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Performer Candice Roberts Larry is the kind of fun, androgynous show that Fringe festivals thrive on. Candice Roberts (a.k.a. Candy Bones) is a honest performing artist that works hard to keep her audience engaged. Her one-women show Larry – also the name of the central character – or at least he becomes the central character, when it becomes obvious that the “real performer” hasn’t shown up. Roberts is in character wearing oversized industrial coveralls and involving the audience before the show even starts. It’s Larry’s job to set up the stage before the show, so when (this is really the first gag that runs for the first ten minutes) the performer is a no-show, Larry takes it on himself to stand in. How tough can it be, right? Larry is pretty rough around the edges and very old school about women and their place in the world. He's not a Neanderthal – not quite. In fact he confesses to wanting to measure up to his girlfriend’s expectations. The show takes a left turn when Larry shows us how to meditate. When Roberts daringly doffs her duds for the show, the audience sees what they probably suspected – she is more interesting as a women than a man. Looking around the audience, I couldn’t help but notice that women were in the majority. They also seemed to laugh louder and longer than the men in the audience. Perhaps the reason they found Larry’s flaws so funny it that they identified his behaviour with someone they knew. I couldn’t help but sense though, that as funny as the show is, much of it seemed improvised.
Performance Dates September 6,8,10,12,13,14, 2019 at The Firehall Arts Centre Performers Bronwyn Henderson, Dennis Virahilias, Nathan Cottell; Musicians Ellen Smith & Demi Pedersen The Russian Play gets full marks for truth in advertising. It’s a forty-minute, Russian romantic tragedy by Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch that is set in Stalinist Russia. Believe it or not, this play has been performed at the Shaw Festival. The play weaves a story of Sonya, a sixteen-year-old flower shop girl and Pyotr, a gravedigger who become lovers in a dangerous time. The relationship ends badly – otherwise it wouldn’t be called The Russian Play. When Pyotr suddenly returns to Moscow and Sonya loses her job in the flower shop, Kostya (Nathan Cottell) enters the picture as a malevolent benefactor. If Sonya’s affair of the heart with the gravedigger went sideways, her liaison with Kostya is a disaster. He is typical of the pre- glasnost Russian male, who has powerful connections, so when Sonya rejects him as a lover, he arranges her arrest and internment in a Moscow prison. Bronwyn Henderson is both Sonya and the story narrator, who, though obviously not Russian, gets the accent spot on. Despite the bleak synopsis, she injects plenty of biting satire into her perforfance (at least at the beginning). Dennis Virahilias is excellent in support as Pyotr, while also delivering the show’s original songs. Charlotte Wright wisely allows the actors to set the pacing, though the action sometimes seems a little hurried. The period specific clothing help establish the time and place of nineteen-twenties Russia.
Performance Dates September 6,7,8,11,12,14, 2019 at the Revue Stage Performer Rob Gee Rob Gee is a former
psychiatric nurse from Leicester, England. He is also a former member
of Comedy Asylum, a sketch comedy group that garners humour from direct
experience from their work in mental health facilities. His show, which
is a potent mix of mile-a-minute stand-up comedy and incredibly agile
story-telling, takes on the character of Kevin Haggerty, a psychiatric
in-patient who has been diagnosed with having delusions of grandeur. Kevin,
despite his best efforts to get along and co-operate with his psychotherapist
(his shrink) he cannot but help at some point get into a major altercation
and wind up getting a mega dose of Xanax. Kevin somehow manages to escape
from the hospital, but on his way to the airport to take a flight to Cairo
and assume his rightful position as Pharaoh Ramses II, he finds himself
at the centre of a myriad of misadventures, including kidnapping a six-year-old
girl called Millie. Gee requires no props for his act, save for an uncomfortable
looking chair, while immersing himself completely in his characters. You
may find it a challenge to keep up, but you will leave the theatre with
a smile on your face.
Performer Tamlyn Bryson This show had already picked
up some positive buzz. This was in evidence at seeing a respectable
size crowd at a 5pm Monday performance in the middle of a downpour.
Tamlyn Bryson’s one-woman show, co-written with Kyle Kimmerly,
starts with her having a two-way conversation with her bladder –
as it turns out – her least favourite organ. For some unknown
reason she gives her bladder a Bronx accent. Bryson has every reason
to be vexed at her nocturnal leaky bladder. It was a bane to her social
and school life up to her teenage years. It has to take the blame for
not only embarrassment and apprehension over sleep-overs and school
camps, but routine visits to the urologist.
Performance Dates September 6,7,8,10,12,14, 2019 at the False Creek Gym Performer Tim Bourgard
Performance Dates September 5,7,8,12,14,15, 2019 at the Revue Stage Performer Katie Hartman The
Legend of White Woman Creek is a dual character, one woman show
that combines theatre and music in the form of a song cycle comprising
of about a dozen songs that are similar in melody and structure. Creator
Katie Hartman uses the song cycle to drive the narrative of Anna Morgan
Faber’s story of suffering on the American frontier in the mid-nineteenth
century.
Performance Dates September 5,7,8,10,14,15, 2019 at The Nest Performer Monica Ogden Filipina performer and storyteller
Monica Ogden certainly propounds an ambitious title to her one woman
show. The show’s title may well draw Fringe patrons that might
have otherwise given it a miss. It’s also perhaps too overreaching,
considering what Ogden actually achieves. Besides frequent trolling
pop-up messages flashing across her multi-media screen, there isn’t
much direct conflict with the internet itself. While she may refer to
herself as “a warrior” she really only rails against racism,
relationship abuse and bullying – all valid targets to go after
– without demonstrating how she defeated the bellicose forces,
or even wrestled them to the ground. Her style of self-deprecating humour
and physical comedy draws righteous support from sections of the audience,
especially from young women. When her use of multi-media isn’t
focused on cyber-bullying, she uses it to throw the spotlight on her
family’s touching story. Particularly, that of her mother who
left the Philipines as a child and grew up Kapuskasing, Northern Ontario.
Performance Dates September 6,8,9,11,13,14, 2019 at the Revue Stage Performer
Kevin Armstrong © 2019 John Jane
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