This one’s a big sigh. Two talented actors (Michael Armstrong as Cal, Drew Staniland as Justin Trudeau) giving excellent performances, and a nice set – but the script feels generic, like a made for TV special. There isn’t a single real surprise just a lot of verbal tennis. And it feels like we’ve seen this before.
It’s the day of Pierre Trudeau’s funeral, and Cal a faithful aide and political mover wants Justin to capitalize on the momentum of his eulogy for his father.
They battle around a bit and well… check your history book/internet if you don’t know what...
A production by Rolling Stock Theatre written by Peter Boychuk
Relationships are like tennis – if you just figure out each other’s game, then both of you will start playing better. This is the premise of Playing for Advantage, a play written by Noah Casey and directed by Matt Clarke, about the highs and lows of relationships, and how we may stop faulting and start rallying successfully if we’d just play fair.
Beth, played by Jen Shirley, is a confident, happy, fun, twenty-something year-old woman who works as a technical writer and enjoys a hit of tennis on the side. Tom, a bank marketer played by Noah Casey, is also...
Playing for Advantage (written by Noah Casey & directed by Matt Clarke)
Attending Jacques and Awe: The Best of 25 Years on the Fringe last night was like attending a roast for Jacques Lalonde wherein he was honouring himself. I should have picked up on this right away. Waiting to get in, Jacques came out dressed as Jean Chretien with a Canadian tie and hugged older men in the line-up. Other younger men with movie cameras moved in front of me to capture the greetings. When I tried to start conversations with some of the men in the line-up they wouldn’t answer. Seriously. In 25 years I have attended the Fringe I...
Jacques Lalonde in the Fringe for 25 straight years!
I tried to surrender to The Illumination of the Grumpy Guitarist, but the curmudgeon George Chesterfield was too annoying and silly. The grotesque mask he wore covered his lips and made it difficult to hear his lame jokes such as when he mumbled that his guitar had ‘shrunk in the wash and became a ukulele. Never leave your guitar in your pocket.’
Luckily for the audience made up of friends of the cast, 11 singers and dancers interrupted Grumpy. There was plenty of tap, tap, tapping. Fred, a seven year-old audience member in a straw-hat in the second row rated...
Protection for human rights violations is a heavy topic for any Fringe play. There’s a temptation to be preachy. Mostly, the three short plays in Short and Sweet manage to avoid clichés and cardboard stereotypes to deliver engaging performances that are sometimes funny, sometimes sad and always entertaining.
The first play, Possible Lives of Dolores Garcia Rodriguez, tells the story of a poor pregnant woman in a Latin American country where religiously-infused laws prevent doctors from even helping prevent miscarriages, much less carrying out abortions. A photo-journalist tries to intervene for reasons both altruistic and professional. The two women are...
Co-author / performer Bruce Horak personifies cancer in this performance, which sounds peculiar but is quite straightforward. "Do you hate me?," he asks and some of the spectators join in the spirit of the work and reply by shouting "Yes." "Imagine what it's like for me," he asks, "to be bombarded daily with chemo, radiation and prayer."
Horak's grotesque outfit goes with a grotesque characterization. Accompanied by a drummer and two guitarists (oddity piled on oddity), Horak sings and dances, makes forays into the audience, rushes out of the exit while continuing speaking (he's soon back, but difficult to...
Rodger Barton loves William Shakespeare. I think we can just go ahead and carve that into a heart on a tree. He wants us all to to feast on the passionate writings of this genius madman. He explains in a very professorial tone that we have already taken many of these writings and slept with them under our own pillows. He rattles off a long list of everyday sayings that we've all used without realizing their origin.
He performs vignettes of various monologues from some of the many roles he's played over his long acting career, offering us a...
Yum/Yuck is a combination of yoga moves, gymnastics and dance. An interactive play of words, light, motion and an original sound-track that adds yet another dimension as if there is not enough going on.
The Seminar is a funny play. It’s also more than a little creepy – which makes the funny bits all the better. It’s a play with a none-too-subtle message about our obsession with beauty, but the talented cast pulls it off in an entertaining way without being preachy.
A washed-up cabaret performer gets ready for his comeback only to find in his dressing room a reporter. The interview ensues and the audience watches as this original tale written and performed by Bremner Duthie takes his has-been character and shows the reporter and viewers what kind of an artist this man had been.
