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Scrapbook and Reviews |
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Scrapbook and Reviews |
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Edmonton Sun Aug 5, 2007 |
Vue Weekly Aug 16, 2007 |
Edmonton Journal Aug 18, 2007 |
Global TV Edmonton Aug 18, 2007 |
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See Magazine Aug 20, 2007 |
Vue Weekly Aug 23, 2007 |
Edmonton Sun Aug 23, 2007 |
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VueWeekly Website Rather than submit to the pressures of the star system, Vue has chosen to fully embrace this year’s Bond theme and rank all 131 plays at the Fringe according to how they stack up to six actors who have played Bond. Naturally, of course, the rugged Sean Connery is the gold standard, followed by the dashing Daniel Craig, the dependable Roger Moore, the swarthy Pierce Brosnan, the misunderstood Timothy Dalton and finally the unfortunate George Lazenby. True Grid (Score: Daniel Craig) A cast of seasoned, professional actors (including Sue Huff and Andy Northrup) round out the cast of True Grid, bringing to life the essence of the die-hard sports fan. Job promotions? Marriage? Can’t you see it’s the first down?! Such minor details are obsolete in the stands of Commonwealth Stadium, where an age-old season-ticket-holding tradition has been shared by four men— with one notable absence to start the ‘06 season. The characters of True Grid are fleshed out through humour that touches on personal, revealing issues, yet steers away from redundant profanity. This is a true, genuine piece of comedy that anyone with the lifeblood of green and gold, copper and blue, or whatever combination, will relate to. MG |
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ARTS 00780: SEVEN REASONS TO KEEP IT LOCAL AT LIVE AND LET FRINGE DAVID BERRY / david@vueweekly.com VueWeekly Website The Fringe is, of course, all things to all people, but one of its most practical and important roles is as a proving ground for the Edmonton theatre scene. The list of actors, writers and directors who have made careers for themselves thanks to a breakout Fringe show could fill a book, never mind an arts weekly, and it’s no stretch to say Edmonton’s theatre community wouldn’t be half of what it is today if it wasn’t possible to drop your name into a hat and get yourself a prime spot in the summer’s biggest festival. With that in mind, Vue presents seven plays worth seeing if you’re interested in doing your part for the Edmonton theatre scene. The only thing any of these plays have in common is that they’re entirely written, directed and performed by pure Edmonton talent, whether it’s an old hand returning for another hurrah or a first-timer learning the intracacies of midnight showings. At the end of each of our recommendations, you’ll also find theirs: consider it a reminder that no list like this is ever definitive, and half the fun is stumbling on the gem you never expected. There’s a reason all the venues are close together, folks: take advantage. True Grid Stage 7 (Telephone Museum) For whatever reason, arts and sports have always had a somewhat tenuous relationship. Perhaps it’s just the fact all the creative types are paranoid their grant money is one vote away from buying the cornerstone of a new arena, but it’s rare to find a playwright turning her attention to the land of all star athletes and fan heartbreak. Enter Linda Wood Edwards: fresh off the runaway success of her playwriting debut, Spring Alibi, the spritely little charmer that got her a Sterling nod and a trip to Washington, DC for a successful Fringe run down there, Edwards is coming back to a subject that’s incredibly close to her heart, which incidentally pumps blood in green and gold. “I was born into the CFL—my father played for the Roughriders in the 1930s, and my mother was a die-hard Stamps fan. They didn’t tell me which team to pick, but it was fairly obvious I had to have one,” explains Edwards with an audible smile. “I really wanted this play to honour the fans, the people who display this intense love of the game year after year.” True Grid follows the football-watching lives of a group of Eskimo superfans as everything they seem to know starts crumbling down around them. Not only are their beloved ‘Smos hitting the tank—you can thank the team’s terrible ’06 season for that plot point—there’s a woman in their midst upsetting the precious dynamic. For Edwards, the play itself is providing its own stressors: not only does she have to worry about doing right by Eskimo fans, she’s got to live up to the reputation she’s built for herself after only one play—no small bar to clear. “You know, I wasn’t even thinking about it until everybody started bringing it up,” she says with a wry laugh. “Now I’m a bit more nervous: I want to be universally loved, just like everyone else.” Edwards recommends: Poster of the Cosmos, Water The Acting! Hackting! Schmackting! Revue Stage 9 (Walterdale Playhouse) Every regular Fringer knows that a night of Fringing is going to be a diverse experience, but not too many of the companies putting on shows are hoping to give you a little taste of everything without you ever having to see another show. The folks with No Bones theatre, however, are hoping the third incarnation—though first Fringe appearance—of their hyperkinetic, frequently hilarious Revue can use bits of everything to make up one fairly awesome show. “We like to think of it as theatre with ADD,” explains Chris Schulz, one of the fresh-faced company’s more recognizable faces and one of Edmonton’s more charismatic young actors. “There’s something new coming right away all the time, so if you don’t like this one, you’ll probably like the next one. And if you don’t really share the sense of humour, at least you’re not ever going to get bored.” Made up of two short plays—Schulz’s own stolen-cake thriller Cut to the Chase and troupemate Chris Gamble’s roommate comedy It Came From the Closet—the Revue features two hosts, a talking carrot stand-up comedian and musical interludes from Die Gretzky Die and the Fabulous 99s, and is indeed quite the menagerie of theatrical experiences. For Schulz and the rest of his ensemble, though, not pinning themselves down not only means more freedom, but a whole lot more fun. “Both the plays are fairly silly, and probably not the kind of thing you could actually make a whole show about,” he says. “This way, we get to have that kind of silly fun, and when we get bored of that, do something else that’s just as fun, if not maybe as, you know, ridiculous.” Schulz recommends: Our Kind of Love is an Ugly Love, ‘B’ or Unless You Steal Her Pen! God’s Eye Stage 9 (Walterdale Playhouse) Marty Chan returns to the Fringe—blame the lottery system for keeping him away—with this show about a child who comes to grips with his father’s stroke by putting God on trial. Though it started as a children’s play, Chan learned early on it might be a little over the head of a younger audience. “By the end of one of the first full readings of the play at Concrete Theatre’s Sprouts festival, everyone in the audience was crying,” Chan explains. “The kids were bored to tears, but the parents were moved to them.” Who knows what it says about kids that they could be bored with this kind of existential crisis—as Chan explains, the topic of religion is an endlessly fascinating one, and he would have found it a worthwhile exploration even if it didn’t end in God’s Eye. “As I was writing, I realized that the relationship of Norman talking to his comatose father was the same as the kind of relationship religious people have with God,” says Chan, who insists he’s not interested in getting on a soap box, but rather just exploring the idea. “You’re constantly looking for some kind of response, but you almost never get one—there aren’t too many flaming bushes—and you have to somehow learn to deal with that.” Chan recommends: Madagascar, One House of Sod Stage 4 (Cosmopolitan Music Society) For the most part, fiction tends to concern itself with some kind of escape: people more interesting than we are, places more thrilling, situations more important. But even though U of A playwright Bohdan Tarasenko’s first professional play, House of Sod, is packed with the magic of Eastern European folklore, it’s hardly escaping anything. Set in a time and place that almost defines bleak, Sod follows the life of a semi-successful turn-of-the-century Ukrainian boy returning to his childhood soddie—the, uh, sod-built houses that the settlers lived in when they couldn’t afford to find wood. It’s not exactly Paris, but then Tarasenko hardly seems like the type who prefers glitz. “There’s something about the aesthetic that appeals to me,” Tarasenko admits. “The idea of being stuck in this dirty little place you can’t escape, a house sinking into the ground, with dirty potato sacks around, and a fence made out of broken sticks and logs: it’s rustic.” Working with a gaggle of some of the U of A’s most interesting actors—including Rapid Fire theatre regulars/all-around talents Amy Shostak and Kirsten Rasmussen—Tarasenko is hoping to bring a kind of magical realism to the misery of life on the prairies in the early part of the century. Admittedly, though, it’s been the despair that’s come easier to Tarasenko, a fact he credits at least partially to his heritage. Ukrainians, as they themselves will tell you, have it rough. “I work in a senior’s home, and every morning these people get together to talk about what’s going wrong with them,” Tarasenko explains. “Someone’s hip is going, and someone’s knee and someone’s back. Their misery is really kind of what defines them; I think there’s something particularly true about that when it comes to the Ukrainian experience: everything’s always as bad as it could be.” Tarasenko recommends: Effie’s Revenge, Bitches Lobster Telephone BYOV C (Holy Trinity Anglican Church) There’s something utterly magnetic about Salvador Dalí. From the way he styled his moustache like he was trying to attract lightning to the rampant bizarreness with which he infused his oeuvre, most people go through at least a few years with “The Persistence of Memory” on their wall. For the sketch comedy show Lobster Telephone, though, Panties Productions was chiefly drawn to Dalí’s absurd humour—an aspect of the Spanish surrealist that lead Panty Belinda Cornish thinks translates particularly well across time. “It works well for comedy, especially now, because it’s basically anti-observational humour: it’s the thing that would never possibly happen in the situation you’re seeing,” Cornish explains. “Something happens that’s so far from what you’d expect it just kind of jerks the laugh right out of you, you can’t really help yourself.” Audiences certainly haven’t had much luck helping themselves, as the show has already won itself a Sterling for Outstanding New Work, and had successful showcases in Atlanta and LA. Though the Fringe version will be a slightly truncated one—time constraints, you know—Cornish is sure it will prove just as ridiculously hilarious as it has before, mostly because she still finds it to be that way. “My favourite part of this show is a little interlude where I get to play a velociraptor,” Cornish says about the show’s non-sequitur charms. “It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done; it’s completely retarded. The audience just sits there for a second and goes, ‘What?’ And then they laugh. It’s excellent.” Cornish recommends: Matt & Ben, Planes, Trans & Automobiles Poptart Stage 8 (Varscona Theatre) The Fringe, at least in name and mandate if not necessarily always in spirit, is about pushing boundaries. Sometimes, though, challenging your own limits can mean doing something a bit more traditional. At least, that would seem to be the case for Clarice Eckford and Shannon Blanchet’s Pony Productions. The preciously named production company become renowned for its ensemble-written productions, most notably 2003’s Change Room, which earned 12 different playwrights a Sterling Award for Outstanding Fringe New Work. For this year’s show, though, the duo decided to stick with just one writer, but picked a good one. Chris Craddock, the man behind Edmonton theatrical gems from Summer of My Amazing Luck to Faithless to Bash’d, wrote the play specifically for the pair—something that, Blanchet admits, initially took some getting used to. “I think immediately after reading the script, I wanted to play Clarice’s part and she wanted to play my part,” Blanchet explains with a matter-of-fact laugh. “But we realized pretty quickly that Chris had made us each our characters for a reason. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, because I kind of do some dumb things in this play, but at least we have fun with it.” According to Blanchet, the play actually grew out of a conversation the three were having about the online networking phenomenon, which is where her character, seemingly pulled almost directly from the notoriety-obsessed webpages of MySpace and Facebook. Her overbearing personality puts her somewhat at odds with newfound roommate/sister Eckford, and Blanchet admits she can see why. “You know, I can’t even count how many friendships I’ve developed over those things, so I probably shouldn’t talk, but it’s crazy how public some people make their lives,” she says. “It’s not like we’re saying this is the downfall of society or anything—it’s a pretty fun time at the Fringe—but I don’t really think [my character] is as far off as she maybe should be.” Blanchet recommends: Die Roten Punkte, Something Red Scratch BYOV A (B-Scene Studios) Putting on an Improv show at the Fringe is a fair bit tougher than it would first appear. Oh, sure, you don’t have to worry quite as much about getting a script done, or cue-to-cueing your way through arduous tech sessions, but what you trade in pre-show ease you get back multi-fold in the stress of having to be consistently fresh, clever and funny night in and night out. And even if you can handle that, you’ve still got to battle the perceptions people have when they hear the word “improv.” “A lot of people seem to have this hang-up about it, and you just can’t win with them,” explains Kevin Gillese, one half of Edmonton’s near-mythic improv duo, Rapid Fire Theatre regulars and third-time Fringers Scratch. “If you have a bad show, they’re just like, ‘Yeah, that’s improv, it always sucks,’ and if you have a good one, they think you rehearsed it.” With Scratch, it’s not enough that you can’t go in expecting some old-timey Whose Line? games and constantly being barraged for funny place suggestions. As Gillesie explains, he and partner Arlen Konopaki not only share an “uncanny psychic connection,” but they also do a kind of improv that even a place as savvy as Edmonton isn’t quite sure what to make of sometimes. “We’ve still got the characters and emotions of long-form improv, but we have the flash and energy of short-form,” Gillese says. “It’s like a non-stop thrill ride of zaniness and incredible improv. “Actually, wait, don’t put that,” he adds, showing off his talent for thinking on his feet. “Scratch is way better than any show that would actually describe itself like that.” Gillese recommends: Die Roten Punkte, Cody Rivers Presents: Flammable People |
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