Tuesday Fringe reviews, part 2

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/07/2012 (4803 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FUBUKI DAIKO: GODZILLA VS. LED ZEPPELIN

Fubuki Daiko

Muriel Richardson Auditorium (Venue 12), to Saturday

TO label this percussive powerhouse a drum ensemble would be a little like calling Godzilla a big lizard.

Waving their sinewy arms in the air, the Winnipeg quintet circle and attack their massive drums with an artful fluidity that is both primal and precise. You can’t take your eyes off them.

They use their entire bodies to connect to their instruments, and after witnessing this hour-long spectacle of riveting rhythms and intense showmanship, you’ll understand why they thank their chiropractors and massage therapists at the end.

If the title weren’t clue enough that Fubuki Daiko like to play fast and loose with ancient Japanese tradition, the numbers inspired by Benny Goodman and Haitian voodoo, and the rap finale, should make the point nicely. If you haven’t seen this festival mainstay on the outdoor stage in the past 17 years, it’s time to see Fubuki Daiko’s indoor debut. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö1/2

— Carolin Vesely

BIG IN GERMANY

Ten Foot Pole Productions

John Hirsch Mainstage (Venue 1) to Saturday

PERFORMERS Rob Salerno and Eric Minsch have the manic energy to be completely believable as hyper 14-year-old buddies Alex and Bruce, who dream of being rock stars. Unfortunately there’s still 55 minutes to go.

The teens grow up and proceed to get every impossible break (after becoming international rock stars playing arenas in Europe, and somehow not learning anything at all from the experience, they become millionaire gay porn artists and win every award in the world.) It’s a funny running gag which would’ve made a great 15-minute skit, but it’s ridiculous for a full-length play, even a screwball fantasy. And it’s really all just a setup for Bruce finally admitting his feelings for Alex. Silly. Really. Silly. ‘Ö’Ö1/2

— Janice Sawka

CUPID AND PSYCHE

The Struts and Frets Players

Rudolf Rocker Cultural Centre (Venue 21), to Sunday

NO one brings mythology to life quite like local merry pranksters The Struts and Frets Players.

Cupid and Psyche will pierce the heart of audiences with its achingly clever and gaspingly funny interpretation of the story of these most famous of lovers. Struts and Frets’ irreverently relevant take on the story is a riotous blaze of puns, puppets, pithy quips, flying Barbies and men in drag.

If you need more than that, these young actors also happen to be fantastic. What remains amazing about this group is how they manage to uphold the integrity of their source material with such love, while making it fresh, hilarious and wildly exciting. Cupid and Psyche is a love letter to these immortal characters and for a lucky audience. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö1/2

— Barb Stewart

MORNING COFFEE

Theatre 1974

Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 8), to Saturday

LYLE Morris and Toni Reimer are David and Katie, a couple who manage to turn a minor fight into a permanent breakup. As we join them the morning after the fight, imbibing their morning brew, the situation, and their behaviour, spirals further downward.

Morris and Reimer are both a treat as these world-class sparring partners and director Darcy Fehr keeps the pace brisk and sharp. The problem is, when we’re faced with characters so bent on being awful to one another, it’s difficult to really care what happens to their relationship. The brief glimpses we’re given of their humanity aren’t enough to sustain any genuine concern. We need a bit more from David and Katie than their ultra-insults to earn any empathy. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö1/2

— Barb Stewart

CABARET

Crosswalk Players

Shaw Performing Arts Centre (Venue 9), to Sunday

THIS locally produced stage version of the Kander & Ebb musical jettisons the “divine decadence” of the movie version for fleshy theatrical spectacle: not-so-divine decadence.

American Clifford Bradshaw (Brad Zacharias) moves to Berlin in the ’30s to teach English and write a novel. He is lassoed into the realm of Brit expat Sally Bowles (Elizabeth Whitbread), a free-loving chanteuse at the Kit Kat Club who would rather not pay attention to the growing Nazi menace, even as it ensnares Clifford’s lonely landlady (Meg Pfeifer-Brandt) as she embarks on a politically dangerous romance with a Jewish tenant, Herr Shulz (Shawn Kowalke).

In the role of the club’s Emcee, Scott Plett offers the strongest performance, embodying the cheery sexual depravity of the era, and offering hints of the more dire ideological depravity to come. The 105-minute production has some sound issues: You often can’t hear the singers over the “beautiful” dolled up-band. But that’s a minor quibble in what is otherwise a satisfying production: one of the few mainstream musicals that fits nicely into the fringe’s fringey raison d’�tre. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö

— Randall King

THE GREATEST GUITARISTS IN THE WORLD

Colin Godbout

Johnny G’s Restaurant and Bar (Venue 29) to Sunday

VANCOUVER “global guitarist” Colin Godbout stages a one-man guitar battle in his latest fringe offering featuring the music of six musicians — Django Reinhardt, Chet Atkins, Lenny Breau, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton — he believes are the greatest ax-men ever.

The one-hour offering is more like a house concert, but guitar nerds might be interested in hearing the personable Godbout perform everything from gypsy jazz to distorted hard rock on his Cervantes classical guitar.

Godbout is a six-string wizard himself and can coax any sound and style out of his acoustic instrument with the help of some pedals. It’s fingerpickin’ good. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö

— Rob Williams

FRAZ: LONELY AT LAST

randombandname productions

Son of Warehouse (Venue 5), to Friday

LET’S face it, most fringe comedy might only pay off in occasional chuckles at best. But Regina-spawned, Winnipeg-based D&D improv guy Fraz Wiest delivers authentic gut-busting laughs about flying solo: “This particular one-man show is about doing this particular one-man show.”

It is, of course, more than that, delineating the comic actor’s trial by fire including lengthy stints in dinner-theatre hell (“It’s not quite dinner and it’s not quite theatre”) and an abortive attempt to join Toronto’s Second City, before finding his place in the world.

With his expressive mug and a gift for characters, Wiest fills this 45-minute show with never-a-dull-moment comedy that works. His dissection of a pitch meeting between a dinner theatre’s director and producer is alone worth the price of admission. You’ll never drive by a Celebrations Dinner Theatre billboard again without thinking of it. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö

— Randall King

LADY SKITS

Muff-Stache Collective

Studio 320 (Venue 15), to Saturday

IT is introduced as a theatrical presentation of the manifestation of patriarchy in contemporary Western society but in keeping with its zealous use of foul language, Lady Skits can best be described as a bitch session.

The four young University of Manitoba women of the Muff-Stache Collective fly the flag of feminism in this needlessly raunchy 50 minutes of sketch comedy but to no real effect. There are laughs but it’s hard to see how scenes featuring women peeing, watching porn and rapping about being “a girl in this motherf ing world” advances the cause. It only proves that some young women can be as sophomoric and vulgar as the guys.

The lament is that educated, talented women given an opportunity to do whatever they want onstage could not make a more insightful statement about their sex in 2012. ‘Ö’Ö

— Kevin Prokosh

IN ADAGIO

Arts and Lies Productions

Muriel Richardson Auditorium (Venue 12), to Saturday

THIS elegant and stylish production would have satisfied as simply a showcase for the remarkable talents and distinct vocal styles of its two Manitoba-born stars. It turns out to be a polished piece of storytelling, as well.

The drama is set in 1960s Paris, against a backdrop of civil unrest about the Algerian War. When a bomb threat leaves two famous singers from different cultural and social — not to mention musical — backgrounds alone on a stage, they wage their own battle of wills.

Ria Krauss (Steinbach native Danie Friesen) is the older, classically trained opera diva, desperate to make her comeback. She looks down her nose at Carminda Fernandes (former Winnipegger and playwright Jess Salgueiro), the poor young Portugese fado singer whose mournful, sultry ballads she accuses of “encouraging moral depravity.”

Their mutual contempt turns deadly until they discover they speak the same universal language, just different dialects. Hearing Friesen perform just one aria is worth the ticket price. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö

— Carolin Vesely

FLASHBACK

Drive Dance

Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 8), to Sunday

DRIVE Dance, the spunky Winnipeg troupe founded by grads of the School of Contemporary Dancers’ professional program, is back with another captivating program of six works by senior local choreographers Stephanie Ballard and Gaile Petursson-Hiley. The pieces range from dreamy to quirky to fiery.

Inevitably, with the shortage of males in dance, the three guest men here aren’t of the same calibre as the four women. But they’re pretty darn good, so they should relax and show a little flair.

One feels the womanly spirit of recently departed choreographer Rachel Browne in A Quiet Place, an exquisite, understated new solo created by Ballard for magnetic dancer Arlo Baskier-Nabess, who is eight months pregnant. It’s a tender and touching expression of generational legacy, and of the mystery of impending life. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö

— Alison Mayes