Out of the cold & into the theatre

>> >> Hits unprecedented at 10th Fringe Fest!

by AMY BARRATT

Something unusual happened on the opening weekend of this 10th Montreal Fringe festival. People lined up hungrily to see theatre! Let's face it, most years the Fringe is as much a beer fest and street party as it is a theatrical event. There are avid Fringers who never quite get around to seeing a ticketed show. This year, Octoberish conditions kept the Beer Tent almost deserted all weekend, while people sought refuge in theatres both established and makeshift.

Not only was attendance way up but, based on my own experience at least, so was quality. In three days of Fringing, I didn't see one bad play.

girls! girls! girls!

I came out of girls! girls! girls! on Saturday evening thinking, "that's the highlight of my Fringe"--not an entirely happy thought considering the eight long days of fest still stretching out before me. In terms of professionalism, this co-production of Teatro Comaneci and Playwrights' Workshop easily topped anything I saw last year. The exploration of teen violence is disturbing, to be sure, and may not be everyone's idea of Fringe fare. Still, performances have been selling out, a miraculous feat for a play that isn't a comedy (though there are funny lines).

Playwright Greg MacArthur has created a Damon Runyon-esque dialect for his teenage characters that allows them to seem inarticulate and poetic all at once. He has all of the characters refer to themselves in the third person by their colourful names: Puss, Jam, Splitz, Little Bucky. In the case of these four "chums" who are, to all intents and purposes, a gang, the convention works well. But the girl they gang up on, Missy, should have a distinct way of speaking, at least initially. This is a quibble with the play, not the production.

Peter Hinton's direction is almost flawless and the cast--Alison Darcy, Julie Tamiko Manning, Laura Teasdale, Brendan Healy and Stefanie Buxton--is phenomenal.

Arrhythmia

I went with high hopes to see Alex Haber's Arrhythmia, and was not disappointed. It's a gentle, funny tale about love and the numerous ways that hearts can break, and be mended. My initial reaction after the hour-long performance was that Haber should expand this material into a "full-length" play; in retrospect I realize that although Arrhythmia left me wanting more, that was simply a reaction to it being so damn good. By no means should she go tinkering with something that is already near perfect.

Director Alain Goulem has once again pulled together some of the finest actors in the city: Robin Wilcock, Rea Nolan, Jane Wheeler and Jennifer Morehouse. Regular readers of this column may suspect that Morehouse is a great friend of mine, the way I'm always raving about her. The fact is, I don't think she'd know me if she fell over me. Morehouse's performance in Arrhythmia makes me happy; it's as simple as that.

Between Iraq and a Hard Place

Where were you during operation Desert Storm? Songs like "From a Distance" and "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" played on the sound system before the performance of Between Iraq and a Hard Place, brought me instantly back nearly a decade (!) to those weeks spent glued to my TV set, cussing out the American military-industrial complex and its ass-kissing allies.

Comedian Jill Turnbow has a different take on the conflict. On Christmas Eve, 1990, she was flown into Bahrain, where she spent the next three months entertaining troops on a docked cruise ship. It's a fascinating story exploiting two timeless themes: sex and death. I questioned Turnbow's emphasis a couple of times, like when the show threatened to become all about whether she got laid or not, but she is an engaging storyteller. One incident she recounts may illustrate the difference between Canadians and Americans. At a shipboard talent show, a young marine stands up and sings the theme song that goes "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I can be free" and Turnbow is moved. I was simply horrified.

Mad Dash

You've gotta love the concept: in Mad Dash, playing at Geordie space, one of the performers calls in a pizza order at the top of the show. Then, they send a runner off to pick up the pie and the company tries to get through an hour-long show before he returns. The scenes in Mad Dash are performed in a random order determined by the audience (30 titles are posted on the set and the audience calls out one at a time). The scenes are all short, and mostly funny with a sprinkling of poignancy. Many of the quieter moments contain a message about stopping to smell the roses, a message which is undermined by the race-against-time structure of the show. I'm not sure what to make of Mad Dash, but I admire it.

Fringe bits

* Ego Rites--you know, the Wonder Woman play--had all the elements to be a really powerful show, yet I was left strangely unmoved by Anne-Liese Juge's tale of growing up in New Orleans in the '70s. It's a stylish-looking piece, with all the props and costume pieces in shades of red, but Anne-Liese, honey, your technique's showing.

* Tin Fish has laughs, believable dialogue and terrific performances, especially from Mindy Parfitt. The script, however, is unfinished. Playwright Allison Johnston needs to figure out what happens next, then sit down and write a second act.

* The All-New Kiwi Stand-up Experience suffers a bit due to thick New Zealand accents and rapid-fire delivery. For instance, a fellow named Moik confounded me by referring to "fuzzy beers." I eventually deduced that he was talking about teddy bears. Some free advice for the Kiwis: say "garbage" instead of "rubbish" and you'll meet with fewer blank stares. Language barriers aside, these two guys (they perform one after the other, not together) are very personable and their material's strong. :