Day 1: The first of many fringe play reviews are in… take your pick

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/07/2023 (814 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ANESTI DANELIS: THIS SHOW WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

Anesti Danelis

Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 3), to Thursday, July 27

Armed with a guitar, keyboard and violin, Toronto musical comedian Anesti Danelis riffs on wellness, self-help, dating, office culture and growing up in a Greek household. But too often, his observations are funny in the way that might make you smile but not laugh.

Many of the jokes feel dated — bits about manbuns, astrology and Instagramming meals are very 2014 — and the songs are overwritten (breathless run-on verses are only amusing the first few times, and then they get tedious). Danelis is competent on his instruments, but he’s not exactly a virtuoso, and comedy songs still need to be actual songs, with hooks and choruses and melodies. And one tune is so unfunny — and unnecessarily vulgar — that it should be cut from the show entirely.

Danelis is a charming performer and it’s clear he has smart things to say about how we live. But he’d do well to focus on quality over quantity. ★★1/2

— Jen Zoratti

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ANOTHER VERY SERIOUS NIGHT WITH BARNEY MORIN

River Road Productions

The Studio at Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 20), to July 30

After a slideshow informs the audience that the upcoming presentation “is as serious as seatbelts in the 1960s,” we get a very non-serious 45 minutes of standup and sketch comedy.

Otterburne’s Morin is a likable sort, and you want to root for him. It’s a bonus to have a decent sidekick, Morin’s friend Keagan Blanchette, whose silent portrayal of Sgt. Serious and his damn good guitar licks put him almost on par with the headliner.

Highlights include the traumas of Bescherelle (a French guidebook to conjugating verbs) and the Shopper’s Drug Mart automated checkout that gets creepily too personal.

Hopefully Morin will find his footing as the run progresses, and won’t have to rely on badly sung songs or making remarks such as “It’s opening night, it’s OK if I eff up” to get through the show. ★★★

— Janice Sawka

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AUGUST QUARTERLY REPORT

Tattooed Egg

Artspace Boardroom (Venue 11), to July 29

Cramped into the Artspace Boardroom for a rather slow-moving 60 minutes, an audience becomes shareholders at a board meeting of Yogurt Yum while board members go through the agenda. The company is falling apart with idiot marketing and disasters including a poisoning event with the yogurt. Terry inherited the company from his late workaholic father, and we quickly realize that he doesn’t want the job or the company.

As the meeting proceeds, Terry goes off on many tangents which become the story of his miserable childhood and teen years playing second fiddle to his father’s business. The visuals nicely parody contemporary media presentations, and there is some humour in the by-play between actor and audience. Unfortunately Terry’s story groans with clichés. What makes the show worth seeing is Cory Wojcik’s wild, soulful, unafraid take on Terry. Wojcik surmounts the material and gives a must-see performance. ★★★

— Rory Runnells

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BOOGER RED

Jim Loucks

The Output at Video Pool (Venue 12), to July 30

Written and performed by Jim Loucks, this biographical drama runs a tight 50 minutes. Loucks did this show at the 2019 fringe and this critic frankly loved it then, despite it not having an ending.

Now it does and its overall power as storytelling remains. It’s the riveting tale of Loucks’ father, who survived a brutal childhood to become a star preacher in the U.S. South. His father’s tormented life hovers over his son, who goes his own way to become an actor. It is a play about finding one’s real self while touching on faith, masculinity and the difficult striving for family love.

Loucks plays many characters wonderfully — notably his father — throughout the piece without condescension or judgement. His timing remains flawless; his ability to shift tone and take an audience with him seems without limit. ★★★★

— Rory Runnells

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DUNGEONS & SHAKESPEARE

Shelby Bond

Royal Albert Arms (Venue 15), to July 30

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely role-playing gamers in this interactive improv comedy from fringe veteran Shelby Bond (One Man Back to the Future).

The Los Angeles-based performer combines twin teenage obsessions — Shakespeare and Dungeons & Dragons — and invites willing audience members to play a multitude of characters onstage.

Bond, who is also the mastermind behind pay-what-you-can fringe feature The Sherlock Holmes Experience, acts as narrator/dungeon master. He calls on gamers and theatre nerds in the audience to choose characters from Shakespeare, who are pitted against D&D monsters. A roll of the dice determines who lives or dies, with a new story playing out each night.

The opening performance dragged on longer than necessary — about 15 minutes longer than the scheduled 60 minutes, in fact. But a good time was had by most. ★★★

— Pat St. Germain

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ELEANOR’S STORY: LIFE AFTER WAR

Ingrid Garner

Royal Albert Arms (Venue 15), to July 30

Fans of five-star fringe drama Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany will definitely want to catch the 60-minute sequel from Los Angeles-based writer-performer Ingrid Garner.

But you don’t have to be familiar with the original story to appreciate this moving, stand-alone tale, in which 16-year-old Eleanor returns to New York from Berlin, having survived the Second World War and its aftermath.

After seven years, she’s a stranger in her homeland and her attempts to fit in and move on are hindered by traumatic memories: Hiding in a cellar during terrifying bombing raids, suffering from hunger, witnessing death in the streets and, after the war, the constant fear of rape as conquering soldiers occupied the city.

Garner slips seamlessly from past to present, attending her first sock-hop one minute, hiding from Russian soldiers the next.

It’s a riveting story, adapted from her grandmother Eleanor Ramrath Garner’s memoir and told with wit, charm and grace.

Warning: There will be tears. ★★★★ ½

— Pat St. Germain

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EVERYTHING IS SUPER WOW

Spec Theatre

The Studio at Theatre Cercle Moliere (Venue 20), to July 30

British Columbia playwright/performer Ira Cooper returns to the role of Stancyzk, a 30-something who flees his “very Polish, very Jewish” lifepath of taking over the family deli in favour of a 1,000-day wilderness bike trip. His only companions are his tent, helmet, bike bag and bicycle, all of whom talk to him — and may be plotting against him.

This 55-minute contemporary clown show, based on Cooper’s 2022 fringe entry Mr. Coffeehead, retells the original story incorporating changes suggested by audience feedback.

It’s a solid showcase for Cooper’s talent for physical theatre, from very convincingly pantomiming pedaling a bicycle to shadow puppetry depicting giant mosquitos.

At the end of the journey, it’s up to the audience to decipher if Stanczyk is facing the future ahead — or really facedown dead.

Wacky, trippy and surreal, this one deserves larger crowds than it drew on opening night. ★★★★

— Janice Sawka

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FRIENDZONE

Megan Phillips

Creative Manitoba (Venue 28), to July 30

University: a time of freedom, new friends and emotional abuse.

At least, that’s the case for the unnamed protagonist in this one-woman dramatic comedy, written and performed by Sherri Elle and directed by Winnipeg’s Megan Phillips. The fictionalized autobiography takes place mostly in the ‘80s with Elle playing a naive freshmen armed with Aquanet, a rainbow clicky pen and dreams of run-ins with “rad hotties.” (The show is full of funny era-appropriate references and musical interludes.)

Instead, she finds Ezra, an insufferable but attentive acquaintance who comes on too strong and crosses many boundaries beyond the friend zone. It’s a dark and relatable story about unrequited affection told from a woman’s perspective. Yet, the commentary would be stronger if it weren’t presented as fiction. Ezra’s is the only name we know, every other proper noun is obscured by a hand-covered mumble — a curious creative choice that quickly becomes unwieldy. ★★★

— Eva Wasney

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JEM ROLLS MAXIMUM CRUSOE

Big Word / Jem Rolls

Alloway Hall — Manitoba Museum, (Venue 5), to July 29

London poet and storyteller Jem Rolls is back and he’s got a fascinating pandemic tale to tell from the beaches of Gokarna, India, a place where “idleness is an extreme sport.”

He has regaled fringe audiences about Oppenheimer-era nuclear physicists Leo Szilard and Lise Meitner, but in Maximum Crusoe he delves into the world of metaphysics: life and afterlife, good and bad, beginning and end. It’s an odyssey filled with weird characters — conspiracy crackpots, stoners and remote-working laptop jockeys — all of whom receive Rolls’ notorious poetic descriptions.

He also focuses his observational skills on himself, making Maximum Crusoe Rolls’ most personal story since his Winnipeg fringe debut in 2003. What could possibly go wrong? In fringe terms, hardly a thing. ★★★★

— Alan Small

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LA LA LUNA SEA

All About Theatre

John Hirsch Mainstage (Venue 1), to July 29

This local amateur theatre production warrants its own audience designation: SFAF — Strictly Friends and Family. All others beware. The premise offers a combination of closed circle mystery and farce as an underworld enclave of French spies attempts to solve the murder of one of their own, with the assistance of a buffoonish master detective.

The real mystery: What the hell is going on? It’s genuinely unfollowable due to mumbled/flubbed lines, missed cues and writing that is baffling in all the wrong ways. Farce demands Swiss-watch precision, and this show is more akin to a cafeteria food fight. On the positive side, some 17 people were onstage taking a bow at the end, which means friends and family should fill the seats adequately. Some performers were admirably game, but this show is a long way from ready for public consumption. ★

— Randall King

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LIA & DOR

Catun

Pyramid Cabaret (Venue 22), to July 30

From playwright and performer Cristina Tudor comes this new hour-long work that explores Romanian folklore — stories and songs that have shaped the life of Lia (played by Tudor) and Dor, who is visible only to Lia (and the crowd, played deftly by Alexander Forsyth).

It’s a bit confusing at the outset, with both Tudor and Forsyth playing numerous characters (sometimes indicated by changes in masks, headscarves, etc.), with little indication of who’s who until after the fact. But the production gets increasingly stronger in intensity, emotion and, thankfully, volume (the venue is painfully noisy, so sit close).

Tudor’s singing in Romanian is moving, as are the few but thoughtful props (including a fabulous mystical snake, voiced in tandem by the two actors). Family, mortality and fable intermingle, and both Tudor and Forsyth bring great skill and emotion to their movement, interplay and range of characters. ★★★ 1/2

— Ben Sigurdson

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A MASTERS GUIDE TO BEGINNERS IMPROV

SensibleChuckle Theatre

The Output at Video Pool (Venue 12), to July 30

The creators of A Most Daring Murder Mystery (Tom Did It) and A Brothers Guide return with a faux-improv show featuring the three most inept students struggling improv master Jacques Lemain has ever tried to teach.

Mark, Jeanine and David, each hilariously flawed and awkward in their own way, all essentially signed up to the class to learn better social skills. The tight 45-minute show sees Lemain haplessly trying to present a supposed improv show for the crowd — it’s seemingly his last chance to make it big, but every “scenario” the students are put in ends up hilariously screwed up by the inept trio.

It may not actually be improv, but this show brings all the fun and flavour of folks making it up as they go along. ★★★★

— Ben Sigurdson

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MINDREADER

Gregoire Entertainment

Theatre Cercle Moliere (Venue 3), to July 30

Winnipeg magician Patrick Gregoire can read people’s minds. He can’t even explain it. Mindreading is a feeling, he says, not a knowing. But whatever it is, it’s highly entertaining.

Gregoire, an engaging presence, gets audience participants to think of a person, place or thing. Or pick a word out of a dictionary. And he gets it right almost every time.

But even when he doesn’t get it, the results are equally mind-blowing. On opening night, two women were tasked with thinking of a person and a place. He got strong “Germany” vibes from the woman who was thinking about the person. The person was Meg Ryan. Meg Ryan and Germany are anagrams. (The woman with the place was indeed thinking of Germany.)

It takes a bit for the 45-minute show to get going — there is a lot of admin at the beginning while audience members get their assignments, and Gregoire establishes trust — but once it does, there’s lots to ooh and ahh about. ★★★★

— Jen Zoratti

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ONE NIGHT ONLY

Duhdumduhdum Productions

Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 8), to July 29

Toronto writer and actor Nicholas Eddie misleads the audience right from the start in this one-hour solo dramedy that will have audiences squirming with his unflinching depictions of mental illness.

Eddie plays a man at the edge of a precipice with a trunk full of props and awkward life stories. His stresses are amplified after a troubling voicemail message — are there any other kind? — from a glib RCMP officer seeking a firearm.

Eddie’s intensity sizzles, overshadowing One Night Only’s awkward attempts at dark humour, especially as the clock runs out and a fateful decision must be made. ★★★★

— Alan Small

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PRIVATE PARTS: THE SECRETS WE KEEP

Gravity Theatre

The Studio at Theatre Cercle Moliere (Venue 20), to July 30

The stage lights snap on harshly, illuminating a wild-eyed, hyperventilating young bride. Rocking out to Eye of the Tiger, she is summoning the courage to inform her father of her secret quickie wedding. The audience is hooked.

For the next 55 minutes, Vancouver performer/writer Joanna Rannelli plays herself at various ages from five to adulthood, examining the pitfalls of secrets, guilt, and lies people tell themselves and others.

Topics run the gamut from childhood embarrassment at soiling the bed all the way to adult horrors of sexual abuse and cancer scares. (“Our bodies keep secrets from us.”) Rannelli’s strong, confident performance delineates the brittle nature of secrets, and the way they can spawn unintended ramifications years down the line.

Visibly emotional as she addressed the audience at the opening night conclusion, she also provided hopeful food for thought: “Secrets may drive you, but I will not give them the keys to the car.” ★★★★1/2

— Janice Sawka

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RAT MAN HAPPY PLACE

Bruce Ryan Costella

Creative Manitoba (Venue 28), to July 30

The Happy Place is a chaotic, post-apocalyptic merry-go-round with no discernible beginning or end. The dark comedy from Florida native Bruce Ryan Costella introduces many narrative threads but follows few of them through to a satisfying conclusion.

Rat Man is an orphaned Disney — sorry, “Gisney” — theme park fan modelled after the world’s most famous mouse, who’s determined to preserve the sanctity of the Magic Kingdom following a society-ending disaster. The one-man production is ultimately about grief and fear of letting go, but the message is hampered by corny jokes, surface-level social commentary, mandatory audience participation, fourth-wall-breaking and haphazard props. Costella’s grimy Mickey-inspired costuming is, however, effective.

The highlight is a dramatic turn, in which viewers learn more about Rat Man’s origin story and motivations. The wild, disjointed ride to get there is less thrilling than exhausting. ★★

— Eva Wasney

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THIS CALLS FOR DANGER

Hogans Circus

Royal Albert Arms (Venue 15), to July 30

Blumenort’s Brett Oddly (Worst Case Magic) returns with an hour-long act based in large part on circus “side shows” — those freaks of nature who can seemingly stand a great deal of pain.

Oddly’s show featured six “bags of pain,” each of which features varying degrees of difficult/torturous tricks, while other stunts include putting a nail up his nose, eating a lightbulb and the like. A few audience volunteers were called upon, including one who stood on him while he lay on broken glass, one of a few tricks that elicited audible gasps from the audience.

The performance ends with Oddly escaping from a straitjacket while hung upside down, replicating the trick Harry Houdini performed in Winnipeg in 1923 while suspended from the Free Press building. It’s an impressive enough collection of stunts — some low-stakes, others more intense — that would be helped by a tighter, more fast-paced delivery. ★★★

— Ben Sigurdson