Fringe fest reviews keep swimming along

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This article was published 21/07/2024 (454 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE BIG BIG IMPROV SHOW

Leap Before You Look
Asper Centre for Theatre & Film (Venue 10), to Sunday

Why sit through one three-hour movie, when you can experience four never-to-be-seen-again flicks in an hour flat?

A revamp of the long-running Big Stupid Improv Show, this production from Stephen Sim features a rotating cast of well-known Winnipeg improvisers working with and competing against one another to create a compelling made-up narrative.

Four designated “directors” provide the genre — western, film noir, time travel or Fast and Furious , for example — and then poll the audience for people, places, things and plot points. The teams run through scenes and the crowd votes on which movie they’d like to watch to conclusion in a series of elimination rounds. A live musician and lighting techs are also forced to fly by the seat of their pants.

The format feels like a chaotic, but entertaining channel-surfing session. It’s a great way to catch some of the city’s top improvisers beyond their respective fringe shows.

🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Eva Wasney

DEAR JAX

To the Hilt Productions
MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to Sunday

Montreal’s Stephen Maclean Rogers chronicles the decline of his mother, freelance journalist Susan Maclean, through his own memories of her final years and letters she wrote to a guiding spirit named Jax in this poignant, heartfelt one-man monologue.

As Stephen’s mother was overcome by aphasia and dementia, she began to lose the ability to remember words, and then to speak. After her death, her family discovered her letters to Jax, about whom she had never spoken — and who also seemed to respond with letters of his own.

The 40-minute show sees Maclean Rogers surrounded by his mother’s letters arranged around him on the stage, with a handful of audio cues (including Jax’s responses to Susan read aloud) enriching the overall experience. Maclean Rogers’ performance is incredibly moving, conveying the heartbreak of watching a loved one’s decline while incorporating the small rays of sunshine and humour that come along the way. It’s a delicate balance that will send all but the most jaded theatre-goer out into the world misty-eyed but with a smile.

🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Ben Sigurdson

THE GREAT GATSBY

Illustrium Creations
Red River College Polytechnic (Venue 11), to Saturday

Winnipeg director Hayden Maines’s take on The Great Gatsby offers a speedy retelling rather than a wholesale retooling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famed novel. It’s good, not great.

The plot and characters are faithful to the original, but with a little more outright kissing than homoerotic undertones. The monied residents of East Egg are exactly as insufferable and the West Egg-ers just as naive. Racism is discussed in passing.

Parker Koepnick shines as narrator Nick Carraway, remaining on stage throughout the 60-minute run as the action swirls around. While the acting is stiff at times, other bright spots include Ryan Osodo as Jay Gatsby, Hunter Love Watson as Daisy Buchanan and Daniel Piché as a whole stable of characters.

🐟🐟🐟 ½

— Eva Wasney

JIMMY HOGG: THE POTATO KING

Jimmy Hogg
Red River College Polytechnic (Venue 11), to Sunday

Jimmy Hogg is the Potato King — and he has the credentials to back it up.

After a six-year hiatus from the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival, the English-born comedian and passionate culinarian was welcomed back by an excited audience in a sold-out venue.

Hogg’s hour-long set is more than just standup. It’s physical comedy, engaging crowd work and frenetic storytelling. Don’t let his chaotic energy and wild eyes fool you, every anecdote, every thread is laid down with meticulous intention, only to be picked back up at some surprising future juncture. Even when he lingers too long on a bit, the belated payoff is usually worth it. Callback King could be a new moniker.

The material is often about potatoes, yes, but it’s also about love in the modern age. By the end, you might find yourself with a catch in your throat and a few gourmet cooking tips up your sleeve.

🐟🐟🐟🐟 ½

— Eva Wasney

LETTERS FROM A SPACE GIRL IN LOVE

If Only a Dream Productions
Asper Centre for Theatre & Film (Venue 10), to Sunday

Space Girl is a dreamer with a penchant for ruminating on emotions that feel as big as planets. At the same time, Space Girl, we’re told, isn’t anything special. She’s just an Earth Girl who’s been told they’re “too much.” Too much what? It’s never totally clear.

Written and performed by Vancouver’s Chantal Vaage, this one-woman spoken-word performance is a cosmic stream of consciousness that uses the creation and eventual implosion of the universe as a metaphor for the beginning and end of a relationship. Space is also a stand-in for the poet’s inner world.

Vaage’s sparkly stage presence and delivery are solid, but the material of her letters is vague and overly general, making it hard to connect with Space Girl’s emotional plight. The show is short and sweet, clocking in at 30 minutes.

🐟🐟

— Eva Wasney

NUCLEAR FAMILY

MaxQ Productions
Le Studio at Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 20), to Sunday

Cold War anxiety hums through this smart if uneven hour-long dramedy by Winnipeg’s Gilles Messier.

We met Bea Alerte (Alyx Buhler) and Justin Case (Markus Buhler) — get it? — who are eyeing what’s happening in Berlin and worried about nuclear war reaching them in Canada. Bea, a former stewardess, keeps having to defer her dreams of returning to Paris so her husband can invest in a fallout shelter, and then a move to a “safer” neighbourhood with yet another fallout shelter, where they meet the Paxtons (played by Messier and Debbie Dann) who doesn’t necessarily subscribe to their belief system — which makes for some tense conversations, especially as Molly Case (a wonderful Sadie Armstrong) strikes up a friendship with the Paxton’s rebellious, questioning son, Felix (Marek Winfield).

The sets are inventive as is the use of audio and light, and the commitment to period-era props and costumes is certainly impressive; an airplane-print apron on Bea, for example, is a note-perfect detail. But it often feels as though the show is sagging under the weight of all those props; with the actors having to navigate so many scene changes and items, it distracts from what are otherwise solid performances.

🐟🐟🐟 ½

— Jen Zoratti

SHELF-CONTROL

Distingo Dave
Barber Cinematheque (Venue 7), to Sunday

Bibliophiles will find plenty to love in this charming solo show, love letter to books, bookstores and libraries performed by Duncan Storozuk and written and directed by Distingo, a local duo originally from Brazil.

Shelf Control is the troupe’s debut production, clocking in at around 50 minutes, in which Storozuk plays Manuel, who waxes poetic about a range of books and authors (many Brazilian, although with some Canadian and local content as well). Storozuk deftly shifts throughout to play a grumpy librarian, a jaded bookseller and somewhat clueless, pestering patrons looking for a specific book but armed with little or no information about the title.

Storozuk’s versatility and charm work well here, bringing both humour and introspection about the written word throughout. Manuel tries repeatedly to share with the audience what his favourite book is. Is he successful? You’ll have to see for yourself.

🐟🐟🐟 ½

— Ben Sigurdson

SHUNGA ALERT

Theatre Group Gumbo
Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 8), to Sunday

An X-rated puppet show that explores the sexual history of Japan, Shunga Alert brings loads of laughs and the occasional gasp in a frenetic hour-long visual delight.

The story: an artist named is initially hired to censor all of Japan’s remaining shunga art — explicit drawings and paintings created over the centuries. After a change of heart, he’s joined by Pleasure, a robotic sex doll with no long-term memory, and Pain, an AI bot. The trio, shrunk down by a magic hammer, set off on a quest to create Japan’s sexiest shunga yet.

This trio of real-life humans, from Japanese theatre troupe Gumbo, interacts with visually stunning paper puppets and backdrops projected onto a screen behind them by a pair of puppeteers/narrators, blurring the lines between the actors on stage and the incredible scenes and characters behind them — including a whole lot of very explicit shunga. From start to finish, this hour-long, high-energy show brings big laughs, many of which come from the dirtiest of jokes and scenarios that are deliciously, delightfully offensive.

🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Ben Sigurdson

SIDETRACK BANDITS SKETCH COMEDY

Sidetrack Bandits
Le Studio at Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 20), to Saturday

Six-piece Steinbach sketch comedy troupe Sidetrack Bandits — Jeremy Plett, Michelle Plett, Cameron Penner, Heather Penner, Kenton Dyck and stage director Thalin Dyck — are fast becoming fringe darlings with their smart, original comedy.

This crew is all about the characters, whether it’s an unscrupulous marriage counsellor meddling so her clients will stay, a guy struggling to pay attention to his girlfriend’s boring story while conversations about murder and skydiving are happening around him, or the recently separated conjoined twins who haven’t seen each other in a while.

While most sketches in this high energy 45-minute show feel fresh, there are a couple that employ hacky gender stereotypes — namely the song about wives who say “it’s fine” when it’s not — but when they steer clear of clichés, these bandits are sharp. And while the whole troupe is excellent, the ringer is Cameron Penner: he can get the audience going without saying a word.

🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Jen Zoratti

THE STAKEOUT

Racing Sloth Productions
PTE Colin Jackson Studio (Venue 17), to Saturday

Martin Dockery’s hour-long dramedy starts in a van, where a couple of feds (played by Dockery and fellow Brooklynite Andrew Broaddus) try to share pithy, hard-bitten truths about crimefighting and masculinity.

But as the dialogue continues into nebulous territory, the audience realizes this is no police procedural, as Broaddus’s character reveals a) it’s his first day on the job and b) he’s an emotional wreck due to abandonment issues. Eventually his partner reveals a) it’s his last day on the job and b) he views empathy as a deadly drug to be avoided at all costs. (“You’ve got to exile your heart into a dungeon in your foot.”)

In filmic terms, let’s say it starts out as William Friedkin and slowly transmogrifies into Luis Bunuel, as identities shift and it’s not clear who is staking out whom. Could it be that it’s less about police work and more about … writing plays? But all in all, it’s a fascinating trip, trimmed down to 60 minutes from the 70-minute iteration the last time it played here in 2022.

🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Randall King