Passing gas and laughs

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This article was published 22/12/2016 (3287 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If there’s one thing we can agree on in these contentious times, it’s that farts are always funny.

And if there’s one thing we’ve learned to count on, it’s that December brings Robert Munsch to the stage in Winnipeg.

So when you take the annual showcase of stories by the Guelph, Ont.-based author at Prairie Theatre Exchange — as much a holiday tradition as watching Nutcracker or throwing out fruitcake — make sure it features Good Families Don’t, a tale about a giant fart that terrorizes Carmen and her polite parents. You’ll find you’ve got a pretty reliable recipe for kid-friendly fun.

The annual event — which presents several of the American-born writer’s most beloved stories, combined in a portmanteau format with an overarching theme that ties them all together — is celebrating 30 years of banishing the winter blahs over the holiday break.

This year, local playwright Debbie Patterson — in her 11th year of adapting Munsch for the stage — has used Ghostbusters! as the glue. Fittingly, in light of this year’s all-female remake of that 1984 film, MunschBusters! features an all-female cast. Robyn Slade and Spenser Payne play supernatural investigators and Jane Testar is their client, whose parents have been swallowed up by the Darkness.

The Ghostbusters theme ties in well in another way, because all the tales tackled this year — Alligator Baby, The Dark, Good Families Don’t, Mud Puddle and The Boy in the Drawer — feature a monster or animal of some sort, whether it be a malevolent mud puddle that drops from the trees, or a fart that preys on a family.

“Spenser and I run the Munschanormal Activity Agency,” Slade explains, “For this show, all the stories are creature stories, so it does have that paranormal aspect to it.”

Whether getting slimed by a puddle or dealing with a baby alligator, children always come out on top in Munsch’s stories — another reason for their enduring appeal.

“It’s cool because, as Robyn was saying this morning, Robert Munsch really empowers the kids,” Payne says. “The kid is always the hero; the kid is always the one who’s in charge. There are parents, but the parents often fail in the story.”

Munsch has a deep well of more than 50 works to choose from, but after 30 years, there have been some repeats, as well as some crowd-tested favourites that pop up more often. Payne is particularly fond of Good Families Don’t (her mother’s name is Carmen, so she found it hilarious as a kid to think of her mom having to deal with a fart). That said, the production is never a rehash of former years.

“They morph every time the story gets told,” Slade says. “The way we’re telling Mud Puddle, the way we’re showing the mud puddle, is totally different from the last time it was told, but with the kind of exciting, repetitive nature of the Munsch stories, the story is still there for the kids, so they can play along and probably they will speak it with us, but the approach is different.”

And if kids are familiar with the text of the stories, they’re equally familiar with the books’ esthetic, thanks to the colourful illustrations by Michael Martchenko. The cast, as well as director Sharon Bajer, recognize kids want to see the characters they know and love onstage, but they have allowed themselves some artistic licence.

“For example, the fart character, in the book, is this disgusting, green, slimy thing with a big gross moustache,” says Testar, who, along with Slade, is also a member of improv troupe Outside Joke. “We kind of went another way with the costume and the characterization, taking something that’s supposed to be the gross thing and making it super cute and sassy.

“I saw these shows when I was a kid and there were these moments when I’d be like, ‘That’s not what it’s like in the book,’ and I remember going, ‘Oh, but this is fun, too.’ ”

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @dedaumier