Review: (Winnipeg) Fake News Fangirl (Fringe)

Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger
by Edgar Governo
@pseudohistorian

There are a lot of facts in Senior Fandom Correspondent Sharilyn Johnson's solo memoir at Venue 17 (The Fighting 17th!) about her personal and professional admiration for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Even as a regular viewer of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (enough of one to make all the references you'll see in this review, at any rate), I couldn't possibly better know a comedian than she does.

Review: Unenlightened (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Edgar Governo


Sometimes, a performance suffers most from the timing of when a person sees it. I saw this show the day after seeing TJ Dawe's Medicine, and the two face opposite problems despite dealing with what seems to be extremely similar subject matter.

Both shows ostensibly tackle the same premise: an autobiographical tale in which the author/performer, unsatisfied with some aspect(s) of their own life, seeks help from a shamanic retreat at a remote location to learn more about their true selves. Right away, those specific parallels predisposed me to compare Elizabeth Blue's work to Dawe's, even though the two were no doubt created independently and that type of comparison can be inherently unfair. Unfortunately for Blue, such a comparison also reveals how much more polished a performer Dawe can be, despite my reservations about his work (discussed in more detail in my review of his show).

Review: Dirty Fairy Tales (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Edgar Governo


Notions like "the fourth wall" and "suspension of disbelief" seem entirely out of place when talking about any Sound & Fury performance. (It's tough to maintain that "once upon a time" feeling when a tablet at the front of the stage is counting down how many seconds the troupe has left in the show.) This trio just wants to have fun at the theatre—tell some cheesy jokes, dress up in silly costumes, and banter with the audience.

Review: Medicine (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Edgar Governo


This will seem like blasphemy to many devotees of the Fringe circuit, but I am losing interest in the work of TJ Dawe.


Don't get me wrong—he is still a gifted writer and storyteller. His engaging presence and command of the monologue structure are on an entirely different level from almost anyone else you'll encounter performing a Fringe show. However, the road Dawe's work is following in recent years often leaves me cold, pursuing his increasingly idiosyncratic interests at the expense of one of his other strengths, the ability to draw those interests together towards revealing something more universal.

Review: Shelby Bond: The Poor Man's Guide to Being Rich (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Edgar Governo


Shelby Bond’s optimism comes through best in how he reacted to the circumstances facing his show at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival.

When the original venue for the show (and five others) was found to lack the necessary occupancy permits, the festival engaged in a mad dash to set up an alternative—but despite his claims that adversity has finally made him bitter enough to pursue a career in standup comedy, he remains as affable a presence as ever, from his greeting the audience in line before the performance to his cheerful reassurances that the new venue is working out great.

The title of the show is misleading in the sense that it doesn’t particularly focus on wealth (real or figurative), but much of it does focus on contradictions: being the theatre-loving son of a Hell's Angel, pursuing girls when everyone thinks you’re gay, then telling those girls of your potential ferocity when you’re a relentlessly nice guy.

Bond holds no grudges, and invites you to look at those paradoxes of existence with a laugh that is good-natured and not sardonic. At the end of the day, you're never going to seem that threatening when you're strumming a ukulele.


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Review: Wings of Darkness (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

In this adaptation of a native tale, we see the Bat, resentful of his alienation from both the Winged and the Legged, trigger a territorial war between the worlds of the Birds in the air, and the creatures that walk on the earth.  It takes about 30 minutes into this hour-long show to determine that this is the crux of the story. Besought by excessive flourish and too much effort put into making the script sound like a legend, the audience is left to wade through a quickly-delivered unfortunate abundance of adjectives and third-person pronouns in order to really grasp what’s going on. Where the writing reaches for abundance of poetry, it falls short of elegance to tie itself together. But what it lacks in textual clarity, Wings of Darkness makes up for in visual beauty. Simple costumes, consisting mostly of re-purposed sporting equipment and gaffe-tape, are accented by beautifully expressive masks, also inspired by the world of sports, made from altered baseball caps. With stunning and subtle projections as background, and fitting musical cues underscoring, this diverse cast tells its tale simply and clearly, despite the script. Interactions between characters on both sides of the conflict, in particular the rather diplomatic Squirrel befriending the Eagle and the Blue Jay, balance the impressively choreographed scenes of  violence and war with their warmth and playfulness.

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Review: Stretchmarks (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

If there is an award for Best Poster, let it go to Kimmy Zee and her full-colour vintage pin-up housewife, from back in the days when the duck-face was adorable. I confess this is what brought me to the show, and, unlike so many Fringe shows, I was happy to see the classic housewifery aesthetic carried onto the stage.  Stretchmarks is a sexy burlesque cabaret all about the effect of motherhood and marriage on your sex life. Four delightful Winnipeg women tell us their stories with wit, wonder and song through their various means. One tells us the stories of her deeply-in-love parents, and the unrealistic expectations that creates. Another recounts the consequences of marrying young, which include wearing Northern Reflections, and falling for sweaty washboard players from the Bayou when you’re stunned that they think you’re sexy. A third brings a tear to your eye with a re-write of Cat Steven’s classic Cat’s Cradle as a mother-daughter tale of unconditional support, which is worth the price of admission alone. We don’t hear much from our Yoga-enthusiast fourth, however, other than to understand that for some, searching for inner-peace is a bodily pursuit. It would have been nice to hear a story from Robin Redbreast, “The Tall One” – whose stretch marks are present, if less apparent. Although the show has many brilliant lines and comedic moments, some are a tad too Winnipeg-specific and fly directly over the head of this out-of-towner. Much of the unabashed exploration of the importance of fellatio in marriage-maintenance and the glories of female ejaculation might have been a bit too explicit for this seemingly puritanical Winnipeg audience. In a house of easily 200 people, only one raised her hand when Kimmy Zee asks how many married women still perform fellatio, and was otherwise met with uncomfortable silence when polling the audience for reactions. Who knew Winnipeggers to be so frigid? However, for those fond of fucking, tits and sass, a roiling good time is to be had.

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Review: The Touring Test (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

This scientific experiment to determine the effectiveness of beings designed, as we all are, to elicit an emotional response, is conducted by Dr. Anya Sheinpflugova (Stefanie Wiens) with perhaps… unconventional methods. We’re told that one of the actors on stage is a robot. At the end of each performance, the audience is polled via secret ballot, as to which one. The cast tours city to city under strictly controlled directives, and are forbidden contact with “the outside” and fraternization among each other over the course of the experiment. This leads, of course, to acute cases of the all-familiar iPhone withdrawal and distracting dressing room romances endemic of almost every rehearsal and performance process, even without the strict experimental controls.

The Touring Test brings us all the necessary elements to tickle your sci-fi geek bone; Robot attacks, introverted nerds with poor social skills, and scenes clipped from vintage sci-fi theatre. It will also float your theatre-geek boat with its tongue-in-cheek cracks on artistic life, the cheapness of theatre actors, and the dreaded “It was… Interesting” post-performance note. This multi-generational cast is on point, offering a flawless performance of this witty and engaging script, even handling the collapse of a major set piece with such grace as to make me wonder whether or not the malfunction was part of the show.

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Review: The Daves of Our Lives (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

Poor Dave. His wife is an angry harpy, his widowed step-mother’s been keeping secrets in a way that seems to cause her to gesticulate convulsively, and his daughter, the only teenage girl in history who greets her parents with “Hey Dudes” has brought home a friend who flirts with all the charm and grace of a cinder block who somehow becomes his paramour. All this would drive me to drink too.  I feel even worse for the actor playing him, however, because it seems as though he might have some chops. Mind you, it wouldn’t be difficult to play bored, tired and rolling your eyes at the badly played melodrama of it all when this is the script and these are the cast mates you’re stuck with. Melodrama and over-the-top cheese works when it’s done intentionally. Although The Daves of Our Lives may have been cast to highlight soap-opera-style bad schmacting, the point would have been better made by showing off the talent of good actors relishing in bad behaviour, rather than abandoning the need for direction by showcasing the cast’s lack of skill. In the end, we’re left with as much sympathy for Dave, as we are for the entire cast. Pity and embarrassment on their behalf are not generally the emotional reaction a company wants to instill in their audience.

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Review: power | play (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Edgar Governo


If you want to get naked, turn to Page 34. If you want to use words instead of staying quiet, turn to Page 47. If you want to fashion a sex toy from whatever happens to be in your purse, turn to Page 22.

Like a much more adult version of the children’s book series used for the subtitle of her show (Create your own adventure), Cameryn Moore offers the narrative of a sexual encounter in progress, with a forking-path structure along the way allowing members of the audience a choice in what happens next. The performance becomes a consensual act for the performer and spectator alike, with the scene literally negotiated between the two.

Moore recently wrote right here on The Charlebois Post about how difficult (and yet exciting) it is to incorporate audience participation, but power | play definitely benefits from this choice in comparison to her previous Fringe shows, Phone Whore and slut (r)evolution. Although this show still features anecdotes about her own past erotic escapades, the interactive nature of this storyline makes for a more dynamic theatrical experience while keeping Moore in ultimate control. You might have a say, but she is deciding the options.

Casual or serious? Public or private? Dominant or submissive? Each of us is on a journey of sexual exploration defined by a series of choices.


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Review: Burnt at the Steak (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy


Carolann Valentino, Italian Rose of Texas, can handle anything. Sizzling from the word go, Burnt at the Steak flies us from the lone star state, on the premonitions of Carolann’s psychic mother, to her challenging day job in Manhattan’s highest grossing steakhouse where this motivated restaurant manager introduces us to her co-workers, her clients and her audience-recruited trainees, with ease and zeal.

Burnt at the Steak’s bare basic set, a table, some chairs, releases Valentino to use her greatest asset, her voice, with which a simple vocal shift and a change in the tilt of her engaging smile brings us a full cast of characters whose distinctiveness are clear even as they switch back and forth from line to line within the same song. As competent at nailing an audition and serving a performance piping hot as she is at putting out kitchen fires, this performer’s chops are juicy, and rare. No steak sauce required.

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Review: The Complete History of the Moustache

by Nanette Soucy

Perhaps more accurately titled, A Brief History of Kristian Reimer’s Dating Life, A Complete History of the Moustache is a casual and comedic lecture and presentation of Moustaches and the TV Dads who raise the men that wear them, which may or may not be based in historical fact. Delivered with enthusiasm and self-effacing improvisational charm and besought by the off-putting last minute venue change the presentation itself could use fewer slides, and a touch of dramaturgy in the interest of providing a few tidbits of trivia. The show manages nonetheless to take the audience poll’s moustache-appreciation numbers from 13 at the top, to 31 by the end. Reimer makes a convincing argument for the longevity of his lady tickler.

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Review: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

Apple geek or not, people ought to be lining up for this show like it was launching the iPhone 5. An adaptation of Mike Daisey’s controversial Monologue, lambasted for daring to apply dramatic license to a creative work, I was initially incensed during the opening scene where four actors sat in their chairs reading from their scripts, thinking that the piece should have been billed as a dramatic reading. However, true to the aphorism that the way in which a thing is made is part of its design, by the third scene, the company had sneakily begun re-writing the code of our paradigms of effective presentation, our relationships to our gadgets, and the people that make them. District Theatre Collective are sharp, focused, and clean like all good Apple design, if unfortunately lit to match their fruity and bulbous aesthetic of the late 90’s. The actors tease each other on stage, and master the tales they’re telling with such a thorough understanding that for a moment I was certain they’d been to China with Daisey on his now infamous trip. Whether or not the stories Mike Daisey’s telling us can be taken for actual fact is irrelevant. As the Brechtian quote that carries the show reveals, art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it. Sometimes, we have to fudge the truth to reveal it.

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Review: Kuwaiti Moonshine (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

The crux of the play is an ultimatum. Cuffed to a door in a Kuwaiti prison wherein he finds himself for bootlegging date rum, our hero Andy has to choose: kill, or be killed. A tense moment, for sure. Unfortunately, Tim Murphy’s performance of the tension, anger and fear of that climactic moment eats the entire show, leaving us unable to feel the love - for his Parkinson’s besought mother, his erstwhile girlfriend, or his niece and nephew - that he tries to impart as his life flashes before his eyes.

This anxiety, so thoroughly embodied might well be real, as it contributes to the difficulty of following the rather complex cast of characters by Murphy’s inability to keep their names straight, and having to correct himself at least a half dozen times throughout the course of this 1-hr one-man show, which seems written as a break-neck run-on-sentence punctuated with ubiquitous “And Then, and then, and then” and fails to set the scene in any way that makes us feel like we’re following a story in the dusty Middle East, rather than listening to a drunk on a tirade at a party.

Other than Our Hero Andy, the only other character we see on stage is Québécois Jean-Luc, who’s differentiated by a backwards baseball cap and a terrible and inconsistent accent. We’re told Jean-Luc is pretentious, and this is somehow shown to us by his enjoyment of Nickelback and tendency to speak in the 3rd person, which make him seem more childish than anything.  Pretentious: It does not mean what you think it means.

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First-Person: Yana Kesala of The Ukrainian Dentist's Daughter (Winnipeg Fringe)

Winnipeg: Coming Home to a Place I've Never Been

by Yana Kesela

The moment I touched down in Winnipeg, I felt at home. Which was unexpected, considering that I've never been here before.

The saying goes, "Home is where the heart is." Home has been a lot of different places for me over the years: suburban Chicago, northern California, London UK, Seattle. Plus lots of tours travelling the world in between. It was a shocking moment when I realized that there was nowhere I could move where all my people would be. Home, and the hearts that make it, are all around the planet. A blessing and a curse, home being everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. 

I wear my heart on my sleeve. Usually it translates to making friends easily, but it means getting hurt easily, too. Thankfully a career as an actress, where you hear, "No," so much more than you hear, "Yes," has toughened me up, and the hurts don't ache as long as they used to. Winnipeg also wears its heart on its sleeve. It is home to a lot of people who spent a long time hearing, "No," and decided to go somewhere they would hear, "Yes."