The tide of Fringe Fest reviews is not going down

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This article was published 21/07/2024 (412 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE GET LAID SHOW

The Other V Name Productions

Duke of Kent Legion (Venue 13), to Sunday

Going by “V,” fringe vet Veronica Ternopolski shoots for a wild, raucous fringe experience in the intimate – some might say cramped – confines of the Duke of Kent Legion. V invites consenting adults to play games designed to open you up to relationships with new people. She employs a whiteboard spelling out the tenets of responsible mating: Participation, Risk, Vulnerability, Honesty.

If you go in knowing she’ll be polling patrons on their sexual histories, the bold extrovert may be happy to oblige. (All others beware.) Indeed, she takes up much of the show sharing her own sexual history, told through the device of an egg collection with each ovum representing a past lover, the best part of the evening.

But The Get Laid Show doesn’t mean you’ll get lucky with the overall fringe experience. Despite Ternopolski’s extensive experience with improv, she spends much too much time reading from a script, throwing her performing rhythm off. And of course, she has no control over the inevitable tipsy jerks in the audience who may have taken the show’s title as a guarantee.

🐟🐟 ½

— Randall King

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HAPPY GO LUCKY

Shoshinz

Le Studio at Theatre Cercle Moliere (Venue 20), to Sunday

Tokyo’s Yanomi Shoshinz is the master behind this funny, touching and utterly magical one-woman puppetry show that will stay with you long after the lights come back up.

The 60-minute performance is composed of short stories starring charming puppet characters created and operated by Shoshinz: a two-faced woman who teaches us that honesty without tact might be cruelty, but saccharine false faces are also not to be trusted; a little xylophone-playing spirit whose head is operated by Shoshinz’s mouth and wee mallet feet are controlled by her hands; and a Little Red Riding Hood updated for 2024 who declares “I am famous!” by way of introduction when she steps onto her miniature stage.

Shoshinz herself is visible for the whole show, but you almost forget she’s there, a testament to her vivid, fully realized characters and her skilled puppetry. But it’s the last character, an elderly woman who quietly honours the memory of a loved one, who will leave you feeling like you just witnessed something truly special.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Jen Zoratti

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JON BENNETT: HOW I LEARNED TO HUG

2hoots Productions

MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to Sunday

The latest one-hour monologue from manic Australian fringe fave Jon Bennett ( Pretending Things Are a Cock ) is a globe-trotting, time-travelling tale that takes us from the Montreal airport security line back to his childhood in the outback to explore the origins of his intimacy issues.

Clad in a too-small satin dress (don’t ask) and backed by a goofy PowerPoint of illustrative photos, Bennett recalls his first loves and first betrayals, his tendency to “Forrest Gump” away from conflict (cue Flock of Seagulls’ I Ran ) and how his inability to show affection in public affected his relationships.

Bennett’s often profane and always hilarious diatribe is peppered with moments of sweet vulnerability. Although you might doubt the veracity or even the sincerity of his account — he is a storyteller, after all — there’s no doubting his skill at wrapping a sprawling story up with a neat little bow.

🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Jill Wilson

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MY GRANDMOTHER’S EYEPATCH

Clowns Can Dance

MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to Saturday

Upon entering My Grandmother’s Eyepatch, you’re handed a plastic animal and a paper styled like a funeral program, and told, “Sorry for your loss.” It’s a promising beginning to a scattershot 60-minute show that feels like an excuse to trot out outré characters, not a story.

The premise is that we’re at a memorial for New York playwright/actor Julia VanderVeen’s grandmother where she insists on hogging the spotlight, performing Macbeth or doing “magic.” There are moments of inspired silliness —VanderVeen is a talented physical performer — but each one drags on to the point of discomfort, with nervous laughter outweighing guffaws.

The concept here is just too tenuous; there’s no logic to why these “funny” things, such as an extended Sia video re-enactment, are happening.

Warning: There is a lot of audience participation, ranging from uncomfortable to excruciating (having people read a script in 12-point font in a semi-dark theatre is a bad idea).

🐟🐟

— Jill Wilson

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PARANORMA PI

BadPuss Productions

Le Studio at Theatre Cercle Moliere (Venue 20), to Sunday

Vancouver’s Hillary Fillier is ParaNorma, P.I., a brassy broad with a Jersey-by-way-of-Boston accent in an ‘80s windbreaker who solves cases of the spectral sort in this energetic one-woman romp through hell and back.

This one-hour comedy, written by Fillier, is a bit slow to start, set up as a seminar on paranormal investigation delivered by ParaNorma, whose bumbling confidence makes her simultaneously seem like she could be your emergency contact and get you killed.

But this, it turns out, is just the buildup. The show takes the best (and hardest) left turn when we meet Lilith: a horny hellion in heart-shaped pasties and a leopard thong who possesses ParaNorma’s body and promptly puts the boo in booty, relishing her new bodacious human form. It’s here where Fillier’s talent for physical comedy shines; her willingness to “go there” is truly unmatched. Truly a riot of a performer.

🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Jen Zoratti

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PRECARIOUS ENDANGERMENT

Hogan’s Circus

MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to Saturday

Brett Oddly’s face takes a lot of abuse during his performance. It’s all his own doing, though. The local artist’s latest show is a mix of magic, escapes and sideshow stunts. In one trick, he swallows a nickel and works it through his sinus cavity. In another, an overturned spike is placed in an unmarked brown paper bag and a volunteer gets to choose which of four bags he should smash into the table. Things get tense.

There is plenty of humour and audience participation over the course of a never- dull 60 minutes, which also features Oddly performing the human blockhead trick first performed in the 1920s, escaping from being hog-tied and getting out of a straight jacket while dangling upside down, à la Harry Houdini. And Oddly can thread a needle so uniquely he should be getting invites to every sewing circle in the province.

🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Rob Williams

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RUNAWAY PRINCESS: A HOPEFUL TALE OF HEROIN, HOOKING AND HAPPINESS

Runaway Princess

MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to Sunday

Mary Goggin’s street name was Princess, but her life has been anything but a fairy tale. However, that’s the motif the Bronx-raised playwright/actor uses in her moving one-woman show, which documents her years as a drug addict and a prostitute, her time in an abusive relationship, and how having a daughter eventually turned her life around.

Goggin has a lovely stage presence and a nice way with an accent. With a chair her only prop and just a few small costume changes, she portrays her judgmental Irish mammy, a hardened Las Vegas madam, a streetwise pusher, a predatory pimp and a variety of nuns.

Her chronological narrative could use a little tweaking — the jump to being sober feels too abrupt after all the detail that goes before it — but her happily-ever-after doesn’t leave a dry eye in the house.

(The show runs about 65 minutes, 10 less than advertised.)

🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Jill Wilson

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SEASONS OF LIFE

Flamenco on the Prairies

Tom Hendry Warehouse (Venue 6), to Sunday

Brandon’s Flamenco on the Prairies takes a deep dive into the generation gap with this intriguing 55-minute show performed by two flamenco dancers a lifetime apart. A live, four-piece band accompanies company founder/choreographer Christine Penner and Anna Osterbeck as they perform a paella of Spanish-flavoured dances, exploring their playful to more competitive connection.

There’s a lot of promise here, including several heart-stopping moments in which Penner’s palpable pain of being in the autumn of her own life felt raw, as she ostensibly passes the torch to Osterbeck. Each dancer also brings their own strengths: from Penner’s well-seasoned artistry with this fiery art form so deeply in her blood and bones, to the lithe grace of Osterbeck including her twisting “floreo” wrists and fingers that enthrals. However these dramatic moments are too few and far in between, with even the musical interludes during the dancers’s costume changes feeling oddly dispassionate. More of this narrative through line would have made this an even stronger show – and these clearly committed artists firmly rooted in Prairie loam could carry it.

🐟🐟🐟 ½

— Holly Harris

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UBUNTU

Drum Cafe

Planetarium Auditorium (Venue 9), to Friday

The power of drumming to create unity is celebrated in this thunderously interactive percussion-fest, in which every audience member is provided with a West African djembe to play. Four performers lead the crowd in slapping the instruments’ goatskin tops, cooking up a high-energy polyrhythmic jam.

Winnipegger Jay Stoller has been dedicated to West African drumming for decades, but this is the first time he’s brought his Drum Cafe to the fringe. He’s joined by Casimiro Nhussi from Winnipeg’s NAfro Dance and two electrifying female guest artists from South Africa, singer/drummers Nosipho Mtotoba and Tiny Modise.

A bit of instruction on how to produce the different tones on a djembe would enhance the one-hour show and provide a slight break from the sound barrage. Mtotoba and Modise are wonderfully vibrant and soulful, but their full-volume yelling while wearing headset mics is very loud. Fringers who are sensitive to amplification might consider earplugs.

🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Alison Mayes

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A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO PEEING OUTSIDE

Holly M. Brinkman

MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to Sunday

If you think this one-hour storytelling show from Victoria, B.C.’s Holly M. Brinkman really has anything to do with al fresco micturition, urine for a surprise. But that’s just about the only surprise on tap in this pleasant but underdeveloped piece, the oft-told tale of one woman’s quest to find herself.

Brinkman is a very engaging performer, but a raconteur needs more dramatic material and a more satisfying arc. Mostly the stakes are low and the events so universal — embarrassment in front of peers, boy you like dates someone else, small town stifles you — as to be frictionless, although her portrayal of the different personas she uses to deal with the world is insightful.

A screen goes almost completely unutilized — some illustrative projections would lend visual interest — and the titular guide’s connection to the material feels forced.

🐟🐟 ½

— Jill Wilson