Fringe reviews #16: I need an extra show

FILTHY FAKESPEARE … AND FRIEND

Patchwork Theatre

Aceartinc (Venue 24), to July 26

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Patrick Hercamp is sharp at crowd-work. He spotted this reviewer, typing away on his laptop, after his other show, Fakespeare, and said something like, “I recognize your poofy hair from the audience.”

Then again near the end of this show, he was singing an improvised tune about the “man with the handsome hair, sitting alone in his cuck chair.”

He knows how to chat up audiences — and invite audience participation in entertaining ways that harass but only gently. Even with the show’s warnings about language, there’s something sweetly traditional about Patrick’s comedy — with his encyclopedic knowledge of raunchy songs, knock-knock jokes and improv games.

This show — joined in Winnipeg by London’s Andrew Silverwood, who performs in Love Thy Neighbour — is all about that. Do all the rapid-fire jokes land? No, but the risk of improv and crowd work makes everything feel alive. It’s a very warm show.

Since Hercamp feels confident commenting on others’ sense of style, I might retort that I’m still not convinced by that Renaissance Fair outfit. But he’s won me over.

— Conrad Sweatman

IT’S JUST YOU AND ME

Viva Dance Company

MTYP — Mainstage (Venue 21), to July 26

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Edmonton’s Viva Dance Company takes a deep dive into the “reinvention of self and fluidity of identity” in its latest contemporary dance show.

An eight-member ensemble bring to life artistic director Stephanie Lilley’s athletic choreography in a series of 11 works, many featuring the haunting vocals of Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan.

Kudos to this troupe for more than a few impressive lifts, several jaw-dropping head and handstands, and smoothly flowing movement phrases evoking the molten quality of contact improvisation.

The only problem is that this 50-minute production about “identity” ironically never finds its own footing.

Too many group pieces feel overly homogeneous (not helped by a lack of natural applause breaks), although a few smaller duets, such as sisters Hannah and Ruby Chyz’s Dem Words mesmerized, while providing greater texture and contrast.

Detailed program notes for each piece also felt strangely disconnected from what we were seeing onstage, with one exception, a pastiche of Plyve Kach, 97 Violins and Hymn for Gloria, inspired by the courage and bravery of Ukrainians forced to leave their land, that stirred the soul.

— Holly Harris

THE REVIEW

Concrete Drops Theatre

Tom Hendry Warehouse (Venue 3), to July 26

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This quick-witted two-hander written and performed by New York fringe favourite Martin Dockery along with Andrew Broaddus is like a satisfying tennis match between two worthy opponents — only they are lawyers, in a performance review.

Broaddus’s lawyer is the younger of the two, and he is tasked with reviewing his older subordinate (Dockery), who keeps derailing the meeting. He’s brought an agenda of his own: why did his superior send a photo to his wife?

It’s a sharp script that crackles with dry wit and wordplay, but while there are plenty of laughs, there’s also plenty of air-altering tension as the two men battle for dominance and power, the balance constantly shifting depending on who has the upper hand.

We learn Dockery’s character fears irrelevance; Broaddus’s character wants to be taken seriously. And they learn that the gulf between how they see themselves and how others see them is wide.

There is a running bit about a string of coloured lights controlled by a disobedient virtual assistant that, while serving the surveillance technology subplot, also occasionally slows the momentum.

That’s a minor quibble and likely a deliberate device: after all, what do we do when things get uncomfortable? We play with our gadgets.

— Jen Zoratti

SERIOUS COMEDY

Still Your Friend

The Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 8), to July 26

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Most of the cast for this high-octane hour of comedy rotates, but one name that recurs each evening at the Rachel Browne is Armando.

He isn’t a man, but an immersive improv concept developed by the Upright Citizens Brigade. In an Armando setting, recurring hosts Quinn Greene and Adam Bailey explain, the nightly troupe is joined by a guest “fringelebrity,” a monologist whose soliloquies prompt the action.

On Saturday night, TJ Dawe took the mic and the international cast included Winnipeg’s Greene (of defunct but beloved sketch group HUNKS); frequent fringe performer Bailey; Houston’s Brad Torres; Tulsa magic comic Tim Hoffman; Boston instrumentalist C. Neil Parsons; and Calgary improviser Brian Gashgarian.

The format lent itself extremely well to this impromptu troupe, whose combination of frenetic energy and deep knowledge of fringe audiences contributed to one of the more enjoyable hours of improv comedy in recent memory.

Inspired lunacy mixed with clever character work and agile joke-making. Highlights included Greene’s portrayal of the Bay of Fundy; Parsons’ touchy kitten; and Torres — explaining how a chair got caught on his head — asking Hoffman, “Have you heard of Slobodan Milošević?”

— Ben Waldman

THIS IS A…

Crosseyed Rascals

One88 (Venue 23), to July 26

👾👾👾 ½

Humour is anarchic. We try to police it with morals or politics and it goes and sh—s in our face.

We say “sh—s” because this is the sort of rude-but-not-too-rude word that the famously clean Winnipeg improv troupe Crosseyed Rascals now drop in their uncensored late night shows. It can sometimes feel like the nice kids awkwardly swearing out loud for the first time, but that’s part of the nerdy fun.

All the shows during the day are still family friendly, but this writer can only review what he saw.

One bit with Mitch Krohn mimicking ramming his wheelchair up the rear end of another improviser was quite funny.

There were bits that grew chaotic with so many onstage, though this show was mostly aided by the presence of the four or five guests who joined them.

— Conrad Sweatman

YOU ARE HAPPY

Hypothetical Projects

RRC Polytech (Venue 11), to Saturday

👾👾 ½

This odd, funny dramedy — an English translation by Leanna Brodie of Montreal playwright Rébecca Déraspe’s 2012 play Deux ans de votre vie — unfortunately gets lost in translation to stage in this local production.

Chic, single Bridget (Jade Janzen) is tired of finding her brother Jeremy (Griffin Kehler) trying to hang himself in her closet, so she makes it her mission to find him a partner.

She stumbles upon Chloe (Kirstin Caguioa) shopping alone in the supermarket, convinces her to sign a confusing contract (involving her razor company?) in which she agrees to be Jeremy’s live-in girlfriend. And she … goes with this?

All three players have good instincts when it comes to comedic timing (particularly Janzen), but the performances are often one-note.

The use of second-person narration — which is tricky to pull off at the best of times — makes it unclear if the “you” is the audience or someone else, and sometimes the characters switch to first-person narration to narrate what we plainly see them doing.

There is also a confusing mix of real and mimed props — at one point, Chloe appears to grind out a cigarette on her bedroom floor.

A more absurdist/surreal and less literal treatment of the script would make for a much stronger entry.

— Jen Zoratti

YOUR REAL GIRLFRIEND FROM CANADA

Good Morning Productions

Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 8), to July 26

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This storytelling show, written and performed by Winnipeg’s Hannah Clark, is a harrowing (and often humorous) look at online dating circa the mid 2000s, and what happens when your real girlfriend from Canada turns out to be a real human, with real needs.

Clark is a teenager when she starts chatting with the boy from Louisiana. But there are red flags.

When they meet for the first time and she gets the ick. When he berates her for wearing heels to his prom, the one she flew down from Winnipeg for, because they made her slightly taller than him.

When he moves in and spends all their money on his self destruction.

When she starts to shrink, little by little, trying to contain herself into the perfect, chill-girl avatar she once was online.

It’s a compelling, compassionately told story, unfortunately made too complicated by staging choices.

It’s not strictly a one-woman show: there is a cast of background actors who occasionally offer comedic relief but mostly distract from the thrust, and a PowerPoint element that, when it works it works but when it doesn’t, it kills the momentum.

With some streamlining, this could be a stunner.

— Jen Zoratti

WHO’S GONNA PUSH YOUR WHEELCHAIR?

Karin Fekko

The Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 8), until July 26

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It’s 2011. Karen is 34 and a grad student in London. She’s struggling with bipolar disorder and invisible MS symptoms, though there’s a cosmopolitan glamour to her life. Sophisticated friends, motorcycle rides with Frenchmen, whirlwind romances with artists.

Even her self-admittedly reckless decisions — shopping sprees, cheating, over-drinking — are described by this confident storyteller in ways that charm.

There’s some wit and silver linings, but this minimally staged one-hour show is mostly a narrative detailing over a decade of negative experiences with parents, landlords and lovers.

Some truly are terrible, but this can feel more like a therapy session — or an exercise to publicly impugn a long list of people — than a work of theatre.

Memoirs at fringe can work, and this one certainly holds our attention, but the most successful examples of the genre tend to have more understanding of storytelling and theatre forms.

— Conrad Sweatman

THE BIG BIG IMPROV SHOW

The Midnight Society

MTYP Richardson Studio (Venue 22), to Saturday

👾👾👾 ½

This perennial fringe touchstone is like the K-Tel Big Shiny Tunes of the festival’s improv niche, offering work samples of multiple artists from around the fest and, hopefully compelling you to go check out their album … er, show.

Ringmaster Stephen Sim, already busy in the shows Four Hearts at Venue 3 and Burns and Allen: Comedy Duo in Venue 1, worked with eight other artists Sunday evening (not counting a musical accompanist) on a long form game of Director’s Cut in which four different directors guide the cast through different stories in different genres, including medical drama, Monkey’s Paw-style horror, sci-fi, and a musical biography of Isaac Newton (which saw Alli Perlov struggling to remember any of Newton’s three laws of motion in mid-song).

It’s certainly big shiny fun, but it can also get little chaotic and directionless with nine actors running around the stage at the same time. Sometimes big, or even “Big Big” is not better.

— Randall King

BEANSTALK MARKET CRASH

Mind of a Snail

PTE — Cherry Karpyshin Mainstage (Venue 16), to Sunday

👾👾👾👾 ½

At its initial public offering Monday, the latest venture from Vancouver company Mind of a Snail capitalized on visionary practical effects, inspiring object theatre and mesmeric original scoring to deliver a peak fringe festival experience.

Returning to Winnipeg for the first time since 2018’s Caws and Effect, Chloe Ziner and Jessica Gabriel put Mother Goose through dada lenses, layering live animation, real-time digital streaming and parallax motion to create an immersive retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk for the age of the trillionaire economy.

With an overhead projector, the duo shines light through transparencies to give the experimental production a storybook background, while a digital camera captures live transmissions from a greedy greenwashing developer (Ziner) who makes himself Public Enemy No. 1 to the feathered friends who’ve called the beanstalk home.

Though the grafted-on narrative sometimes feels forced by an invisible hand — the wordless opening stanza is the production’s artistic peak — Ziner and Gabriel demonstrate tremendous precision to keep the show’s hundreds of visual elements in proper sequence.

Sit in the middle at the Cherry Karpyshin Mainstage for an inventive production that puts the beans and their counters under the microscope. Buy now.

— Ben Waldman