goestoshow

Normally I wouldn’t have gone to see Afternoon Delights and Emergency Exits. Modern dance is not a genre I really get. A free ticket is a free ticket, however, so I went to see it. For me this was a bit of a mixed bag. The first piece, called ‘only’ in the program, went pretty much right over my head. It was technically very good. Kate Nankervis is clearly a very skilled dancer, and the stage design and tech were pretty much perfect, but it was too abstract for me to get anything real out of it. That’s just me.

Carry-on baggage, the second piece, was less abstract. It’s an intermittently narrated dance designed around the motions we’re all familiar with flight attendants performing in their day to day life, such as motioning towards the emergency exits and the seatbelts. Again, technically very good, and it was great to have some context provided in verbal prose to clarify what I was seeing, but it still wasn’t much of my thing. The songs themselves being less abstract and trance-y helped as well.

Basically I’m not a big fan of this type of play. I suspect, but don’t really know, that a bigger fan of the genre would probably enjoy it. So judge from what I wrote above if you’d like it or not.

Today was another short day, having seen only two plays. It’ll also be a fairly short post, as the day itself was fairly uneventful. But I think it was the busiest Sunday I can remember seeing at the Fringe. I’ve seen, in comment boxes elsewhere, claims of the Fringe being in decline with a lack of people on the grounds listed as proof, but I really don’t see it. Seems like plenty of people are coming out, and I haven’t yet even been to a show that was less than 3/4 full. This is kind of amazing, to be honest.

Bang! is a show about Love and Chaos, and how they relate, and how they had a role in the creation of the universe. It’s also about star nurseries and how people approach the question of the infinite, whether they’re children, scientists, teachers, or the earth itself.

I’m going to be honest, this play was not exactly my thing. Its approach to the questions it asks was too mystical and it had a tendency to endlessly digress. But this play got me thinking, and it led to a very long discussion with someone who’s opinion I value highly and who liked it much more than I did.

The play makes excellent use of the New City space, moving around all over the place, with pieces happening almost everywhere all at once. I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t actually intended for the larger space New City used to have downtown, because it felt a bit cramped, but they did well with what they had. It’s very visual, very physical, and if you enjoy interpretive dance in small doses, you will probably really enjoy it.

An interesting thing about the structure of this play is that it talks a lot about infinity. About whether or not the universe is finite, how many stars are in the sky, even the infinite emptiness of death. And it seems to weave an endless (or, were the play to go on, infinite) stream of stories around this question. The digressions can be seen as a kind of modelling of infinity itself.

Basically, if what I’ve said above sounds intriguing, you should go see this play. I think people who take a more philosophical approach to the world will get more out of it than those who take a more scientific approach, though the play is full of little scientific factoids that are actually quite well delivered.

I’m not sure there’s much point in recapping the story of Hedwig. I think it’s fairly infamous. But just in case, Hedwig is about a boy named Hansel born in East Germany during the Soviet occupation who grows up to be a punk rocking transwoman named Hedwig. The frame of the story is a concert she’s putting on, where she progressively reveals her story and its relation to a more famous musician named Tommy Gnosis (supposedly playing simultaneous at the Commonwealth Stadium across the river). At issue in particular is the titular angry inch, or “what [she] has to work with.”

Having never seen a production of Hedwig before, I can only comment on it as a whole, not specifically as the version performed by vi.Va?VOOM! Productions. That said, there are some things that are clearly brought in to make this a uniquely Edmonton production. Various pop culture references are altered to fit an Edmonton context (like the above mentioned Commonwealth Stadium concert), and this of course adds a good bit of fun to the play.

Everything about this play rocks. The musical performances are pretty much perfect, they make great use of the large Westbury stage space, but don’t confine it to the stage. Antonio Bavaro puts on an incredible performance as Hedwig and Tommy Gnosis, seeming like he really is speaking off the cuff to an audience there to reluctantly see him perform in a second rate performance space, probably over a beer while they chat with their friends. He comes off as a lounge singer demanding the audience’s attention, and that’s just perfect.

And it was also the shortest hour and a half long play I’ve ever seen. It didn’t feel like it was that long at all, and that’s a feat.

The only flaw to this otherwise great play, for me, is that towards the end it gets a bit jumbled and hard to follow what was going on or where it was going. The ending left me a little bit confused, but I think that was probably the intent.

This is a spectacle play. You should definitely check it out.

If you’re a fan of improv and you haven’t seen Scratch, why?

No, seriously, why? You should fix that.

Seriously, though, these guys are great. I’m not a huge fan of improv myself, but the story these guys weaved out of 3 random audience ideas was hilarious. It’s not conventional improv. They don’t do short scenes and act them out and then get new ideas. They take three ideas and create an interconnected set of three stories based on them. Fun results.

Go see it.

One Hundred Posts, Thirty Years

This is my hundredth Goes To Show post. I’ve been blogging about the Fringe since 2006, and I looked back a bit at my old posts today. Most of my early posts are actually pulled from old LiveJournal posts. Many were originally multiple posts, more like these recaps. My early reviews weren’t very good, to be honest. Which is not to say that I consider myself a professional quality reviewer now, but more on that later.

To top it off, like the Fringe (sort of), I’m turning thirty. Technically, I’m a year older, since the first Fringe was in 1982, but it gets counted differently than people. But still, it’s another major milestone. The Fringe has figured into my birthday since I was fairly young, since my father was an avid Fringe-goer, and my birthday always falls on one of the days of the Fringe.

This leads me to a lot of kinds of reflection on how my habits have changed and how the way I look at theatre and the fringe has changed over the years. The Fringe as it exists now is quite different from when I first started going avidly in the early 2000s. Most notably, the mad rush (or massive lineup) to get tickets that went on sale only just before the show has largely disappeared thanks to online ticketing (implemented very very badly in its first year).

I think these changes have, in the end, been for the better. It seems to me that the number of casual fringe-goers has gone up massively. And by casual I mean they probably don’t have a fringe guide and probably only see one or two plays. I am excluding people who only come to the Fringe to see street performers, not because they don’t matter but because to me that’s not what the Fringe is about. The Fringe has broadened the appeal of local theatre in Edmonton by embracing the task of making it more accessible, and that’s a great thing.

And that’s what I wanted to contribute to with this blog in the first place. I wanted people to come see plays, with or without me, and I wanted to tell them the cool things they could see if they went. I hope I’ve succeeded at that. I know I’ve brought several people to their first Fringe plays, and showing off my passion for it through this blog is a part of how I get them interested.

On Reviews

Which brings me to the existential question of the night. One I’ve been thinking about ever since this Fringe started. Really ever since the Jeff Haslam incident last year, in which I decided not to see any more plays at the Varscona that year or for the regular season because of it. He has since apologized to Mack and Sharon, for reference, and I no longer have any issue supporting the Varscona or any of the great companies that inhabit it.

Underneath the hurtful things that were said, though, Haslam had some valid and interesting points about the nature of casual reviewing and the dangers inherent in it. I’m a huge proponent of free speech, but I do think it’s important to try to be aware of how what you say might hurt people and to do your best to speak responsibly and fairly.

So I look back and I wonder if any of my reviews have hurt anyone, or if I’ve been unfair and irresponsible. I hold no meaningful qualifications for theatre critiquing, beyond an inquisitive mind and a passion for theatre. I’ve been harsh in reviews. I’ve given plays low numbers of stars. In later years, I’ve always tried my best to keep my criticism constructive, and to try to see plays that I wouldn’t normally have enjoyed from the point of view of someone who might enjoy them more. And I think, a lot of the time, I’ve succeeded at that. I’ve had what felt like, from my end, great conversations with playwrights and actors in the comments on my not so sterling reviews more than once.

But I wonder, sometimes, if I’ve done enough along those lines, and if the very format of my reviews (if not critical reviewing in general) doesn’t lend itself to causing harm I don’t intend when it’s negative. And I wonder, even further, whether or not negative reviews fit into the goal of this blog. My intent is to bring people out to the Fringe. To give them a place to start and an understanding of what they can expect from a passionate voice. A fan.

Because that’s what I am. I’m a huge fan of live theatre. What these people do — what I have never done — is put themselves out there and show off a piece of their brain to an audience that may or may not be hostile. Even when I don’t like a play, I’m still awed by the gall it took them to do it. There’s no camera between you and them. No publisher. No computer screen. No removal at all. We all pretend there’s a fourth wall, but the truth is that live theatre is a collaboration between the performer and the audience. An energy exchange in a very real sense. There is no other media that can provide that.

So how can I change my process here to better achieve that goal? I can focus on the positive. I can, as I’ve already done, remove the star system and replace it with a direct suggestion. But is that all I can do? What if I removed “not recommended” and “ambivalent” as suggestions? I can easily say what I love, but maybe I’m not qualified to tell you what you’ll hate. I don’t mean to say that I’m going to stop talking about what I didn’t like in a play, but maybe with less pressure to rate the plays, I could be more constructive about it.

So I think I’m going to try that. I want to give people reasons to go to the Fringe, not reasons not to.

Today

With that heavy subject out of the way, today was my first 3 play day this Fringe. That brings my total to 5. I’m pretty sure this leaves me behind most other years, and perhaps renders my reviews less useful than they could have otherwise been. I’ll probably be doing some 4 or even 5 play days during the week next week, which is where the real fun begins. For some reason it’s taking me longer than usual to ramp up into the plays this year.

All three plays I saw today were excellent in their own right. One of them wasn’t really my thing, but it did spur an hour long discussion with the more artistically inclined person I went with. Which is, in the end, what Fringe theatre, more than other kinds, is all about. Look out for reviews of those plays in the morning.

I should really remember not to do heavy fringing on friday and saturday nights, though. Especially now that there are so many BYOVs down Whyte from the grounds. It’s such a pain to get down the sidewalk when it’s full of people hanging around bars. I accidentally wound up getting into a VIP lineup for a bar on my way over to the Varscona Hotel.

Which actually brings up an interesting thing about the Fringe this year. Most of my shows so far (3 out of 5) have been at BYOVs. This is definitely the first time such a ratio has ever even begun to occur for me. Back before the Varscona defection, I tended not to even look very hard at the BYOVs. They were particularly difficult to get tickets for and just didn’t have as much stuff as the mainstages. Now that there are 4 times as many BYOVs as mainstages, things are quite different.

I do wish there was more control over the seating in BYOVs, though. The ones in bars particularly tend to be crammed full of awkwardly placed chairs. In particular, this year, if you’re seeing something at New City Legion: Get there EARLY. Getting there late risks you being smack behind a pillar that blocks your view of the show.

Tomorrow I get to use my first comp of the year. That’s always fun. For anyone who’s feeling a little poor, hang out on the grounds some and odds are pretty good someone will hand you a comp to a show at some point. It’s a fun way to take a risk on something that may not be doing well at the box office, but may hold some special gem you’d have never seen otherwise.

I didn’t actually make it out to the Fringe very much today. The Fridays and the Saturdays of the Fringe are actually my least favorites, simply because it becomes so crowded it gets hard to move around the grounds. Which can be a pain when moving from one play to another or looking for a place to sit and write a review. But I still made it out to one play, and then I went off the grounds for some quasi-fringing at Metro Cinema‘s new digs at the old Garneau theatre, where they were doing their first monthly screening of The Room. If you’re a fan of crappy, but funny, movies, I highly recommend checking it out next month.

What’s really interesting to me this Fringe is that I think this is the first time my choices have really been informed by the people involved in the productions. In spite of my hardcore fandom of the Fringe, I have next to no connections to the theatre community, so I don’t tend to recognize names as much as other people do. But slowly that’s changing, and I sometimes wonder if that’s a good thing or not. I’ve noticed that my choices have been getting less daring as I continue going to the Fringe.

Plays are impressing me less than they did a few years ago, and I don’t know if that’s because I’m becoming more discerning (or picky, if you prefer) in my evaluation of the plays, or if it’s because I’ve gotten too good at picking plays that are safe for me. The more rules and criteria I place on what I do and don’t see, the less likely it is that I’ll see that diamond in the rough that will blow my mind unexpectedly. I wrestled with that last year, and I think I will wrestle with it more this year.

The first line of No Choking Matter asks: “What does the heimlich maneuver mean to me?” Apparently, to the characters in this play, it means very little. Even so, they are attempting to make a video about it to enter into a contest.

This play had a lot of really funny jokes. Jokes that had me and the rest of the audience laughing a lot. But somehow, outside the jokes, it kind of felt a bit long at 70 minutes. The romantic plots didn’t move along quite as well as they could have, and none of the characters felt very likeable. The show has a lot of potential, it just didn’t come together as well as it could have.

As a positive to highlight, though, I really enjoyed Stephanie Wigston‘s mousey performance of Annette. The understated nervousness really contrasted well with the more brash personalities of the other characters, but wasn’t drowned out anyways. And there was always something going on in the background while characters talked, which I always appreciate.

If you’re in the mood for just a silly play that will make you laugh a bunch, you might enjoy it more than I did.

Tudor Queens was a great start (in terms of new shows) to the Fringe for this year. These women have great rapport with each other and it shows. They dance well together and apart, they exchange witty banter pretty much flawlessly, and they manage to make the play both sexy and informative.

Much of the play is dominated by three of Henry VIII’s wives, the bitter and angry Anne Boleyn (played by Elena Porter), the smug and doting Jane Seymore (played by Ellen Chorley), and fiery and drunk Katherine Parr (played by Morgan Smith. These three form the major part of the narrative, with all their bitterness over their treatment by their king and husband laid bare after 400 years of performing a show in purgatory.

Even so, Katherine of Aragon (Andrea Jorawsky), Anne of Cleaves (Karyn Mott), and Katherine Howard (Delia Barnett) all get their moment in the spotlight. In particular Katherine of Aragon and Katherine Howard get very good dramatic moments, while Anne of Cleaves gets (if historians are to be listened to, ironically) probably one of the sexiest performances of the show.

And all through it, some very sexy dancing from all very sexy women. This is what burlesque should be, really. Not just arbitrary titillation, but something more. I think with the recent rise of burlesque, this kind of show has been something lacking in the field. Tudor Queens rose to the calling and pulled it all off.

I highly recommend checking this one out.

I actually saw this one a couple of years back, in 2009. You can find my prior review here. Not much was different about this version of the play, except that it was updated to follow US politics (Canadian Alliance becomes Tea Party, Progressive Conservative becomes Republican, and, if I remember correctly, Preston Manning becomes Sarah Palin). This is only really a superficial change, but probably one that needed to happen given the Canadian Alliance hasn’t existed as an independent entity for close to ten years now.

Amanda Bergen did a very good job in the role, switching easily between the different roles and giving them separate voices at the same time. There were a few slipups, but they seemed like opening night issues more than anything and I suspect they’ll clear up soon.

The only other thing I have to say about it is rather peripheral: They used the chair from Moving Along, another Chris Craddock play from 2009 as their lighting board. Which is both weird and genius.

Since I’d already seen it, I don’t have a lot to say on the subject matter. I recommend seeing it if you haven’t already, it’s a very fun play. I may convince the person I went with to post a guest blog post about her thoughts on the play later, so keep an eye out for that.