance's hoy-hoy-hoy turn as a Jewish Santa in Japan.

There are quite a lot of Yiddish, Hebrew and Mennonite in-jokes that quite obviously flew right over this reviewer's head, and these earned the biggest laughs of the show. Still, there are enough universal truths about family dynamics and relationships that everyone will find something with which they can connect.

THE FOGGER
The Charles Nelson Reilly Players
The Playhouse Studio (Venue 3), to July 26

Jim (Clayton Wilchowy), a guy who drives a mosquito fogging truck, accidentally runs over a Wolseley anti-fogging activist while his mopey wife Donna (Amber Anderson) carries on an illicit affair with a TV newsreader over the airwaves.

The synopsis makes the play sound more interesting than it actually is. Playwright Joel Newbury can't even commit to a solid pro or con stance on the fogging issue, leaving The Fogger to play like a sitcom in which someone forgot to include the com. On the plus side, in the role of the offstage newsreader, BOB FM's Steve Thompson does a not-bad impersonation of Will Ferrell in Anchorman.

FRANK EINSTEIN & TANGO FIASCO
The Rogue Elephants
Onstage at the Playhouse (Venue 4), to July 27

Relive your headbangin' youth at this original rock opera written and arranged by Winnipeg's Geoff Taylor and performed with gusto by defiantly cool, middle-aged rockers the Rogue Elephants.

As T.R.E. wend their musical way through this two-part show, the audience can follow along with a screen that projects both lyrics and accompanying images. The first half, Frank Einstein, begins with the re-telling of the Frankenstein story. The second half, Tango Fiasco, begins by using the "rocked-out" rhythms of the music and form of the tango dance as a metaphor for male-female relationships.

Both operas eventually morph into something more political, and the lyrics and images start to reflect a (seriously) post-adolescent dissatisfaction with the "establishment" as characterized by capitalism, nuclear weapons, and love gone wrong.

Jo Gretsinger was born to rock, and her voice drives the show, with admirable turns on lead guitar by JT Scavenger (the winner of this year's Jerry Garcia look-alike contest), Matt Chaput on bass, and with terrific percussion by drummer Rodney Struss.

Ear plugs are being handed out at the door. Take them. Use them. The venue is just too small for the Rogue Elephants' big sound and it can be overwhelming sitting that close to the band.

FREE-DUMB
Dog of Habit Productions
The Conservatory (Venue 7), to July 26

The title of this routinely adolescent sketch comedy show contains two syllables, one of which is accurate.

No prizes if you guess which one.

The four Winnipeg cast members are in their early 20s. They aspire to Judd Apatow country, melding cheerful vulgarity with cheerful idiocy.

As performers, they display signs of incipient talent. The three guys must have something going for them in order to have persuaded such a beautiful girl to stand on the same stage with them.

The hour-long production drags on at least 15 minutes longer than it needs to, even with an amusing end that comes full circle. One skit, which charts a couple's romance on Facebook, is reasonably clever and certainly up to date. But another, about a Mafia hitman hired to kill his best friend, is tastelessly stupid.

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ANTOINE FEVAL
Chris Gibbs
King's Head (Venue 14), to July 26

Fringe favourite Chris Gibbs returns in this hilarious sequel to again play his ancestor Barnaby Gibbs, the simpleton sidekick to a suspicious detective named Antoine Feval.

Barnaby is a doltish loser whose limited powers of deduction leave him blind to the fact Feval is the notorious cat burglar terrorizing London.

The 70-minute mystery spoof is all about this Victorian Clouseau, "a man of ample limitations." Not so with Gibbs the performer, whose appeal for his distinctive dry humour and deadpan delivery is limitless. His story is hardly gripping, but the telling is. He will matter-of-factly set a scene and mention an occasional table and then blithely toss off the line, "I don't know what it is the rest of the year."

His abilities as an ace improviser were never more on display than during a recent performance when he had to contend with a baby's cooing and a spectator who fainted on the way to the washroom. The former he gladly ad-libbed into his monologue, while the latter he respectively worked around to the appreciation of the sold-out house.

A GIRL'S GUIDE TO CHAOS
Your Face Rings a Bell Productions
MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to July 26

This is an Osborne Village version of Sex and the City, wherein a trio of friends struggles with modern feminism, cheating men who are no longer sure of their place in the world and the lack of boyfriends in this town. Too true, ladies.

It starts out with an arty and fun video collage of women through the ages that goes on slightly too long, and then we get to know the ladies -- the tough-talking bitch (Susan Kurbis), the nerdy scientist (Kerri Woloszyn) and neurotic columnist (Meghan Pesclovitch).

There are some tight, funny scenes, like one where a "sweet little urban heterosexual" played by Tim Horton gets rejected by each of the women and another that involves a collage of annoying couples. And the observations about modern women are inventive and cerebral enough to elevate this above the predictable female kvetching over cosmos.

It needs an edit -- especially the overwritten parts belonging to neurotic Cynthia. There's some dirty talk meant more for shock value than real insight. And a fourth female walk-on role is redundant. But otherwise a funny, dishy and energetic exploration of pretty much every singleton I know.

GLOBAL MENNO PAUSE: AN UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH
Crosseyed Rascals
Exchange Community Church (Venue 12), to July 26

This group is as righteous as they come, and that's no small feat, considering there's nothing quite as challenging as an improviser working to keep his head out of the gutter. And while crudity was not at all missed in this squeaky-clean 60-minute set, opportunities to take risks and accept a partner's contribution to a scene were.

One blocked idea after the next made this predictable short-form show difficult to watch after a while. Some enthusiastic performances from this likable foursome, however, helped pass the time and even garnered some warm responses from an appreciative audience.

This is not the kind of improv that masterfully cuts through audience suggestions and hits a home run with collective problem-solving and naughty pimping. Instead, this show offers safe, game show-type humour that is easily forgotten the minute you walk out the door.

GLORY DAYS
Prairie Boy Productions
The Conservatory (Venue 7), to July 26

Regina writer-actor Rod McDonald plays an aging boxing coach who recalls his youth rising up from the working class streets of East Vancouver to become the only Canadian to fight George Forman, Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali.

This 50-minute one-hander has undeniable crowd appeal, though there is no sentimental cliché that McDonald is too proud to exploit.

His boxer has an idyllic Irish childhood, loyal Italian and Chinese friends, a gruff but well-meaning coach and a saintly wife who dies of cancer to the strains of Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door.

Overall, the soft-hearted piece is much closer to Sylvester Stallone's Rocky than to Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull.

McDonald, a fleshy fellow of about 60, is convincing enough as the boxer. When he's not making his punching bag jump, he milks his share of laughs and tears from what is pedestrian material.

THE GREEN ZONE
Jolene Bailie
Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 9), to July 27

Winnipeg's Jolene Bailie has earned a reputation on the fringe circuit for solo contemporary dance shows that wow audiences. As always, she brings stunning technique and presence to the stage.

A warning, though, for anyone expecting a show as delightfully accessible as last year's Private i: this year's lies way out there in an edgy no man's land, offering few signposts to help average fringers interpret it.

The Green Zone, a 25-minute antiwar piece by Deborah Dunn, is the only new work in the one-hour show. (Also included is the challenging Switchback, in which Bailie portrays a reptilian creature. It has been overexposed locally.)

In The Green Zone, Bailie is not always audible as she speaks text passages about the war in Iraq. She wears a Second World War uniform that she calls "my war outfit," implying that war is a romantic dress-up game.

At the outset, she unspools three white strings that divide the stage space at waist level, suggesting a giant game of cat's cradle or perhaps fences or borders. When one string ends up on the floor, Soldier Bailie forms it into a human being -- like a chalk murder-scene outline -- kisses it, and tries to embrace it. It's a perfect moment, capturing loneliness and grief on the battlefield.

But much of The Green Zone is cryptic. You're on your own reconnaissance mission when you venture into it.

GUERNICA
Theatre Incarnate
Studio Incarnate (Venue 20), to July 26

IT'S safe to say Theatre Incarnate's production of Guernica will never be as funny as it was Friday.

During the emotional climax of the almost wordless, "illustrative physical theatre" piece, a woman gives birth to a baby, but when the rubber doll is born, its head is missing, resulting in one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments of the fringe and saving this 60-minute piece from being a humourless exercise of movement and guttural noises. The cast continued the best they could, with one of the three characters even breast-feeding the headless rubber doll, and a crown was placed on its bare neck as it sat upon a lengthy umbilical cord to be worshipped by the trio.

Prior to the birth, the three characters awoke following an apocalyptic incident and relearned how to feel, see and smell while bonding by gyrating on the floor, fighting for food and playing with found items from their past. The cast is to be commended for the physically demanding effort required, but ultimately this is niche show for die-hard fans of performance art.

Everyone in the crowd was offered the chance to come back for free because of the baby-head incident, but there is no way to recreate the magic of Friday night and the laughs it generated when the story was retold in the beer tent following the show. A bonus star for a one-time only performance.

HAMLET: BACK IN BLACK
The Spastics
PTE-Colin Jackson Studio (Venue 17), to July 26

There are no original ideas anymore -- not in Shakespeare's time and not in Hollywood. That's the theme of this sketch comedy that melds the Bard with the box-office blockbuster. It's actually pretty inventive, playing off the ancient rumour that playwright Christopher Marlowe penned all of Shakespeare's masterpieces. Fast-forward to a modern Hollywood studio, where a scriptwriter is being bullied into creating a lame Hamlet sequel.

Fringers Karl Eckstand and Mike Seccombe give us lots of nerdy film references, an obligatory Sean Connery impression and some sword-fighting, but it actually hangs together better than most sketch comedy and there are some laughs, if you're in a good mood and don't expect too much. One incongruous surprise: The final scene between Marlowe and Shakespeare is totally touching and finely-written.

HANDS OFF
Hot Thespian Action
The Playhouse Studio (Venue 3), to July 25

According to the old Saturday Night Live template, men tend to dominate in a sketch comedy troupe.

No such dynamic exists among the five members of Winnipeg's own Hot Thespian Action. The three women in the troupe, Shannon Guile, Jacqueline Loewen and Jane Testar, not only outnumber their two male partners (Garth Merekley and Ryan Miller), they're more physical and bolder in their comedy contributions, especially in sketches that include a mime throwdown, a robotic girls' night out, a glimpse into the tragic downward spiral of air freshener addiction, and a flat-out hilarious staging of The Miracle of Birth. But there are no weak links in the troupe and everyone gets a chance to shine, whether it's Miller's interpretation of a young/old dog, or Testar's choice of a heartfelt, folkie interpretation to ask the musical question: Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me?

If you've blundered into a lot of bad comedy at the Fringe, Hands Off feels -- contrary to its title -- as reviving as a high-end spa treatment administered by caring professionals who know how to rub you the right way.

HEY ABBOTT! A CLASSICAL COMEDY TRIBUTE SHOW
Chase & Hamill
Tom Hendry Theatre at the MTC Warehouse (Venue 6), to July 27

Some fringe shows push the boundaries on all manner of sex and profanity, but this isn't one of them.

Hey Abbott! is a re-creation of some of comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello's best routines from the 1930s and 1940s, played to perfection by Winnipeggers John Chase as straight man Abbott and Kevin Hamill as his hapless partner Costello. With several jokes per minute being thrown out, some can't help but be groaners (they were written 70 years ago, after all), but the majority hit home, and even the bad puns earn laughs.

The impressionists deliver each send-up with perfect timing and impeccable delivery. Who's on First and Hertz U-Drive still sound fresh, and other forgotten favourites are updated and spruced up with local references.

Costello may lose a one-horse race, but there's no chance anyone who sees this show will feel swindled.

HIGH INFIDELITY, RELATIVELY SPEAKING
Run Ragged Company
Red River College (Venue 11), to July 26

HIGH Infidelity starts slowly as a middle-aged woman packs away some of the belongings of her recently deceased husband John. Nancy is alarmed to discover evidence that John might have been carrying on an affair.

That is the first plot twist of many in a storyline that an hour later looks like one of those snake balls during mating season in Narcisse. Just when you think you have it figured out, Winnipeg writer-director Dale Watts springs another outrageous revelation about who has been sleeping with whom.

The local amateur cast occasionally stumbled with the frivolous material but people in the sold-out house were probably laughing too hard at the soap-opera antics to notice.

HOUSE
PKF Productions
The King's Head (Venue 14), to July 26

If you saw Victor on the sidewalk outside the King's Head, you'd probably give him a wide berth. His darting eyes and hostile scowl suggest he's a ticking timebomb. He may be a madman who is off his meds. And what's that he keeps doing with his finger and thumb -- rolling an invisible ball to keep his anger from exploding?

Fringe veteran Jon Paterson gives a brilliantly intense performance as Victor in this Vancouver-based production of Daniel MacIvor's hilarious, sad and disturbing monologue. MacIvor keeps us on edge as he takes us inside the mind of a screwed-up loner who has a literal sh-- job at a company that vacuums out septic tanks.

Victor starts out entertaining us with quirky observations and mocking accounts of his lame therapy group. His ravings turn increasingly surreal -- sometimes going for mere shock value -- until you're not sure what's a nightmare and what he experienced. Like Guy Maddin in My Winnipeg, MacIvor is interested in finding the truth in lies and dreams. And like Maddin, he probes the connections between self and home.

The details of Victor's humiliation, frustration and desperate hopefulness make his pain touchingly recognizable. "I never had any camaraderie," he mourns. Like all of us, he craves connection, acceptance, and the fundamental comfort of a sane house. The word also refers to the theatre audience. House asks questions about theatre itself, and involves the audience in a way that prompted audible gasps and cries from the King's Head seats.

HOW SWEET IT IS
Islet Productions
The Conservatory (Venue 7), to July 27

BEING heavily drugged but wide awake while a doctor performs surgery on your eyes is just one of the exciting adventures a diabetic might have to look forward to during the course of his or her illness.

The funniest stuff often pours out from the darker parts of life, and Elizabeth MacEachern fearlessly splashes around in those depths. She's been a diabetic since childhood and she recounts the frustrations, the fears, and the health professionals she's battled trying to live a whole life. She just wants to be normal -- but what is normal, anyway? Living a life on a rigid sleep/diet schedule to accommodate your blood sugar? Is there more to life than juggling insulin shots and controlling an obsession for chocolate so powerful it borders on lust? Can a woman turn into her father?

This Toronto comedian delivers a moving, funny performance as she slips in and out of her own skin, and those of the people that have aided and abetted her in her quest to live her sweet, sweet life.

HOW TO FAKE CLINICAL DEPRESSION
Daydream Productions
Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 9), to July 26

Oregon-bred Steven Marrocco tells us that he moved to Los Angeles to make it as an actor, but got stuck working in a tanning salon. The lack of drive the slacker-ish Marrocco invests in his one-man show suggests he's not likely to make the Hollywood A-list anytime soon.

He could get bigger laughs if he spoke up and delivered his lines with a sense of ownership. That said, his tale of faking depression in order to take part in a paid drug study does land lots of satirical jabs, particularly against the makers of drugs like Prozac, Celexa and Paxil and their sanitized ad-speak about feeling "down, sad or blue."

Marrocco switches characters well, painting funny little portraits of his much-medicated family members and the eccentric researchers. With the running joke of approaching his trumped-up illness as a well-researched movie role, he pokes smart fun at actors' pretentions.

His story turns conventionally touchy-feely at the end, as he learns life lessons about real depression and trots out the over-simplification that people on antidepressants are numbed-out, incapable of feeling emotion. Overall, the show propels one to neither an exhilarated high nor a crushing low, just to a zone of mild amusement. Marrocco needs to up the dosage of fierceness and originality in this prescription.

IDENTITY.COM
Stupid Gumball Dispenser Productions
MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to July 27

THIS well-acted Internet Age relationship drama has a split personality.

Half of it comments on the foolishness of using the emotionally distancing tools of dating websites and the like to find someone to get close to. The other half recirculates old ideas about being 25 and still mixed up.

Winnipeg writer-actor Brent Hirose stars in his own script, taking on the two roles of young men with very different personalities. This works out well because it depicts how the line between not enough self-confidence and too much often can come down to simple attitude.

Caught between the two men is Gwendolyn Collins as a mixed-up waitress who lies to herself when she says she's not looking for commitment.

What makes this cliched triangle interesting is the metaphoric use of computer games like Sim City and the videotaped scenes of the characters posting their online profiles.

The action on-screen is supposed to be mirrored by the action onstage, but the obvious mismatches become distracting. Worse, the second half of the hour-long show ignores its modern premise and becomes just another tale of anxiety-ridden 20-somethings trying to find love.

IMPROVISION: FAST, LOOSE AND LOVELY
ImproVision
Planetarium Theatre (Venue 10), to July 27

Their reputation clearly preceded them. On opening night, veteran local improv duo Alan MacKenzie and George McRobb performed to a healthy crowd at Venue 10. It also happened to be their 100th fringe show.

By my estimate, 100 shows with this pair translates to at least a million total laughs. After six years at the fringe, MacKenzie and McRobb are masters of good-natured improv. Both have bang-on comic timing and effortless onstage appeal; nicely paced interactive bits keep the laughs coming fresh and easy.

Every act was uproariously funny, and the duo's good-natured one-upsmanship will have you rooting for one or the other to score the biggest gag. While there's no telling exactly what future performances will hold, the show-closing fast-forward replay was deliciously clever and self-effacing.

Quick tip? If you're too shy to become part of the act, nudging the person next to you is not advisable. MacKenzie and McRobb have eagle eyes for that sort of shenanigan.

INFERNO SONATA
The August Assembly
The Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 9), to July 26

THE road from hell to paradise is only three steps long, but it's a strange and twisted path featuring smoke and mirrors, where nothing is as it seems, according to 19th-century Scandinavian playwright August Strindberg.

In his one-man play about the life of the writer and artist, Edmonton's Scott Sharplin takes us on a mesmerizing trip into a world of paranoia and insanity. His portrayal is nothing short of brilliant as the character tries to distinguish himself from his rivals and solidify the love of his wife by trying his hand at alchemy, turning sulphur, arsenic and mercury into gold.

Sharplin, who wrote the script based on Strindberg's journals, stalks the stage intensely in white face paint, using a variety of props to illustrate the protagonist's methods and what is going on in his fevered mind as he slowly descends into madness.

The journey is intense and fascinating, smoke and mirrors be damned.

INFLATABLE BUDDHA: BIGGER THAN JESUS
Hammer & Tongue
Tom Hendry Theatre at the MTC Warehouse (Venue 6), to July 26

Good, cheeky fun makes for a too-short hour with the Oxford, U.K.-based Inflatable Buddha taking musical jabs at cats, capitalism, the blues and the "fat sex" that is the obsession of all women's magazines.

The band was led by stocking-footed "spoken-word guru" Steve Larkin who, while perhaps not bigger than Jesus, is certainly funnier and more English. Richard Brotherton demonstrated some positively transcendent guitar playing and Su Jordan reminded the audience of just how effectively a woman's voice can be accompanied by nothing more than the chant provided by her own lovely stand-up bass. The very tall Alex Horwill provided holy drumming.

The sound needs a little tweak so that the audience can better hear all the lyrics while the band plays because the words, especially in this instance, are the point. Play along with some totally painless audience participation.

IN OTHER NEWS
Scopophobia
MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to July 27

Young local actors need somewhere to acquire some chops.

That's the chief reason for the existence of this sloppy, wholly irrelevant satire on TV news wherein: a flossy co-anchor is expected to look pretty and keep her mouth shut; a weatherman becomes a star on the strength of his right-wing rants; two young lesbian lifestyle reporters capture the pornographic imaginations of the public.

In the age of fake news, Fox News, infotainment and vlogs, a backstage glimpse at a news organization should have yielded at least one pertinent observation.

But this comedy by Deb Patterson and her troupe of novice thespians comes up dry, on both comedic and thematic fronts, although one has to acknowledge that digging up Edgar Allen Poe to function as a doom-saying weatherman is at least somewhat inspired.

IT'S A GAY GAY GAY GAY WORLD
hYsTeRiUm
School of Contemporary Dancers (venue 8), to July 26

Drag queen Nelly Furtaco, ably abetted by her fag hag buddy Hagatha and prancing minions Twink 1 and Twink 2, offers up a gay-positive spin on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood (It's a fabulous day in the neighbourhood ... ") in this 75-minute cabaret-sketch comedy from playwright Curtis Lowton.

Nelly's bedtime stories include a too-long Emperor's New Clothes variant in which an American head of state is fitted with a designer suit made from material only straights can see. Better is a Cinderella knock-off that sees the entire cast knock 'em dead with an 'N Sync dance routine.

Gayer than a Lance Bass marionette, Gay World is ideal fringe fare for mature audiences of all stripes, assuming hetero attendees live up to the words on Hagatha's T-shirt: "Straight but not narrow."

JEM ROLLS
Big Word Performance Poetry
King's Head (Venue 14), to July 26

In his latest power poetry recital, called How I Stopped Worrying and Learnt to Love the Mall, Jem Rolls takes listeners into what he calls the "rat maze of plenty" that serve as a "laggard-archipelago of lego-ego." This fringe vet's superlative wordplay and image-creation remains impressive, displaying no ill effects of spending his first winter in Winnipeg.

This is the first time that the speed-talking Scotsman focuses on a single subject and the result is that his prose is much more accessible and funny. While the impromptu dashes into the audiences to deliver his words have stopped, he is a more lively action figure on stage.

Rolls does takes time to unexpectedly go off on the Kenny Rogers hit Coward of the County, which he calls the most shameful exploitation of sentiment. His only excuse for the national embarrassment of having the tune last six weeks atop the U.K. record charts is that contempt breeds familiarity.

JESSICA -- LIVE!
Pushed Productions
Onstage at the Playhouse (Venue 4), to July 26

This one-woman show from Winnipegger Jessica Burleson promises titillation and envelope-pushing, but delivers very little of either.

A mostly unconnected series of sketches with a little burlesque thrown in, Jessica -- Live! never quite coheres into a satisfying show. There are laugh-out-loud moments, especially in the final sketch, where a bitter schoolteacher puts a too revealing personal touch on a grammar lesson. But a pointless rumination on her childhood obsession with a French pop star is bracketed by two painfully long dance sequences (she accompanies a hilarious '70s video projected on a screen behind her, but most eyes will be on the gold lamé-clad dancers onscreen, not on Burleson's mimicking gyrations).

Her imagined conversation between an aboriginal woman and Jewish woman seems to be heading into an edgy, interesting place that's going to explore the idea of homeland and parallel Indian reservations with Israel, but it sputters out disappointingly.

Burleson is an appealing performer who really sells all her characters, especially the frazzled stationery-store staffer with the sexy secret, but most of this 60-minute show leaves those characters high and dry.

THE JOHNALD SLOW SHOW
InterVisceral Productions
The Conservatory (Venue 7), to July 25

This edition of The Johnald Slow Show finds the "legend of talk," Johnald Slow (Dean Harder as the titular radio-show host), wallowing happily in his own bombast, seeking a (raisin-free!) chocolate chip cookie recipe, and asking the questions: Is reducing pollution around Bejing just interfering with nature? And wouldn't our French-Canadian Olympians have an advantage in Bejing because public smoking is still allowed in Quebec?

Slow explores these and other stupid questions, bantering with "callers" while accompanied by his guest, a delightfully sleazy wanna-be athlete (Aaron Mercke), who feels he qualifies for the Special Olympics because of his "self-declared A.D.D."

Harder's blowhard delivery as a faux radio host seems to be channelling what might be a cross between Larry King and a young Richard Dreyfuss in either Jaws or The Goodbye Girl. Funny guy -- funny stuff. The tricky bit is that a show like this has the potential to be really uneven, but Harder is smart enough to know that 30 minutes of "hot air" is just about right.

KALIBAN
Reliquarium Productions

Shakespeare devotees in particular will be intrigued by this 40-minute monologue by a B.C. performer who invents a future for one of the Bard's allegedly abandoned characters.

In The Tempest, Caliban is the only human inhabitant of an island that is otherwise "not honour'd with a human shape." He is usually played as a wild man, a beast or the devil himself.

Providing sympathy for this devil is the goal of Andrew Hamilton, a 40-something actor who resembles an overfed hobbit from The Lord of the Rings.

Stripped to the waist for much of the play, displaying a luxuriantly hairy back, he speaks in dense Elizabethan-style sentences to explain why Caliban, a creature of impressive appetite, is no worse than the humans he encounters in the wider world.

Hamilton's material is reasonably ambitious, though perhaps too obscure for most. On the plus side, he makes cannibalism sound like a tasty option.

KILLING KEVIN SPACEY
Royal Palm Productions
The Conservatory (Venue 7), to July 27

IT'S a familiar story, seen in everything from Fight Club to Office Space: cubicle drone gets some cojones and kicks some butt. This New York duo (one of whom also presents The Movies: Abridged at this year's fest) takes it a step further and uses the movies to trigger one man's transformation. (This production is somewhat abridged too, taking up only 37 minutes of its claimed 60-minute running time.)

Charlie is a going-through-the-motions office worker with a hateful girlfriend and a loathsome manager who suddenly realizes he's playing Kevin Spacey in his own life (the wimpy Spacey of Usual Suspects and Glengarry Glen Ross) and decides to take cues from Al Pacino (the take-no-prisoners Pacino of Scarface and Glengarry Glen Ross) instead. Music from The Godfather cues mousey Charlie's transformation into a tough-talking, open-shirted badass.

The very funny, flick-worshipping duo injects new life into the done-that premise, especially the nine-to-fiver cliches. There were no programs to identify the two actors, but both acquit themselves handily (although the one playing Charlie needs to enunciate more clearly during the rapid-fire dialogue). The other, who plays multiple roles, including the girlfriend and the braying blowhard of a best friend, probably scores the most laughs, but Charlie's bagel-shop blow-up is a masterful show of scene-stealing bravado. Killing Kevin Spacey deserves a solid "Hoo-ah!"

LEARNING THE GAME
Ice Time Theatre Collective
PTE Mainstage (Venue 16), to July 27

As a girl hockey player with a learning disability, the imposingly physical actress Megan Leach gives 110 percent in this Kids Fringe entry from Regina's Ice Time Theatre Collective.

Lanni shines in athletics, but fails in academics, a condition that leaves this tough kid feeling vulnerable to her peers and to stupidly insensitive school officials. Overcoming her academic weakness is presented as one big sports metaphor in Janice Salkeld's play, contrived to educate kids about learning disabilities.

Fortunately, the strapping Leach has charisma and energy enough to transcend the "after-school special" flavour of the piece. Even in the cavernous space of PTE, Leach fills the void on the strength of sheer extrovert personality, at one point belting out Stompin' Tom Connors' Good Old Hockey Game with the gusto of a Cossack.

LESTER GETS KISSED
Magic Toaster Productions
Tom Hendry Theatre at the MTC Warehouse (Venue 6), to July 27

Gene Simmons has always had a bit of a God complex, so it only seems right that he and Jesus -- who both look pretty cool on a lunch box -- battle it out for the soul of Lester when the KISS reunion tour hits town in 1996.

Lester (fringe vet Dan Baker-Moor) used to rock and roll all night, but has stopped partying every day to devote his life to the Lord by working at a Christian supply store, which is next door to a record shop where his son works. The temptation of the KISS concert is almost too much for the tormented convert and he resorts to spitting up Moses' Red Sea ketchup to imitate his hero.

The strong pull of musical nostalgia and religious fanaticism and hypocrisy (along with a side-helping of feminism) are explored in this 75-minute musical comedy that has plenty of in-jokes for KISS fans. The 13-member cast keeps things moving quickly with sharp dialogue, snappy musical parodies and simple choreography.

If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that hard rock and religion can co-exist, because, after all, as KISS famously noted, "God gave rock 'n' roll to you."

LETTERS @ LARGE
R.S.T.N.L.E. Productions

Planetarium Auditorium (Venue 10), to July 26

Letters @ Large is the result of one-man, guerrilla letter-writing campaign by Winnipegger Jeff Sinclair. For years, Sinclair has penned hoax letters, sent them off to unsuspecting businesses and waited for quirky new material for his one-man stage show to arrive by post.

Sinclair's act is essentially reading the responses to his outrageous correspondence and waving his arm to a technician who will change the image on the screen. His best is a reply from the American Philatelic Society, to which he sent a made-up story about acquiring a taste for eating expensive stamps. The serious reply referred to stamps as being like fine wines, with distinctive flavours, and suggested that he consume less costly stamps.

Despite Sinclair's quirky hobby and his brilliantly concocted letters, the hour-long recitation never pushes the envelope beyond the level of a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction side show.