Run for cover

>>Gender-bending pipers, a brief history of
the century, Led Zeppelin’s acts of piracy
and one couple’s anal adventures:
the Montreal Fringe festival is upon us,
and taking everybody down with it

CABIN FEVER: The Beekeepers

by NEIL BOYCE

As festivals here do, the Fringe, over its 18 years, has grown, mould-like, into a sprawling collection of side-show attractions and performances of every type. Eleven densely packed days that are part theatre and dance fest, part block party and part church picnic in Bizarroland. The shows range from god-awful to “OMG, what an amazing show for eight bucks!” The promise of the latter is what makes it all worthwhile.

From June 12–22, Fringe central at Parc des Amériques (St-Laurent and Rachel) is your best bet for gossip on hit productions and standout performances. Here’s a rundown to help you navigate through behemoth wrestlers, drag queens, and big fat mommas serving stacks of pancakes.

Smart comebacks

A large number of past Fringe acts return with new shows—good news, as some of its best performers and writers in recent years are among them.

SING FOR YOUR SAVIOUR: Cobra II

Two-Wheeler Productions won a Fringe Frankie award last year as most promising anglophone company at the fest for King of Fifteen Island. They return with The Beekeepers, a claustrophobic dark comedy about a man who brings his dwindling honeybee population inside for the winter, barricading himself and his wife inside their small farmhouse. Jeremy Taylor’s text emerges from the playwriting program at the National Theatre School, the play looks like one to watch out for.

Montreal’s own comedy supertroupe (if they do say so themselves) Uncalled For follow last year’s Best Text award-winning Thunderspank! with the new sketch comedy Blastback Babyzap, where characters morph and flow into new and unexpected areas without cessation. “It’s like jazz,” says member Anders Yates, “only instead of musical instruments, we use funny-sounding words.”

Zeppelin Was a Cover Band translates Stéfan Cédilot’s French-language hit from 2007 for an anglo audience in a show that bridges presentation and performance, tracing the history of the blues through songs that Led Zep stole. “Whole lotta appropriation,” says Cédilot.

L’Inspecteur Drive rapplique is the sequel to last year’s house-packing La dernière enquête de l’inspecteur Drive (toujours ivre). This pseudo-drunken-cop-thriller written and directed by Véronick Raymond has a great cast, including Stéfan Perreault in the title role, and featuring Stéphanie Breton (recently seen in Short Story Long).

Way back in 2002, there was a Fringe show called Cobra: The Musical that grafted together G.I. Joe, Shakespeare and super villains and it sounded dumb and I didn’t go... Well eff-me, it turned into the audience favourite of the year, selling out every show and packing them in for an added performance. I have a chance to correct my oversight with Cobra II: Cobra Christ Superstar, wherein they tackle the religions of the world and “attempt once again to make this whole musical terrorist idea work.”

STRIP TEASERS: Team Burlesque

Red Dots and Jem Rolls

Otto and Astrid Rot were a sensation in Fringes around the world with their 2007 smash Die Roten Punkte. This pop-punk brother and sister act (or is it two actors from Berlin via Australia?) return triumphant with more musical theatre shenanigans in Super Musikant.

Word wrangler Jem Rolls is the closest thing to a sure bet the Fringe offers. The recusant spoken-word performer is back with his explosive utterances in How I Stopped Worrying and Learnt to Love the Mall.

Barry Smith’s Baby Book continues the story of the title’s hapless narrator who, having survived membership in a cult in his previous and brilliant Jesus in Montana, embarks on a story about his overly documented life and the mountains of collected junk that surround him. A slide show helps clarify matters.

Not to get too Nashville on you, but if you’re looking at the Fringe, you’re looking at TJ Dawe. His one-man shows—a staple of healthy Fringe diets for years—are marvels of well-crafted text, sharp delivery and the natural gift of storytelling. His latest, Totem Figures, is a story about personal mythology and the idea that we are all the main character in our own epic adventure.

It’s Dawe’s 10th tour of the Fringe circuit, his 10th solo show and, amazingly, his 75th Fringe worldwide. Ever busy, Dawe also has a hand this year in Dishpig, about the joy of dishwashing in a busy restaurant, which he directs and co-wrote with actor Greg Landucci (who plays 15 characters), and directs Fringe fixture Keir Cutler in Teaching the Fringe, a look at audience member oddballs who have accosted Cutler over the years.

HISTORY, CONDENSED: This Hour Has 88 Years

Skin and strings

Burlesque and burlesque-esque shows are plentiful, with voluptuous Japanese performer Cherry Typhoon (paired with the song and dance duo Shoshinz) perhaps the most prominent, and Summer Games: Bingo Edition from Team Burlesque, The Dragpiper and Le Cocu Clan (rolling in from St-Jérôme) also making the skin list (my favourite list).

A troubling zeitgeist emerges among French (and a few English) theatre entries with paranoia, psychosis and apartment shut-ins slowly going nuts as recurring themes in plays that might have been written over the bitter winter. Les Arbres, Les Dames, Vertiges and The Particulars all explore our inner demons.

There’s a particular charm to marionette theatre if done well. Shavirez (le tsigane des mers), Toundra Colada, Le Journal d’Adam et Ève, Le Pays Qui N’existe Pas and Apnée show this different style of theatre with strings attached.

The opening night party and fest-within-fest of Fringe Pop mean plenty of music outdoors throughout the Fringe. Inside, the songs never end with productions like Find Me a Primitive Man, a comedy cabaret cocktail from British entertainer Marysia, the heavyweight musical Lard (like grease, but thicker!), from the big gals at Big Moves (see “pancakes,” above), Busty Rhymes (with Kiwi sensation MC Hot Pink), Degrassi: The Musical and Marni Rice’s accordioniste soirée Songs of an Immigrant: Tales From Paris.

And the rest of the fest

Whether it’s advance buzz, a well-travelled production, known talent or great material, certain shows arrive that sell themselves.

I Don’t Know Where Here Is showcases young actor Jessica Rose, who wrote, acts, and performs her own songs in the surreal comedy—an interesting departure from her fine work as an abused woman in the recent production of Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind.

SISTERS IN SECRECY: Les Dames

South African collective Hearts & Eyes Theatre adapt Martin Moran’s Obie-award winning drama The Tricky Part. The solo show about a man who sets out to find and face his childhood abuser comes with worldwide raves.

Daniel MacIvor’s See Bob Run has Lydia Zadel in this production of an early work by the celebrated playwright. A girl hitchhikes the Trans-Canada highway, telling her rides to go “East... until you hit water. A lot of water.”

Stories told through a green-tinged dopey haze fill A Leave of Absinthe, which brings a pack of Ottawa talent to town, including Margo MacDonald, returning after the unforgettable grotesquery of Richard II in Bouffon last winter.

Fringe Queen Alex Dallas returns after a 10-year absence with Wonderbar!, a droll, dark drama about love, larceny and a $10,000 bed. Comedy and Fringe tour solo-show veteran Dallas is in fine company with director Mary Francis Moore and writer Celeste Sansregret.

In Sputniks, Moscow-based actor Elison Zasko tells the tale of a Russian-Jewish family’s escape from behind the Iron Curtain; an odd comedy about our transient and homeless world.

Hanging by a Branch: A Circus-Theater Fairytale perfectly captures the Fringe spirit in a show that departs with its trailing audience from the main tent, stages a travelling show en route and winds up in Jeanne Mance park.

Add to your rapidly filling schedule promising comedy gems like This Hour Has 88 Years, Even Steven or (from the excellent Without Annette improv group) Argument With a Dolphin, and you’ve got a great week and a half ahead of you. You might even find time for titles you could only see at the Fringe: Peg-Ass-Us or Transcendental Masturbation, anyone?