Early catch: the first of our 2024 fringe festival reviews

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This article was published 18/07/2024 (415 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

40 BELOW

What If Theatre

MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟

Running a tight 45 minutes, this ambitious comedy-drama by Sophie Guillas deals with the ideas of guilt, life’s randomness and the hope of redemption.

On a bitterly cold New Year’s Eve, Jerry, a young, aggressive bus driver, takes a ride with an older kinder driver, Murdock, who secretly fears retirement. We meet several passengers who interact with the pair. At the play’s centre is the haunting memory of a year ago when a girl, more or less thrown off a bus, froze to death in the snow, and how the drivers deal with the guilt arising from this pointless death.

While there is some powerful, genuine writing here, there is unfortunately almost as much sentimentality. The passengers encountered are never clichéd, but heading in that direction. Despite flaws, Guillas is a playwright to watch. The production is sufficiently sturdy.

— Rory Runnells

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BY THE SPIT OF YOUR TONGUE

Buried Seeds Productions

MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to July 28

🐟🐟½

Written and performed by Sarah Flynn and Marie Kozyra, this “play-comedy” (as described in the program) still compels one to ask: What is it exactly?

Two women, obsessed with their tongues and the mouths that hold them, find themselves in sort of a tongue heaven where they are harried into a tongue/tastebuds competition by the Tongue God. The goal is to become one of the God’s taste “buds.” Through a series of sketches, including too much interaction with the audience, the performers become more friends than rivals.

Running a brisk 40 minutes, it is deftly directed by Jane Testar. It is all strange and sometimes amusing — especially when Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is played by tongues — but also often tiresome and pointlessly bizarre. You feel the actors are having a better time than the audience.

— Rory Runnells

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CABARET OF MURDER

Blair Moro

Centre culturel franco-manitobain (Venue 4), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟 ½

A few of the homicidal monsters of the past century were distinctive from the howling mad pack in having nurtured artistic ambitions.

Over 55 minutes, Vancouver playwright Blair Moro and a trio of enthusiastic actresses (Paulina Pino Rubio, Katie-Rose Connors and Bella Ciccone) offer up a kind of greatest-hits package of their efforts, incorporating songs, poems, screenplays and playlets from the likes of Charles Manson, Dennis Rader, Lyle Menendez and Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui.

The actors entertainingly sell the show with deliberately broad performances that strive to take the sting out of the brutal realities lurking behind.

But what’s missing is clarity of purpose. It’s easy to mock bad writing, much of which here is just blundering expression of pure rage. It’s harder to find something specific and useful to say about the dance between the creative urge and the devastating destructive impulse.

— Randall King

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THE DIRTY BUCKET COMEDY SHOW

No Cheat Codes Productions

Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame (Venue 24), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟 ½

The show’s title refers to an onstage receptacle from which featured comics pull audience suggestions to inspire what the fringe program describes as “wild, unpredictable, dirty fun!” One presumes the relatively late-night start clears the way for the “dirty,” but in fact the bucket and the forced turn toward raunchy turn out to be more of cumbersome contrivance than a source of comedy inspiration.

The rotating roster of local (and, presumably, other) standup talent — including the reliable likes of Mike Green, Jordan Welwood, Paul Rabliauskas, Benji Rothman, Tim Gray and Emmanuel Lomuro — is rock-solid; obliging them to divert from their A material to riff off mostly lame scribbled suggestions creates lulls in what would otherwise be an awesome showcase-style hour of laughs.

Oh, and this venue has a full-service bar that remains open during the show.

— Brad Oswald

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FUNNY ANSWERS TO YOUR SEX QUESTIONS

Collins Entertainment

Planetarium Auditorium (Venue 9), to July 27

🐟🐟 ½

As “Dr. Nigel, World Famous British Sex Expert,” Vancouver’s Graham Collins gamely tackles whatever the audience throws at him. But for an hour-long standup comedy routine, that’s a risky format if the audience members are too few (or too shy) to offer questions.

Dr. Nigel, in a uniform from the bogus ministry of Sexuality Canada, holds forth jovially using slides, videos and songs. As he quips, “British sex expert — isn’t that an oxymoron?” But for an actor nearing 70, he seems willing to broach any subject.

Unfortunately, frequent technical problems with his laptop often brought the show to a halt. His recorded songs, which he occasionally sings over, were amusing but seemed called into play to fill time. Perhaps owing to the small opening night crowd, Nigel had worked through all the audience’s questions in the first half-hour. With a larger audience — and a greater variety of questions — it could be quite a different show.

— David Jón Fuller

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GO

Pitchin’in Productions

Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 3), to July 27

🐟🐟 ½

Toronto-based Laura Piccinin’s 75-minute storytelling act shares her solo journey backpacking 336 kilometres of trails on the east coast of Newfoundland. Recounting adventures from her journal, Piccinin shares what at times feels like a never-ending story — all while encouraging the audience to get out of their head and live their lives to their fullest potential.

Peppered with anecdotes of encounters on trails and in towns, or tales of past travels in Japan, Norway, Australia, Finland and New Zealand, Piccinin’s show reflects on fear and its motivations, independence, dying and asking for and receiving help.

This yarn is filled with relatable humour for anyone who has gone on a walk through the woods, but the abundance of side stories takes the plot off its path. Piccinin’s execution of dialogue was met with the occasional stumble, compensated for by her expressive demeanour. If you attend this show, listen closely, or you may get left behind at the trailhead.

— Nadya Pankiw

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JOAN OF ARC ASCENDING

Doctor Keir Co.

Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 3), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟

In the world première of this 60-minute drama, Montreal-based playwright Keir Cutler (Teaching Shakespeare) unpacks the origins and impact of French peasant turned saint Joan of Arc.

Armed with a map and more information than one could fit in a history textbook, Cutler invites the audience on an expedition across 15th-century France to understand the political and religious backdrop of Joan’s short-lived existence.

A self-proclaimed atheist, Cutler seeks to understand, via dense deep-dive, the source of Joan’s divine apparitions, while haunting musical interludes by Manitoban Kyla Kelse aim to bridge facts and faith.

Despite requiring some assistance to stay on script, Cutler provides an impressive delivery about Joan of Arc’s lasting legacy on present-day culture and Catholicism.

— Nadya Pankiw

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THE NAKED MENNONITE

Real Live Entertainment

Royal Albert (Venue 15), to July 28

🐟🐟 ½

Stephen Harder tells his story (written by Alan Fehr) about growing up Mennonite with gusto — but the storytelling beats don’t always land.

Harder opens praying on a pew — metaphorically naked before God as he confesses his sins. He then addresses the audience, tells of moving as a young boy with his family from Winnipeg to Rosenfeld, and wrestling with the question: “Are you a Mennonite?”

His story, rich with and sometimes bogged down by ecclesiastical history, has much to say about trying desperately to fit in when not even your theology seems to have room for you (he describes himself as “autism-adjacent”). And Harder brings a lot of humour and pathos to the slow reveal of his crisis of faith. It’s also a literal reveal, as his revelations are punctuated by doffing clothes.

Unfortunately, the performance is marred by frequently forgotten lines or details and subsequent corrections, and background noise from machines in the venue.

— David Jón Fuller