Tuesday Fringe reviews, part 3

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/07/2012 (4798 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MEDICINE

Local Rascal Productions

PTE Mainstage (Venue 16), to Saturday

VANCOUVER storyteller TJ Dawe can be irritating when he dons his teacher hat and merely informs us of stuff he thinks we should know.

Fortunately, there’s little of that in his genuinely moving new monologue. It’s the true story of how he took the psychoactive drug ayahuasca, supervised by shamans, to try to overcome a disturbing personal problem.

By courageously revealing his own shame — and honestly acting it, not detaching from it — Dawe touches all of us wounded children who are ashamed of our destructive habits and secrets, desperate to be cradled, afraid to ask for what we need.

Dawe is maturing into an artist who knows how to find those universal truths. His childhood memory of drawing a spiritual picture that couldn’t be appreciated by his parents is just one of the small gems in this soul-nourishing story. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö

— Alison Mayes

THE PLAGUE DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER

One Bird Walking Theatre

John Hirsch Mainstage (Venue 1), to Sunday

THE 14th-century plague was good for one thing: the death toll left plenty of jobs to be had.

Signore Lassandri gets a gig as a “doctor,” but succumbs to a different disorder before he can start work. In order to keep the doctor’s house, his selfish daughter Enza (Heather Krahn) dons his bird-mask disguise and hits the street with the unscrupulous Ghezzo (Rob Brown). The two actors stand out in the local cast, but don’t always get a lot to work with in a script that drags over the course of 75 minutes. There are a few decent one-liners and some interesting moments to ensure you won’t die of boredom, but you might just be plagued by disinterest. ‘Ö’Ö1/2

— Rob Williams

IN/SIDE THE BOX

Sinéad Cormack

Shaw Performing Arts Centre (Venue 9), to Sunday

LET’S hear it for the seven audience members who walked out of this outrageously self-indulgent, stunningly boring dance/multimedia piece at its opening Friday.

There isn’t a star rating low enough for Ireland’s Sinéad Cormack, a self-conscious contemporary dancer who takes an eternity to construct what looks like a circus apparatus — a scaffolding cube criss-crossed with a web of ropes — but never does any stunts on it.

Cormack’s adolescent concept, complete with the F-word projected on a video screen, is that society wants to put her in a box. The spacey music is numbingly repetitive. So is the plodding choreography. Meanwhile, on the screen, multiple versions of Cormack do variations on what she’s doing live. Thanks, but one of her is too many. ‘Ö

— Alison Mayes

RIDERGIRL

RiderGirl

MTC Up the Alley (Venue 2), to Saturday

AS Winnipeggers, we are supposed to hate the Saskatchewan Roughriders, but it’s impossible to dislike perky Colleen Sutton, who scores a touchdown with her autobiographical, 75-minute, one-woman go-go-go show about being a member of Riderville and bleeding green and white.

Sutton describes how she fell in love with the Canadian Football League, a career change, the illness of a friend and some hard financial times. She has a suitcase filled with everything from ponchos to pompoms to get you in the mood for game day and the biggest game of all, the Grey Cup. (Sorry about that 2009 game, Colleen.) ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö

— Rob Williams

CATCH AS CATCH CAN

Ruus Productions

Playhouse Studio (Venue 3) to Saturday

THE scenario: Two men in a beach hut in a tropical paradise. One of them is in handcuffs and the other has a gun. Why? Who knows. It’s a game where the characters Happy and Lucky talk talk talk about possibly being arrested by members of a revolution and growing up together. Happy might be insane.

What happens? Nothing. They talk about random events that may or may not be real. It’s all pointless, with dialogue about hypothetical situations and memories of events that may or may not have happened when they were kids. It is part of some game that is never explained with rules and points earned for reasons only Safari Guy and Rambo Lookalike understand.

What’s the final score? Zero for the audience. ‘Ö

— Rob Williams