Fringe reviews #5: Power up!

DAN’S INFERNO

H.A.N.D. Productions

CCFM — Salle Pauline-Boutal (Venue 4), to July 24

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Picture a family dinner where the kids stage a play they invented moments earlier that no one else understands. That’s the experience of watching this show.

This ensemble “comedy” features 10 local, young actors and follows Dan (Nic Hill), an asexual straight man journeying through the nine circles of Gender Hell, guided by the ghost of his childhood friend Virgil (Lysander Brandt), as he tries to accept that his bisexual partner now identifies as non-binary.

The show is bat-crap crazy on every level — and not just because Batman himself inexplicably shows up to challenge the non-binary ghost guide in a hate crime fight. It only gets crazier with zombies who eat straight men, an incel convention and the trial of Dan’s sexuality.

Hill shows real emotional range, particularly in Dan’s final breakdown. But unless you’re queer and born after 2006, this probably isn’t for you and will likely leave you wondering, “What in the gender hell did I just watch?”

— Jeffrey Vallis

THE GREAT & POWERFUL TIM: MAGIC BACHELOR

Great & Powerful Tim

School of Contemporary Dancers (Venue 7), to July 26

👾👾 ½

Oklahoma comedian/magician Tim Hoffman may not be “great and powerful,” but he sure knows how to live dangerously.

His opening night was a case study in how shows can soar — or sink — with the calibre of the audience participation.

In the span of 55 minutes, Hoffman had to manage participants who couldn’t operate the props he handed them, couldn’t understand the instructions he gave them, appeared to be deliberately trying to sabotage the trick, or were fun but a bit too enthusiastically into the banter. (“I don’t recall giving you so many lines in my script!” Hoffman quipped.)

The show at times seemed ill-prepared and awkwardly staged, with onstage volunteers blocking what was happening, and the (unnecessary) subplot of Tim being a merman seeking human dating advice appearing and disappearing.

Comical and worth a peek if you have the time, but needs more work — and a different audience — to be magical.

— Janice Sawka

HAPALOCHLAENA

Aaron Malkin

CCFM – Salle Pauline-Boutal (Venue 4), to Friday

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This might be the stupidest show at the fringe this year — and you’d be stupid not to see it. The solo physical comedy from Czech-based comedian Trygve Wakenshaw blends mime, clown and physical theatre, and is produced by Aaron Malkin, co-creator of the award-winning duo James & Jamesy (Fool’s Gambit, Venue 16).

Wakenshaw relies mostly on facial expressions, body contortions and personal sound effects to build characters and tell stories — and that’s all he needs. His imaginary sleight-of-hand card tricks were almost more compelling than the real thing, and his embodiment of an oversized shuttlecock, which audience members literally hit with badminton racquets, was unhinged and unforgettable.

Wakenshaw admits the 75-minute show is still being workshopped and the ending fell off a cliff so abruptly (and 10 minutes early) that it almost seemed like maybe it was part of a bit. It wasn’t. Still, this is exactly the kind of chaotic, goofy show fringe is all about.

— Jeffrey Vallis

JEAN-FRANÇOIS, PLUS QUE PARFAIT

Langues Tordues/Twisted Tongues

Le Studio at Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 20), to July 26

👾👾👾👾 ½

A group of missionaries overhear coital sounds as they rap at the door. Eventually, two half-naked women answer. The missionaries evangelize against a ruinous decline in social standards. But it’s not the women’s lesbian lifestyle that concerns them, it’s their Franglais and poorly conjugated dirty talk. A francophone should say “excité” not “horny”!

The missionaries are led by a sex cult leader named Jean-François, “the ideal francophone,” and hand out XXX versions of French grammar bible Bescherelle. If French in Canada is to have a more perfect future, notoriously tricky French tenses like past simple and imperfect subjunctive must become natural in people’s most intimate moments.

Winnipeg playwright Daniela Smith-Fernandez has delivered as smart a script as this reviewer has seen at the fringe. Almost too smart: the show is in French with English subtitles, but even the subtitles can be a tad dense, and the hour-long play’s execution isn’t perfected yet. A bigger theatre should pick this up and help develop the concept.

— Conrad Sweatman

LETTERS

Parachuting Camel Productions

Tom Hendry Warehouse (Venue 6), to July 25

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Letters, by local playwright Brian Langlotz, was inspired by his grandfather’s military service, centering around letters exchanged between Paul Bailey at war in Italy and his wife, Betty, at home in Winnipeg. Its 75-minute running time encompasses, with emotional power, a wider complex story of how war inspires, destroys and changes people whether they realize it or not.

Langlotz captures an era that will seem, in fairness, perhaps a little too familiar from Second World War Hollywood movies, but the playwright is never patronizing or sentimental when it would be easy to do so. He shows skill in creating a whole community — friends, parents, soldiers in battle — around the couple, using the letters between them as an anchor for this community and the audience.

The production was a little wobbly on opening night, and probably the Hendry is too large for some of the cast to manage vocally, but one hopes the show will right itself during the run.

— Rory Runnells

NO WORRIES IF NOT

Battlefield Heartbreaker Productions

Son of Warehouse (Venue 5), to July 24

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For 60 minutes, Vancouver comedian Katie-Ellen Humphries stands onstage and hangs her laundry up to dry. With each garment comes a story, drawn from her experiences coming of age in the late 1990s and navigating toxic relationships. The metaphor is clear enough; so is Humphries’ spritely sincerity.

Through a mix of storytelling and audience interaction, the performer crafts a loving and comedic commentary on people-pleasing and self-abandonment. Those themes, sharply observed, will hit close to home for many — especially many women.

This is Humphries’ first time performing at the Winnipeg fringe, but her reputation evidently precedes her: her opening show on Thursday was nearly sold out, despite the afternoon rain. (“Wow, so much more of you than I was expecting,” she exclaimed.) They did not leave disappointed: when Humphries took her final bow, multiple people in that audience gave a standing ovation.

— Melissa Martin

A ONE HUMAN BEING, POTENTIALLY COMEDIC PERFORMANCE OF TOY STORY…IF IT WAS A MUSICAL

Living the Dream

School of Contemporary Dancers (Venue 7), to July 26

👾👾👾👾 ½

It’s a question we’ve all considered: What if Toy Story were a live-action, solo show told through more than a dozen iconic musical numbers?

No? Well, it’s a question Winnipeg’s Alli Perlov, a high school drama teacher, has answered in a chaotic and entertaining fashion. In this 60-minute production, Perlov transforms into all the characters (yes, all) from the 1995 Pixar classic while singing the plot via rewritten songs from famed musicals, such as Cats, Rent and Les Misérables.

The sheer number of things Perlov has created for this show — from songs to costumes to set pieces to props to Mad Libs — is impressive (though it may be a touch too complicated, as the opening performance got cut off before its end). Still, this is a very zany and endearing romp for kids and nostalgic adults alike.

— Eva Wasney

ONWARDS!

Big Empty Barn Productions

The Output (Venue 12), to July 25

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What a weird bit of song-and-dance and neo-vaudeville cabaret for a weary world.

Bremner Fletcher is a bass-baritone opera singer who has crafted a hardscrabble, 60-minute valentine to survival.

Shining and flowing from Fletcher’s deep, emotion-filled voice, this collection of pop and Tin Pan Alley tunes rings improbably in the ear like a pop tenor.

Imagine if Chris Rea, Nick Lowe, Kurt Weil, Attila the Stockbroker, Ian Dury and Nick Cave were one dude in a nice-fitting suit that could easily have belonged to anyone in the band Madness. If that notion appeals, this your cuppa tea. Loved it!

— Lara Rae

QUINTLAND: THE MUSICAL

Winnipeg Broadway Theatre

CCFM — Salle Pauline-Boutal (Venue 4), until July 25

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Have you heard of the Dionne quintuplets? The five identical Canadian sisters became an instant media sensation and spent half their childhood in a “baby zoo,” exploited by family, doctors and politicians alike.

A massive tourism draw for lookyloos, the sisters earned the Province of Ontario an estimated $500 million during the 1930s — making them one of Ontario’s greatest economic assets during the Great Depression.

Local production Quintland helps rescue this sad, odd tale from obscurity. It fights another amnesia, too — in an era where pop radio songmakers have forgotten how to craft melody and chord changes, Quintland bears some rich old-school numbers by Janna Larsen.

It’s an embarrassment of riches in a sense because the show is 90 minutes of wall-to-wall music. The relative lack of dialogue makes it hard to connect with the characters, let alone differentiate the sisters. But its capable youthful cast — some very young — carries everything with conviction.

— Conrad Sweatman

SOUNDS FROM THE MEAT MACHINE

Licensed Fool Productions

Son of Warehouse (Venue 5), to July 26

👾👾👾 ½

Here’s a statistic that should scare you: up to 40 per cent of new songs uploaded to streaming app Spotify are entirely AI-generated. That fact prompts some deeper questions. For instance: what is music? How is it made? And how does it connect with what it means to be human?

In Sounds From the Meat Machine — in other words, our brains — Texas-based musician, educator and recovering algae scientist Bradley Torres invites audiences to explore those questions together. From start to finish, the show is entirely interactive; less of a performance and more of a conversation.

That approach works because of Torres himself. At times, his dive into the finer points of music theory may get too dense for the non-musically inclined. But so engaging is the performer, and so comfortable conversing from the stage, he keeps the audience with him the whole way. The end result is educational, friendly and consistently funny.

— Melissa Martin