Reeling in more fringe play reviews

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

1,000 PIECES OF PI

Broken Rhythms Victoria Society

John Hirsch Mainstage (Venue 1), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟 ½

Math fans and anyone else who loves to geek out on numbers — and particularly the perplexing “pi” a.k.a. “3.14” — will enjoy this contemporary dance show performed by British Columbia-based Broken Rhythms Victoria Society.

Choreographer Dyanna Sonik-Henderon originally created 10 dances for her five-member company based on 10 different moves — think head isolations, jumps and slides — corresponding to a specific number as a way to pass high school math.

While the dancers bring to life a thousand digits of pi (as meticulously noted in the virtual program notes), an artist, wearing a wizardly conical hat, inscribes the memorized series on an upstage easel, creating an effective visual counterpoint. It’s a clever concept and you can actually check her accuracy with the sheets posted online following each performance.

Despite some really fine performances and an eclectic score of musical numbers, there’s an overall sameness to the 50-minute show based on her self-imposed lexicon of only 10 movements; infinitely more rooted in the head than heart.

— Holly Harris

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ALL HAIL MRS. SATAN

Still Your Friend

Creative Manitoba (Venue 22), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟 ½

Following last year’s The Life Henri, which took viewers on a rapid-fire history lesson about the life of painter Henri Rousseau, Toronto’s Adam Bailey returns for another solo journey back in time.

In All Hail Mrs. Satan, Bailey recounts the real-life story of Victoria Woodhull — free-love advocate, suffrage leader and, in 1872, the first female U.S. presidential candidate. Bailey packs a lot into his hour-long performance (delivered on a minimal set of a couple of chairs and tables) with a fast-paced monologue that attempts to capture the highs and lows of Woodhull’s life and the cast of characters in her orbit.

The speed at which Bailey jumps back and forth among the narrator and many characters can be hard to follow at times as his polished writing is delivered at a breakneck pace. Woodhull is a fascinating and relatively unknown subject, and while we learn a lot about her from Bailey, one wonders whether a one-person show is the right format to tell her story.

— Ben Sigurdson

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APOPTOSIS

Metanoia Productions

The Gargoyle Theatre (Venue 25), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟

‘The worst thing about going through something horrible is how they look at you afterward, how they hug you like you’re made of fine glass,” Sam Wells (Hunter Love Watson) says from a hospital room.

There’s been an accident, but writer-director Rebecca Driedger’s clinical drama has some purpose, a soap opera touching on women’s health, fidelity and the morbid but true befores and afters of life itself.

As one affected party, Watson is honest and effectively shaky. As another, Josh Pinette is stiff only when necessary. Ward Keith, as the doctor, is drawn straight from The Twilight Zone, his bedside manner suffused with beyond-the-grave awareness.

There are some potent bits of dialogue and several compelling twists in this 45-minute study of trauma and therapy, but its tendencies toward Sirkian melodrama feel overemphasized; a lighter hand might more authentically follow through on the promise of the production’s central griefs.

— Ben Waldman

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BARBIE: A PARODY

Meraki Theatre Productions

CCFM – Antoine Gaborieau Hall (Venue 19), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟

There’s no doubt the members of the under-18, all-singing, all-dancing cast of Winnipeg-based Meraki Theatre put their best feet forward in this 45-minute musical extravaganza of last summer’s ostensibly patriarchy-smashing blockbuster Barbie movie.

It’s a reworking rather than a parody, with some surprises thrown in, and the budding talent of the troupe is obvious. Opening night jitters got in the way of what could have been a smoother performance, but things can only get better as the actors ease into their roles.

Kudos for the execution of complicated choreography on a tiny stage (there was barely a misstep) and flawless dialogue. A nod to the actors playing Weird Barbie and Ken; both had the audience eating out of their hands with their comedic timing and palpable joy at treading the boards. All in all, a solid effort from the future of fringe.

— AV Kitching

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FIFTH DATE

The Gargoyle Players

The Gargoyle Theatre (Venue 25), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟

Ted Wilson (Scott Douglas), a quiet man in housebound penny loafers is lying in the bed he made — but is he also lying in it?

Given that “nothing has happened” after four encounters, Julia (Karen Robb) is skeptical of her paramour, who isn’t exactly an open book. “I’m telling you, it’s not weird,” she says on a phone call as she approaches her date’s stoop. “Ted’s a gentleman.”

But once the door of writer-director Andrew Davidson’s single-room dramedy swings ajar, everything — rosé, buried truths and inopportune desires — is on the table and ready to be uncorked, with Sparks and Nabokov ready to fly.

Directed with a keen eye toward power dynamics and the stubborn resilience of personal convictions, this 42-minute dramedy is a non-judgmental and perhaps too sympathetic exploration of impropriety, a slow dance of discovery, belated disclosures and ethical self-disgust.

— Ben Waldman

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FORBIDDEN CABARET

Melanie Gall Presents

MTYP Mainstage (Venue 21), to July 27

🐟🐟🐟 ½

Melanie Gall might well be called the sweet songstress of St. Albert, Alta., given that she has tended to cut a wholesome figure in her kid shows (including Rockin’ Bluebird at this year’s fringe) and in her straight musical biographies encompassing the likes of Deanna Durbin.

Inspired by the late fringe performer Erik DeWaal, Gall gets more down and dirty telling this story of Sally Chase, an opera singer adventurously roaming the fleshpots of New York City in the 1930s, only to find an alternate career as a singer of dirty songs at a secret downtown cabaret.

She doesn’t get too dirty, mind you, mentioning the notorious Lucille Bogan ditty Shave ‘Em Dry in passing, but not daring to perform it outright. The hour-long songlist, delivered in Gall’s masterly style, achieves only PG-13 levels of naughty with classics such as party record queen Ruth Wallis’s Boobs (“You need two to fill out a sweater; you need two, but three might be better.”)

— Randall King

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THE KID WAS A SPY

Big World/Jem Rolls

Creative Manitoba (Venue 22), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟🐟 ½

London-based fringe fave Jem Rolls offers a fascinating but largely unknown story of the nuclear arms race and Cold War espionage in his riveting one-hour, one-man monologue.

Ted Hall was a prodigy in the world of nuclear physics who, after going to Harvard as a teenager, was sent to Los Alamos to work on the Manhattan Project, helping to develop nuclear weapons and eventually smuggling top-secret documents out of the facility and into the hands of the KGB — and he wasn’t the only one.

Hall’s incredible story is brilliantly told here. Rolls delivers biography and history with a captivating poetic cadence, melding gravitas and humour as he lurches around the barren performance space. He ends by polling the crowd about whether Hall was justified in delivering the nuclear plans to the Russians.

While the results may surprise those in attendance, fringe regulars familiar with Rolls know he always delivers at a very high level.

— Ben Sigurdson

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MORNINGS AT MISS MABEL’S

Sherri Elle Theatre

Creative Manitoba (Venue 22), to July 28

🐟🐟 ½

Get set to spend 45-ish minutes in Miss Mabel’s nursery school classroom, our host and assistant to the titular teacher in this one-woman show. Throughout the course of the monologue — written and acted by Winnipeg’s Sherri Elle and performed on a simply decorated set made to look like a school room — we’re introduced to the stories of a handful of kids, some with issues, and the perils (and occasional pleasures) encountered by early childhood educators, including a broken nose and a kid who has toilet troubles.

Elle’s performance is earnest and endearing, but the show lacks focus, is unevenly paced and needs polish — she breaks for a sip of water every few minutes, taking the opportunity to glance at notes set on a classroom desk about what comes next in the show. The performance is choppy, but Elle’s charm leaves the audience still rooting for our host by the time class is dismissed.

— Ben Sigurdson

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THE MAILROOM

JHG Creative

The Gargoyle Theatre (Venue 25), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

A wacky, khaki musical about blue-collar employees clocking into a robotic company with an inhuman name, The Mailroom is an absurdist blend of ergonomics and economics, Avenue Q and Occupy Wall Street.

A wittily written missive delivered with corporate synergy, ruthless efficiency and more LPMs (laughs-per-minute) than any bureaucratic jargon could obscure, The Mailroom is further proof that neither rain, nor sleet nor automation can prevent the Harry S. Rintoul-winning JHG Creative team from doing what it does best.

Directed with chaotic energy and tight command by Ben Krawchuk, The Mailroom shoots its employees — Tom (a conspiring Cuinn Joseph), Lloyd (an ornery, scene-stealing Connor Joseph), Darcy (a steady-as-always Ian Ingram) and Marion (Monique Gauthier, hilariously refusing to be strung along) — through the pneumatic tubes of collective bargaining and protest, its characters learning to never, ever cower, even under threat of a brutal sacking.

— Ben Waldman

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NOT QUITE SHERLOCK: THE GASLIGHT DETECTIVE

Chris Gibbs

MTYP —Mainstage (Venue 21), to Sunday

🐟🐟🐟 ½

This is the first of two Chris Gibbs solo shows featuring bumbling would-be Watson Barnaby Gibbs, a familiar figure at fringe (the second, The Tunnel of Terror, runs July 22-28). An oblivious boob, Barnaby naively partners with a notorious jewel thief, whom he’s convinced is a deductive detective in the Holmes mode named Antoine Feval; hilarity ensues.

In this storytelling-style show, Gibbs deftly portrays a rogue’s gallery of characters, but at 75 minutes, the joke perhaps wears a smidge thin. The “case,” although it’s obviously an afterthought, is spelled out in expositional fashion that doesn’t match the rest of the tone.

As always, however, the self-deprecating, quick-witted Brit (via Toronto) is at his best during extemporaneous moments, turning flubs into comedy gold and making unexpected occurrences part of the show. You’ll want to tune in for Part 2.

— Jill Wilson

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NUIT

Trip the Light Theatre Collective

Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 8), to July 28

🐟🐟🐟

Physical theatre seems to be a protean category in the last few years, a mushy middle of shows that are neither fully realized works of movement or sketch comedy.

In this offering, four queer characters inhabit various nightclub types to amusing effect and there are two dance numbers that are well done.

The company came up through a youth fringe initiative in Ottawa and the members’ chemistry and enthusiasm do win you over. Honestly, to see young people fully open in their expression of individuality and uniqueness will never not be a tonic to this veteran reviewer of more fringes than she cares to count.

— Lara Rae

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REPORT. DISTORT. RETORT.

Alembic Theatre Creations

Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 8), to July 27

🐟🐟

Winnipeg’s Jade Janzen takes us back to school to instruct us on the experience of being a six-foot-plus trans girl, then woman, in this hour of physical theatre.

It’s a gutsy choice: Janzen is neither a dancer nor trained in movement. A small piece involving her putting her own mark, or marker, on a school assignment is sweet and moving, but it’s not enough to support a naive work and unsatisfying piece of personal exploration.

One major caveat: the soundscapes she’s built to accompany her work, which are painstaking and incredible in their detail and ability to evoke sonically the interior and exterior landscape of being trans in the new millennium. This is where Janzen’s gifts lie. More sound, less fury, and we may have a new talent in our midst.

 

— Lara Rae