Fringe religion

>> A desperate search for truth at the Fringe fest

by AMY BARRATT

Early on in the Fringe I noticed a curious thing: a lot of religious references, at least in the titles of plays. I thought just for the hell of it I'd make a point of seeing Temples, The Devil's Asylum, ...and God Created Woman, Outside the Garden, Indulgences, Everyone Wants to Be Mary Magdalene and of course, Mad About Jew, to see if maybe enlightenment would follow. But I was distracted almost immediately by a little show called Boys.

A one-man show by recent National Theatre School grad Paul Dunn, Boys didn't seem to fit into my spiritual quest at all. But then I was introduced to one of three characters who may or may not be manifestations of the writer-performer's own multiple-personality syndrome: Tambourine Boy is a young man still recovering from childhood exposure to Christian youth camp. Boys is a slightly twisted, funny look at three young men (Army Slut Boy and Ham-and-Cheese Boy are the others) who don't feel like men yet.

Dunn looks and writes like an evil elf. He combines moments of sheer poetry with that perennial crowd-pleaser, the local reference. Here is one character's take on the Montreal metro system: "I'm partial to the green line. It's less pretentious than the orange line, less desperate than the blue line." There's also some shameless product placement of a certain weekly paper (and we didn't even pay him).

The performance of Boys that I attended was remarkable not just for the intensity of Dunn's performance but for the fact that the entire audience consisted of five girls, including yours truly--hardly a girl any longer, having recently reached the age of Christ when he was crucified. (In fact, every audience I've been in so far at the Fringe has been predominantly female. What's that about?). Noon on Sunday presumably wasn't the ideal time slot for what I'd think was this show's ideal (but not exclusive) audience: young gay men. Though Dunn gave his all for the five of us, he deserves to have a butt in every seat for every performance.

Boys remaining performances: Saturday, June 13 at 5 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets: general $8, students $7. Venue 1 (Gert's pub).

Back on my quasi-religious kick, I went to see The Devil's Asylum, written and performed by Montrealers Daniel Nemiroff and Avery Plaw, a couple of Montreal boys who have known each other since kindergarten. The genesis (yuk, yuk) of The Devil's Asylum can be found in a certain 20-year-old record album called Spanish Train. For you youngsters out there, the title track on the record (by Chris DeBurgh) was all about God and the Devil playing poker for the souls of the dead. The plot of The Devil's Asylum is pretty much summed up by the immortal line, "the Devil still cheats and wins more souls."

The Devil's Asylum isn't exactly bad, but it doesn't smell so fresh either. The few good lines (the Devil, on the subject of whether people still occasionally sell him their souls: "Tom Hanks: back to back Oscars. Think about it.") are all but lost in a torrent of fart and penis jokes. P-Scene's crappy acoustics almost seem like a blessing. My advice: give this one a miss and check out Shawn Baichoo's red spandex-clad devil in Plop@Fleck instead.

The Devil's Asylum remaining performances: Tonight (Thursday) at 10:15 p.m., Friday at 2:15 p.m., and Saturday at noon at Venue 2, P-Scene, Aylmer Alley. Tickets $8, $7 with signed coupon, $6 if signed in own blood.

In a last desperate search for truth, I went to see Temples, which is apparently about "the roles of women in Creation myths of varied cultures." Glad ya told me. All I saw was a couple of college girls wandering around in gauze and raffia talking like people from Star Trek: "It is time. You must go." This Toronto production is mercifully short at 45 minutes.

Temples remaining performances: Friday at 5:45 p.m., Saturday at quarter-past midnight, Sunday at 5 p.m., in Venue 3, Players' Theatre. Tickets $6.

At deadline time, I hadn't yet seen Indulgences, Everyone Wants to Be Mary Magdalene, or Mad About Jew, but buzz was very positive on all three. The three best-attended shows in the first weekend (and from what I saw, this could just mean audiences in the double figures) were The Full Molly, Was That My 15 Minutes? and Viva Versace.

If you're still hoping to discover a sleeper hit, consider Spontaneous Combustion. The Northampton, Massachusetts improv troupe rolls into town late, with performances today at 3:15 p.m., Friday at 10:15 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 p.m. and Sunday at 6:30 p.m.

The first annual Fringe awards (The Frankies) won't be given out until Sunday, but I'd like to announce one of my own right now: The Mirror's Stalker Award goes to Terry Simpson of the Free Fall Iguanas, for turning up everywhere I go at the Fringe, waving his... flyer in my face. I'd go see his show but I don't want to encourage him.