The BUZZ – Reviews – 2014

The Quitter

Thunder Blunder&emdash;MTYP Mainstage

So it’s a life story, was the first thing that popped into my mind, and what a charming way of telling this life story. While the show itself felt particularly scripted in the beginning, I was able to look past this, as the actor has an excellent way of telling warm jokes, and seeming like altogether just a genuinely nice guy. He really seems like someone I’d want to be friends with.

Arden Pruden

We Glow

Theatre 4.669–United Way of Winnipeg

This was an interesting venue, and absolutely perfect for this show. They took the audience along with them in this one, having a few select members playing the role of their bosses while the actors defend their positions and describe to us the story of their lives together. The whole thing is brimming with excellently performed satire, and they certainly used the space to its full potential. Very charming, very funny, go check them out.

Arden Pruden

The Hobbling Buddhas

Better To Burn Out/Tim C. Murphy&emdash;Planetarium

Tim Murphy’s The Hobbling Buddhas is a beautiful performance of storytelling relating the experiences of a Vipassana retreat. Whether any of the events ever happened is irrelevant; the authenticity and beauty of Tim’s words make the story true.

This is a wonderful story, drawing in discussions of depression, faith, personal reflection, childhood, and back-pain. His use of words paints a picture that the audience can immerse themselves in. He plays with the fourth wall, engaging with his audience to draw them into the narrative.

His performance is poignant and makes us consider how we feel, what we feel, if we feel.

The tale may not have a happy ending, but it leaves you with much to think about in your next moment of silent reflection.

Christina Fawcett

Sound & Fury’s Hamlet & Juliet

Sound & Fury&emdash;West End Cultural Centre

These men really know what they’re doing. Their comedic timing is amazing, and they know exactly what to say to get a crowd laughing, especially if it’s a rowdier crowd.

It got to the point very quickly where I couldn’t tell the difference between what was planned and what was improvised. I don’t even know if any of it was improvised or not. These guys are hilarious, and boy do they know how to play a crowd.

Arden Pruden

Fruitcake – Ten Commandments from the Psych Ward

Rob Gee&emdash;WAG

Rob Gee is of course a Fringe favourite&emdash;and for good reason. This man can make anything funny, and his stories from his time as a mental health nurse are a perfect example of that.

The show, based around the Ten Commandments, is probably one of the funniest things I’ve seen all year, and somehow really makes me want to work in mental health; but at the same time, it sounds horrifying.

So I’d rather watch his shows than experience it first hand.

Arden Pruden

Magic Unicorn Island

Stars and Hearts&emdash;Eckhardt-Grammetté (UofW)

My own reaction to this was particularly intense&emdash;had I gone directly home from the show, I likely would have hugged my son until he squirmed, then lain down to cry for a while.

Wait. Wasn’t this billed as a comedy?

Yes, but like Jayson Mcdonald’s best shows of prior years, there’s a dark point under the humour, which happened to hit one of my own strongest triggers.

I commend him. It’s an excellent piece of theatre I personally would recommend but never want to see again.

It starts with laughs a plenty, as McDonald mimes God creating the universe; then, because he’s lonely, filling it with life in hopes of eventually having beings in his own image. The miming of the evolution from a squirming sea creature to primitive man drew even more laughs.

Then it begins to edge in that serious edge, with a hapless student attempting to sum up the whole history of war where it soon becomes apparent, that even with covering most wars in seconds, he’ll be at it for hours, if allowed.

This, of course, finally brings in the main plot. The Empire has decided the way to peace is to send drone strikes against every other country until those countries surrender and joins them to make a united world.

Enter Magic Unicorn Island, as the next generation disagrees with this policy. The world’s children have stolen away to a hitherto unknown island and are building a kids’ paradise&emdash;described through the speeches of its 14-year-old “President or whatever”.

The satire is sharp, well pointed, and more than a little poignant. God’s occasional reappearance adds to the laughs&emdash;but the end is inevitable and really there’s no way to make it funny. Macdonald knows better than to even try.

As satire, it’s a raging success&emdash;but for those who confuse satire with comedy, be ready for a change of tone at the three-quarter mark.

Lenora Rose Patrick

This is a Play

Theatre & Play—MTC UptheAlley

I have always regarded Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest as a bulletproof play: no matter who performs it, it is structured and written so well that it will entertain an audience. I can now add This is a Play to that list.

This is a Play is a play within a play, where we learn the actors’ thoughts as they work through a mediocre production.

The company that presents this play, Theatre & Play, makes some unfortunate choices, and they are not professional-quality actors. Still, they drew constant laughter from their audience.

Their first mistake was spelling out the premise in great detail in the program. This betrays a lack of respect for their audience, and robs them of the joy of discovery. Second, they had the composer character on stage instead of a voice-over, which slowed down the show. And finally, the pace of both plays is equally slow. The MacIvor part should be crisp and clean, but it is as slow and overwrought as the turkey the actors are supposed to be presenting.

Even with these problems, I suspect the audience would have gone home happy. I just wish they had seen some of the other productions of This is a Play that I’ve seen.

Kevin Longfield

Nashville Hurricane: A Curious Tale of Fingerpickin’ Fury

Chase Padgett Productions—PTE Mainstage

Chase Padgett, the Portland, Oregon based star of last Fringe’s hit 6 Guitars, returns with show that is similar to that one in some regards. He plays fast-paced guitar pieces, occasionally sings, and acts out four different characters, as he tells the story of the child guitar prodigy nicknamed the Nashville Hurricane in the mid to late 1970s.

We hear this story from the point of view of the reluctant child star( who seems more interested in physics than performance), his lackadaisical mother, his abusive manager Smokey Jones (a former revivalist preacher), and a mentor. All these characters had very different accents and postures, and Padgett transitioned between them without a hitch.

There was some audience participation during the show and Padgett, as one character or another, reacted smoothly and was spontaneously able to turn just about any response into something funny. This was true even when a particular audience member didn’t give him much to work with and things could have become awkward.

One disappointment for me was that Padgett only performed four guitar pieces during this 75-minute show, which seems to be a lot less than what he did last year. However, the last piece, performed by the Hurricane character after he decides he just wants to play music for himself, and not as a career, is a showstopper indeed. Padgett throws in all types of guitar techniques into this finale, including playing with one hand, using a beer bottle as a pick, finger picking, and other captivating movements, while performing the song The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

Konrad Antony

Spec. Ed

Leithelle Productions—MTC UptheAlley

This is more storytelling than a play, but I do not mean that as a criticism. Leith Clark is a great storyteller with a good sense of timing and the ability to extract the key elements of a story.

In Spec. Ed. Clark describes his experience teaching “Special Education”, a program which has had various names over the years, and which describes children who do not fit into the mainstream. Regardless of the motives for naming this group of people, categorization tends to dehumanize any group, and what Clark does brilliantly here is show how individual each person he has taught is, and how special the kids in Special Ed are.

The key difference in dealing with the people Clark teaches is illustrated in the opening scene, where Clark cracks the whip to bring an imaginary group of “ordinary” students into line. With his Special Ed students, however, Clark learns who each student is, and adapts himself to get the most out of each student.

My only qualm about this show is that I wish that teachers would use the same strategy as Clark does with all their students, regardless of their level of academic and intellectual ability.

Kevin Longfield

It Ends With a Bang

In The Morning—Cinematheque

For many people, the Fringe is where a theatre career starts. It’s where you get your first feedback from a paying audience, and where you learn what works and what doesn’t. The young people who present It Ends With a Bang seem to fall into that category.

There’s a clever premise here and some good moments, and the cast have evidently worked hard to prepare themselves, but this show is more about experience developing potential than it is about the product on stage.

The script is more an extended sketch than it is a play, and it borrows too much from screenwriting and not enough from playwriting. The characters do not have much depth and the actors do not listen or play intentions often enough.

Still, there are some good instincts on display. I look forward to seeing more work from these folks in the future.

Kevin Longfield