Review: (Calgary) An Apocalypse Survival Guide: Undead or Alive (Fringe)

Zombie Tag! I survived! 
by Joe Vermeulen
@YYZatcboy

Chalk this up to the weirdest birthday ever! Work has kept me away from the Fringe this year (hence my lack of coverage – sorry!) but finally I managed to snag a day off for my birthday and for a Fringe show. As soon as I was down in Inglewood all I heard about was this show called An Apocalypse Survival Guide: Undead or Alive, so I thought I would check it out.

I’m totally glad I did. Rocking the Dade Art and Design lab, ASG:UA is a hilarious romp that not only talks about zombies, but parodies fanatical religion (looking at you tele-evangelists), scam artists and concludes with a chosen group of survivors being chased through the streets by the rest of the audience as a horde of zombies.

Review: (Calgary) The Kite Runner

(photo credit: Trudie Lee)

War, Betrayal and Kites
Novel to screen to stage
by Joe Vermeulen
@YYZatcboy

Originally a novel, then a film, The Kite Runner has been once again adapted to a new medium, the stage.  With powerful performances and striking design, the Theatre Calgary production also happens to be the Canadian première of the stage adaptation.

The Kite Runner is about an Afghani boy, Amir, growing up and learning how to stand up for himself and for others. In this process he betrays his friend Hassan and the guilt drives him for the rest of the play. Also discussed are what it means to own your national identity, what it means to be a traitor and what it means to be a man.

Memoir: Joe Vermeulen and Les Mis

Do you hear the people sing the songs of my childhood?
How I grew up with Les Mis…
by Joe Vermeulen
@YYZatcboy

It’s 1989, and I am at the Royal Alexandra Theatre with my parents. I am three years old. We are sitting in the follow spot booth looking down at the stage. This is my earliest memory. The barricades are just tracking onstage and the iconic “Red and Black” theme is playing. I asked my mother how the barricades were moving onstage and she said that someone was driving them. My only experience with driving at age three was in a car, so I imagined someone sitting in the barricade driving it onto the stage. We had just moved and my father was working on Les Misérables.

It is now early 2013, and I am thousands of miles away from my family, the Royal Alex and the city where I grew up. I am separated from that little boy sitting in the booth with my parents by 24 years. I’ve been looking forward to the movie version of that same musical ever since I heard about it.

Review: (Calgary) Jack Goes Boating

Swimming in Life
by Joe Vermeulen
@YYZatcboy

[Please note that this review is based on a preview performance.]

It is a cold New York winter, and Jack has just met the love of his life. Connie is everything he has been looking for in a woman. There is just one problem though, Connie wants to go out boating and Jack cannot swim. Jack turns to his best friend Clyde (who set the couple up in the first place) to teach him to swim. Clyde and his wife Lucy are then subjected to Jack learning how to cook a gourmet meal for Connie. Just as the young love is taking flight, Clyde and Lucy’s marriage is imploding.

Garret Ross brings awkward and fumbling Jack to life wonderfully. You feel his awkward nervousness and excitement at his new love. You experience him confronting his fears and growing his own expectations of what he can do. Ross’s chemistry with the rest of the cast is palpable and the stage relationships became completely believable. 

Review: (Calgary) Bashir Lazhar

Poster art

Alone, Together
by Joe Vermeulen

Bashir Lazhar, a franco-Canadian play by Evelyne De La Chenelière, is a fantastic exploration about racism, suicide and death, love and loss, and institutional failure. The play opens with a comic introspection where Bashir attempts to work out how best to introduce himself to his new class. As a supply teacher, he has to work out how far the class has progressed. While the opening and much of the show is comic, through his lessons we delve deeper into his experience as a refugee and the strength of children.

Haysam Kadri, in the title role, is simply phenomenal. He clearly emotionally connects with the character and thus the audience. We were moved to tears by his experiences of institutional failure, both of the immigration system and in his school. We yearn with him to express the feelings of his students after being witness to a horrific tragedy and we feel his frustration at the repeated attempts to silence and belittle their collective experiences. While the dialogue is only in English, every time he writes on the chalkboard he writes in clear French, solidifying the illusion that was built that we are watching a show in French, but hearing the words in English. This wonderful homage to the origins of the play in Quebec seemed so natural that it took a moment to realize what had happened. 

Review: (Calgary) Pride and Prejudice

Poster art

Meeting Pride and Prejudice

by Joe Vermeulen
@YYZatcboy 

I suppose as a theatre and arts nerd I should probably be embarrassed that I have never been exposed to Pride and Prejudice before tonight. Sure I am familiar with the loosely adapted musical based on the same story “I Love You Because”, but I have never actually encountered the real thing. Well, Theatre Calgary sure put that right.

For those who are unfamiliar with the story I will summarize its beginning. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters are thrilled to learn that their new neighbor is both rich and young (not to mention single). After meeting the family Mr. Bingley, the new neighbor, throws a ball to meet the town. Soon it becomes clear that the eldest daughter Jane and Mr. Bingley are becoming an item. Offput by this, his friend Mr. Darcy and his sister Caroline contrive a way to draw him back to the city. In the process of doing this, Mr. Darcy scorns and insults Elizabeth, the second daughter...

Review: (Calgary) Intimate Apparel

Not Just A Love Story

by Joe Vermeulen

Set in 1905 era New York City, Intimate Apparel is a story about growing up, betrayal and love. Esther (Karen Robinson) is a 35-year-old seamstress living in a boarding house for unmarried ladies. Known for making intimate apparel for ladies, she is highly sought after by the wealthy white upper class. After a wedding reception for one of her housemates, the landlady Mrs. Dickson (Kim Roberts) brings her a letter from a laborer on the Panama Canal. George (Andre Sills) has heard about Esther from a man who attends the same church as she does. He craves human contact from  a fine young lady. Encouragement from her friend Mayme (Abnea Malika) and client Mrs. Van Buren (Julie Orton) give her the courage to write him back. Meanwhile she is developing a very close and intimate bond with the Jewish cloth merchant Mr. Marks (Graham Percy). As her relationship with both George and Mr. Marks grow, she learns what real love is, and that she and others can change to let it grow.

Review: (Calgary) The Audition

Script Troubles
by Joe Vermeulen

The Audition is a solo about a woman who arrives for a New York audition only to find that there is no one there. She is subsequently locked into the theatre, and to keep herself company she talks. 

I’m going to be completely honest here... I really did not understand the point of this show. I went into it expecting something like “A Chorus Line” which gave a voice to the hundreds of performers who are auditioning for musicals. While The Audition did begin to broach some interesting areas such as the degradation of women in auditions - including sexual exploitation - and the lack of many powerful roles for women compared to men, but almost as soon as they are mentioned the play moves on to some other odd tangential area. The main character Amy (Brit Kennedy) mentions several times that she is dead, which would be another fascinating aspect of the play to explore, but again it is mentioned a few times and nothing is done with it. To make matters worse the play contradicts itself; Amy claims to be dead, and then proceeds to kill herself offstage. When writing a difficult play it is very important for the writer to be clear what the actual point of the play is. Here, it felt like the work had artificial constraints placed upon it that limited the writer’s ability to flesh out the interesting sections with additional characters or other scenes. The piece is much too long for the very little substance that it actually contains. 

That being said, Brit Kennedy does well bringing Amy to life without making a mockery of the vacuous and almost mindless text that she has been given. She is able to emotionally connect with the audience, showing us, rather than telling us about the internal turmoil and rejection that is faced by actors at auditions. Her fear of the gun that she finds loaded in the wings and accidentally fires is palpable and one of the most compelling (and frankly lucid) moments in the entire show. 

While The Audition does raise some interesting points, the overall show is extremely vague and not very compelling or believable. 

The Audition continues to October 13

Review: (Calgary) Singin' in the Rain

What a Glorious Feelin' I'm Happy Again

by Joe Vermeulen

Based on the 1952 movie musical with the same name, Singin’ In The Rain gives a fictional inside look into a 1920’s Hollywood studio just as talking pictures came to be. Featuring politics, intrigue, comedy and of course romance, this charming show is certainly a classic, with such well known songs as “Good Morning”, “Make ‘em Laugh”, “Lucky Star” and of course, “Singin’ in the Rain”

Opening at the première screening of their new movie, Don Lockwood (Jarryd Baine) and his co-star Lina Lamont (Bethany McNab) and Lockwood’s friend and pianist Cosmo Brown (Graeme Humphrey) are treated to a successful opening. However at the opening gala producer RF Simpson (Chris Gibson) shows the first screen test of the new technology behind talking pictures. In order to save the studio they have to re-do their planned silent film into a talking film. When that fails due to Lina’s horrific and obnoxious voice, Cosmo gets the idea to over-dub her voice with Lockwood’s new love interest Kathy Selden’s (Tannis Laatsch) voice, much to Lina’s annoyance. As Lina attempts to steal the spotlight from Kathy, it is revealed who the true voice of the star is, and all is right. 

Before I discuss the performances, I feel that I really must start with the sound design and operation. One of the hardest things for any production, but especially community theatre, to accomplish is a perfect sound design. That being said however, the sound for Singin' in the Rain completely failed the show. Characters' voices were muffled to the point where they could not be understood, and the volume levels and EQ were weak. Voices did not punch over the orchestra clearly in many cases and the orchestra itself did not have any life to it, to the point where the only instrument you could clearly distinguish from any other was the drums. That being said for a community theatre it’s wonderful to see that they had a live orchestra and while the sound was not as clear as it should have been, it is better to have the orchestra than to use click tracks, so Front Row Centre should be commended for that choice. 

Review: (Calgary) Next to Normal

(photo credit: Trudi Lee)

We’re The Perfect Loving Family

by Joe Vermeulen

Next To Normal, the hit Broadway musical about a woman and her family who cope with her bi-polar disorder has come to Calgary!

Directed by Ron Jenkins, Next to Normal tells the story of Diana, her husband Dan, son Gabe, and daughter Natalie. They, along with Natalie’s boyfriend Henry and Diana’s Doctor, Dr. Madden, are caught in the middle of Diana’s delusions and bi-polar bouts of mania and depression. As her treatment options run out, Diana is given ECT (also known as electroshock therapy). 

Opening with “Its just Another Day” Diana (Kathryn Akin) introduces her family, son Gabe (Robert Markus), daughter Natalie (Sara Farb) and husband Dan (Rejean Cournoyer) as the perfect loving family, however the opening number falls apart as she loses control and starts to become detached from reality. Each member of the family expresses how they feel and just as things seem stable with Diana’s treatment there is a revelation that stops the show. The family all start again introducing themselves in context of the new discovery. As Diana’s treatment progresses we are also shown how Diana’s condition leads Natalie and Dan down a self destructive path with her. 

Next to Normal demands a strong leading lady to carry the show and Kathryn Akin seemed to be struggling with the role. Vocally she seemed uncomfortable with some of the songs, as though they were just out of her range, and instead of playing the bi-polar disorder internally, she makes large and bombastic gestures that were at best unnecessary and at worst a distraction. They also leveled out her performance so that the times when Diana was supposed to be extremely emotional and emotive were flat, since the over-use of gestures at inappropriate times gave no contrast. That being said she nailed the comic moments of the show and despite all the arm waving was still compelling as Diana in her interactions with her family.

Review: (Calgary) Evil Dead: The Musical

Bloody Hell!

by Joe Vermeulen

Evil Dead the Musical is back to swallow Calgary’s soul! A hilarious romp through the highlights of the “Evil Dead” movie franchises, Evil Dead the Musical (EDTM) documents the story of a group of friends who go to an old “Cabin in the Woods” for a Spring break vacation. Ash along with his girlfriend Linda and their friend Scott with his “Girl I picked up drunk at a bar three days ago” Shelly, and Ash’s sister Cheryl are expecting a week of drinking and sex, but instead unwittingly stir up a historic evil. The show does a good job of sending up the historic clichés of the genre; for example as soon as the group enters the cabin a ghostly voice cries out “Join Us”, which immediately makes Cheryl want to go home instead of investigate. Along the same lines the next time the ghostly voice calls out, Cheryl says what everyone is thinking: “Now mother always said that whenever you hear a dark threatening and ghostly voice coming from the dark woods there is only one thing you should do. Not wake the others and go investigate it alone”. While there are some serious scenes from the movies in the show, such as the chase through the forest, director Mike Griffin lets the atmosphere get just scary enough before immediately switching gears and letting the laughs flow. However, the number of “In one” scene changes started to feel a little tiresome after the fourth or fifth time they were used, and kept the pace of some scene transitions very slow. That being said, the show is awesomely campy and hilarious.