Fringe reviews #6: Side quests highly recommended

THE GOLDEN BOYS

Enigma Performance Company

Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 3), to July 25

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You know when you respond to a text with “lol” but don’t actually crack a smile? This show feels like that.

Winnipeg’s Anthony Ferens wrote this gender-bent comedy modelled after The Golden Girls and stars as Devin (Dorothy), alongside Lucas Boudreau (Ross/Rose), Ben Robertson (Sam/Sophia) and JJ Scherr (Blake/Blanche).

Unfortunately, the show lacks the sparkle of the original. It stretches the tight, 22-minute format of the beloved 1980s sitcom into a loose, 75-minute show leading to a bizarre contest to become Manitoba’s next golden boy (literally), padded with too many random stories and unnecessary detours.

The cast are cute and charming, and the RuPaul dance break and Sonny and Cher duet are highlights — with the sexy silver daddy patriarch Sam twerking his way into the audience’s hearts (and probably a few fantasies).

But all the talk of golden boys ultimately builds to nothing but blue balls when the naked contest never comes to fruition.

— Jeffrey Vallis

A MAGICIAN WITH JORDAN ROOKS

Rooks Entertainment Productions

Son of Warehouse (Venue 5), to July 26

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Magician Jordan Rooks mixes sleight of hand with storytelling in his solo return to fringe, but the magic is sparse and the memoir is underbaked.

The Las-Vegas-based performer, who has made more than 100 fringe theatre appearances at various festivals, is attempting to get personal after relying on parody last year as part of a magician duo in the Mary Poppins-themed A Spoonful of Magic. Sharing a little about his childhood in Indiana and his start in entertainment at 13, Rooks takes some surprisingly dark and heartfelt turns between tricks.

The show promises to take the audience on a “magical journey of resilience,” but Rooks’ verbal transitions need work. The anecdotes are unpolished and delivered awkwardly for such a seasoned performer, filling time between too-few tricks. Opening night’s show was about 15 minutes shorter than the advertised 45-minute runtime. Still, diehard magic lovers will be entertained; expect (voluntary) audience participation.

— Katie May

OUR FATHER

Stark Raving

John Hirsch Mainstage (Venue 1), to July 25

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Estranged oil-and-water siblings try to find enough common ground to prepare for the funeral of their very difficult father. It’s a classic setup well explored in numerous stories, films and plays. This production, written by Winnipegger Ethan Stark — a Harry S. Rintoul-nominated playwright — subverts that cosy grief framework by not just draping it across the arms of a bible-thumper’s cross, but doing so with profound love and a fierce sense of play.

As siblings Sophie and Oliver meet, repeated dead-naming reveals one character as trans in a conservative Christian family.

That narrative tension is ripped apart by voice-of-God audio intrusions that confound first the audience, then the actors and finally the playwright, who charges the stage and demands — speaking to the ether — to know what is happening. By the end, father and adult child have gentle but firm words, one heart is both broken and mended, faith and a green-haired God are lifted gloriously whole from the Bible and, just before the theatre leapt to its collective feet, at least a dozen audience members were audibly sobbing. Follow this playwright.

— Denise Duguay

THE POWER OF IGNORANCE

Chris Gibbs

Planetarium Auditorium (Venue 9), to July 25

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When it comes to power, Toronto-based Brit Chris Gibbs is a force to be reckoned with in Fringeland. He typically packs audiences in with his Not Quite Sherlock mysteries, but this year, he revives the 2003 motivational speaker shtick he co-scripted with TJ Dawe, another fringe powerhouse.

Gibbs plays ignorance guru “Vaguen” and does his best to sell his audience on ignorance as a life-enhancing lifestyle choice, backed by well-worn untrue aphorisms such as “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” He even comes up with a new one, suggesting ignorance is a net positive: “The opposite of ‘no’ is ‘don’t-know.’”

Vaguen sells idiocy with such smug self-satisfaction, he would doubtless thrive among the talking noggins on Fox News.

But the hour-long comedy avoids being overtly political when being consistently hilarious is enough. And yet, it vividly reflects Isaac Asimov’s famous observation about the American “cult of ignorance” that is “nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

— Randall King

SURPRISE!

Chicka-Hehes

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

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Two women sing along to Céline Dion’s 1991 R&B banger J’ai besoin d’un chum as they preen and prep for the arrival of the men they love. They’re throwing a surprise party for one of les mecs, Eric.

He’s married to une des filles, but she doesn’t yet know he’s come home with a mistress. Pretty soon Eric’s bumbling parents — a drunk loudmouth mère and mousey incompetent père — show up.

Manitoban playwright Marc Prescott exploits the setup for almost everything it’s worth comedically in his irresistible Franglais. There are no heroes and nothing is learned in this throwback to 1980s and ’90s sex comedies.

That’s OK, so long as we’re kept laughing over the hour-long show, presented in French with English subtitles. The mistress who refuses to leave the party is a solid if overextended bit, and the actors commit with infectious frenzy.

— Conrad Sweatman

STRANGE THINGS: A STRANGER THINGS PARODY

Meraki Theatre Productions

CCFM — Antoine Gaborieau Hall (Venue 19), to July 26

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Here’s another fringe show from Meraki Theatre Productions featuring an all-teenage cast. There’s a moment in this hour-long show where Ghostface yells “wazzup” into the phone. It’s a funny allusion to a scene from Scary Movie, the most famous horror genre parody. That scene in the 2000 movie was, in turn, a satirical reference to both the film 1996 Scream and a 1990s Budweiser commercial that popularized the catchphrase.

If these references feel niche, Strange Things will be even more confusing to anyone who hasn’t seen the hit Netflix show Stranger Things. But little was lost on the packed house who thrilled in seeing their friends and family onstage.

Whatever your connection to the actors or the material, there’s a fun energy to this amateur production that’s hard to resist.

— Conrad Sweatman

SWEAT

Manitoba Underground Opera

John Hirsch Mainstage (Venue 1), to July 26

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If traditional opera scares you, be not afraid of this company. As stated in a handy program presented to theatregoers, the group’s purpose is to animate an artform that once “resonated with people from all walks of life.”

While their body of work has included many classics, Sweat was created in 2016 by Toronto-based composer Juliet Palmer and librettist Anna Chatterton. That this a cappella work about labour abuses in the garment industry is now staged at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, in the heart of Winnipeg’s once booming rag trade, gives the drama extra resonance.

But the lion’s share of praise must go to the performances. Two simple bolts of white netting are transformed into the relentless machinery of factory work by women who spend most of the 75 minutes on their knees. Their voices — alternating, chanting, joyful, haunting — cover dreams, rebellion, despair and alarm. The final moments are stunning. Venue note: bring a sweater! Preferably union-made.

— Denise Duguay

TONY WRESTLES A STRANGER

Tony Adams

Centre culturel franco-manitobain (Venue 4), to July 25

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“Do we really need more white men talking about masculinity?” Yes, if Victoria’s Tony Adams is the one talking. (Though Adams’ pronouns are they/them.)

This solo sketch show is a fringe masterpiece. Over 60 very strange, very smart minutes Adams skewers toxic masculinity and the performative male while wrestling (literally, at times) with their own place in that world.

The emotional swings are surprisingly wide for a show with a garbage can full of hot dogs — and heartache, apparently.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you might even cry as Adams grapples with an ever-present absent father and the problematic male role models who filled the void. Sections on identity and body image are particularly poignant.

The audience engagement and word play are excellent, as is the supporting media, which includes montages of trucks and manly men doing manly things. This topical and disarming production is a must-see.

— Eva Wasney

LA VIE PARISIENNE

Barclay Productions

Son of Warehouse (Venue 5), to July 25

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Pop the champagne (quite literally) and pretend you’re in Paris in the roaring 1920s as you listen to Bremner Fletcher sing French standards from Josephine Baker, Jacques Brel, Édith Piaf and others in this cabaret-style show written by Lisa Pasold.

Fletcher conjures the purgatory-trapped ghost of French pop singer Serge Gainsbourg (played by Winnipeg’s Julian Carneiro accompanying beautifully on piano) and must sing to free Gainsbourg’s spirit, while Fletcher is transformed into real-life nightclub owner Joe Zelli, who apparently still carries a torch for Baker. The narrative is really not the point, as evidenced by jokey references to Taylor Swift, TikTok and Tinder in what is, we’re told, the year 1924.

The point, of course, is Fletcher’s baritone.

The Montreal-based singer charms the audience and takes on the classic chansons with ease, including a powerful performance of Langston Hughes’s jazz poetry and a restrained version of Baker’s J’ai Deux Amours.

—Katie May

A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO ROMANCE NOVELS

Holly M. Brinkman

The Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 8), to July 25

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Romance is having a moment right now and Vancouver’s Holly Brinkman is all over its pulsing, throbbing … heart.

Her clever improv show plays with the predictable formula of romance novels to create new steamy stories. The creative audience interaction includes letting the crowd scan a QR code to choose a genre (historical, romantasy, etc.) or getting someone to pick a bodice-ripper paperback from “Le Sac Magique”; Brinkman then riffs off the cover.

Each night features a different fringe guest (on opening night, Chase Padgett played a soulful Teddy Swims cover and gamely executed a meet-cute in an elevator as a jewel thief).

Some of the elements need to be incorporated more smoothly — there’s too much technical faffing about that’s only charming for so long — but Brinkman has the tropes of romance novels down cold (and hot). She delivers the laughs, yes, but also the licentiousness, and that’s a happy ending for everyone.

— Jill Wilson