So, tonight Nancy and I went to one of the sets of the New Works Festival’s plays at the UofA. It was only $5 each, which is a pretty amazing price for four plays. Given the price, and the fact that it was student-run, my expectations weren’t very high. But I was actually blown away by them. I would have easily been happy with paying Fringe rates ($10-14) for each of them (except the short one at the start, but that’s not because it was bad but because a 5 minute play can’t stand alone).
The first short one was called Vin-Oh by Anna Paquin. It was basically about a guy who like home-cooked traditional desserts like his mom makes, and his girlfriend who prides herself on making fancy chef-style desserts. When she finds out, she’s disturbed that he goes elsewhere for his desserts. It packed a lot of innuendo and funny into a short package.
The second one, Pomplemoussy was by Elena Belyea. It was about a girl who’s questioning her sexuality when she suddenly finds a boy she kind of likes at a gay party. In a lot of ways, it’s a lot like Chasing Amy told from the girl’s point of view. It had some pretty funny moments (like her first viewing of a penis “It’s really funny looking, isn’t it?”), and was overall very good. The only complaint I’d have is they were too ambitious with their set design. Too much shuffling things around before the show and between scenes. It really broke up the play and killed the flow. Overall it was pretty good.
The third play, All Matters by Peter Takach, was absurdity personified. The message seemed to be something along the lines of that words are more important than money, no matter what they are. I’m not sure I really ‘got’ it, but it was fun anyways. It reminded me incredibly of old LucasArts adventure games (made even more glaring by my recent playthrough of Day of the Tentacle). To the point that I think whoever wrote it could probably write a damn good absurdist adventure game centered around a Janitorial Administrator at a major company with big office. Damnit, no more new projects!
And last but not least, Electra by Morgan Smith was a modern retelling of the part of the greek epic cycle that concerns the various insanities of the Atreidai family after Agamemnon’s return from Troy. It’s a fairly loose adaptation, if I remember the story right, but interesting none-the-less. Interesting to see this kind of Greek story modernized, actually. Seems like the ones that involve family-sex, rape, and patri/matricide are left in their original greek form, or ignored altogether. It was easily the most well produced of the four, with a distinct intensity to all the performances that kept the audience rapt. The gunshots were a bit loud, but that may have been a really good thing. One should probably jump when one hears a gunshot. They also didn’t always go off at the right time, but I imagine timing pre-recorded sudden sounds to a live performance is fairly difficult.
Overall, very impressed. Impressed enough to be seriously considering going to see the other four that are on tomorrow. I’m quite pleased. So far, what little off-season fringing I’ve done has been very successful.
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.