Sound & Fury’s “Lord of the Thrones”

Sound & Fury—WECC Ventura Hall

This show was hilarious! After years of hearing about their shows, I finally got to see what all the hype was about and Sound & Fury did not disappoint.

The set was stripped down and the focus was solely on the comedy. The jokes flew a mile a minute and the audience was left in stitches.

Every night they pick an audience hero so the show will be a little different every night. The jokes were well written and the cultural references were a plenty! This is not the show for mom and dad or small children (although one brave 12-year-old seemed to enjoy it a lot), but it is a heap of fun. Definitely a must see!

Kaitlyn Kriss

Drinking & Dragons

Monkey Centurion Productions—MTC Mainstage

What an adventure! I played a game or two of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) when I was a kid, and I wish that I had played with these characters!

That’s the part that’s unbelievable. Most D&D kids were the geekiest of the geeks, and you surely would not have found an assembly of characters that included a nympho, and a guy with a hot girlfriend, all of whom are hard-swigging sots. D&D never (NEVER) ended with a drunk, hot blonde wanting to have sex with the other players!

While the players provide an entertaining background, the “warriors” steal the stage. Bill (B’ayle) is ludicrously hilarious and he carries the rest of the adventuring party. The Dragon-Wizard-Monkey-Whatever character’s emoting evokes great enjoyment, especially during the fireball showdown. The Elf’s character seems like an afterthought and the Mercenary’s “skimpy outfit” isn’t nearly skimpy enough if you’re going to keep referring to it as such. In a world where Xena’s corset is the norm, her outfit falls short of geek fantasy.

Despite some problems, I roared in laughter through much of this adventure. If D&D was this much fun, it would have a lot larger following.

I don’t get the monkey. Seeing as it’s from Monkey Centurion Productions, I’ll assume it’s an inside joke.

Ray Yuen

Shirley Gnome: Real Mature

Heartichoke Arts—Eckhardt Gramatté

I really enjoyed Shirley Gnome’s performance, and yes she can really sing and play guitar. Her songs are of a more adult nature but are all fun and very well written.

As long as you are not easily offended, I highly recommend her show.

Murray Hunter

Journeys

Sheep On A Mission—MTC Up the Alley

This is a nostalgic romp through a couple’s relationship—first glances, dating, fighting, and parting—presented through original, folky music, performed live, in combination with poetry.

It’s a little preachy at times, but heartwarming all over.

D. Penner

Hot Pink Bits with Penny Ashton

Penash Productions—WECC Ventura Hall

Holy heck this show was hot! Sex is the name of the game with this show and there was a lot of it.

Penny created a safe environment where she educated us about the sex trade but did so using dick puppets, audience stripping, porn scripts, and a quiz show. This show surprised me (especially when she climbed onto 3 of the male audience members) and I liked it a lot.

This show is absolutely not for the less open-minded individual. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart and requires a very open mind with regards to sex. Anyone else should follow their curiosity and come learn a thing or two about sex.

Kaitlyn Kriss

Subway Stations of the Cross

Ins Choi—Planetarium

What can I say? It was amazing. He’s a wonderful speaker, switching between characters, and from storytelling to poetry seamlessly

His poetry is chilling, and completely draws you in. When he’s not performing his poetry, he’s a hilarious storyteller and seems extremely easygoing. It’s easy to laugh at his jokes. He makes everything feel familiar. Even during an on-stage costume change, I was totally immersed in his actions.

Arden Pruden

UnCouth

The Cinematheque—Windy Wynazz

Ok, UnCouth is the perfect title for this mishmash of gags and antics. While some of it isn’t that funny, some of it gets you laughing—and it’s the kind of humour where there’s no earthly reason why you should be laughing.

If I describe the show to any of my friends, they’d frown and tell me it’s not funny. And yet, a lot of it works, to the point where she got a standing ovation (well, from two people anyway).

The finale is a lot of fun, but it’s always fun for me to throw things at people!

Ray Yuen

Happiness™

May Can Theatre—Rudolf Rocker

I still don’t know how to feel about this show. It started out as hilarious with some rather high kicks and acrobatics as they greeted us all.

Then it became sad as the characters started to reveal themselves. I laughed a lot but it also left me thinking a lot about my own numbness in certain situations.

The two actors were very versatile and I really felt for both of them.

I did get very, very confused when the actors went back and forth from the past to the present. I was confused as to what point in the story’s timeline we, the audience, were in, and that really took me out of the story.

Kaitlyn Kriss

Dear Jenny,

I had a very frustrating experience at the 9 PM performance of Tape on Saturday. I listened to the pre-show recording about “turn off all cell phones; if you leave you can’t return.” Then I watched two different patrons get up at two different times, (one at the 50-minute mark, and one at the 65-minute mark), wander across the front of the floor-level stage—they were actually onstage with the actors—and past the ushers sitting in the audience, and leave, letting the door slam shut behind them, Each walked back in, five minutes later, the door slamming behind them again, and walked across the stage back to their seats.

The ushers just let this happen. I volunteered as an usher at the Winnipeg Fringe for 8 years and the Edmonton Fringe twice and I remember sitting by the door at the back of the venue with an obstructed view of the stage, because your priority was to keep people from walking in during the performance—not to just watch the show. That was a bonus. I feel these volunteers need to receive more training. The usher should have followed the patron to the doorway and informed them that there was no re-admittance upon leaving, and stayed by the door to ensure there were no re-entry attempts.

Josh Knazan

Theatre changed my life.

That’s probably not shocking considering the company I keep, and the probable readers of this paper. Most of us are here because the arts answered questions we didn’t know we had, took us places we had been too scared to reach for.

I felt like I didn’t fit in, my parents didn’t get me, I needed an outlet for feelings I didn’t understand or I was going to explode. Theatre gave me a voice that allowed me to be who I really was. I won’t waste too many words on that, because half the people here have similar stories to tell that are far more profound—of how the Fringe is their home and how being in theatre has made them who and what they are. I have at least a dozen friends who can tell you they met their partners, the loves of their lives, somehow or another via the Fringe Festival.

“By 1995, I had volunteered and attended the past few years of the Winnipeg Fringe and that summer I performed in my first show.

“That winter I was out for a friend’s birthday and was seated across from a girl I had never met. We made small talk and I could see the familiar look in her eyes of ‘I’m not interested in this guy,’ (I was very used to that look) until something she said made me reply, ‘You went to the Fringe this summer? I did a show!’ She leaned forward and her eyes lit up. ‘Really? What show? I was going to go see that one but didn’t make it!’

“We chatted the rest of the night, she drove me home, and I gathered enough courage to say ‘Some guys I know are in an improv group and doing a show on Tuesday, do you want to go?’ From that first date came 20 years together, 11 years of marriage, 2 wonderful sons and over a dozen Fringe shows between the two of us.” (Josh Knazan)

Art by Dave Pruden

So many of us talk about our Fringe family and how important all these wonderful people are to us, even if we only see them once a year. It brings to mind all the real families that have made this festival home.

“Fringe for me started 21 years ago, but it really started 13 summers ago. I was performing in a Joseph Aragon show, and bouncing my 5-month-old baby girl on my knee in the beer tent. I was talking with Joseph about this crazy, silly idea he had for a musical. With vampires.

“Now, 13 summers later, I’m still having fun, throwing out crazy silly musicals with my best friend; but this year, that beer-tent baby is acting in it. She’s a Fringe baby all the way—and loves this time of year and all the experiences that come with it.

“If she takes one thing away from her Fringe experiences, I think it will always be the sense of teamwork and togetherness that Fringe embodies.” (Heather Madill)

We all have stories to share of how important this festival is and how theatre has helped us, saved us, so mine is nothing new. But a big part of what the Fringe has done for me is how the Jenny Revue saved me.

I’ve never told Coral and Michelle this, but they offered me a branch to grab onto during one of the worst times of my life. I had spent a year in Australia, but that and the relationship that took me there ended very badly, very quickly. My flight home took me to Vancouver, despondent and in debt up to my ears. I had to borrow money from my sister to find food and a roof there long enough to get a flight back to Winnipeg, also on her dime. And so I returned, for the first time in over ten years, to the charity of my parents home in Beausejour, alone, with no job, my debt now bubbling up over my head, and more depressed than I’ve ever been.

“But at least I‘m back in time for the Fringe,” I consoled myself. Except that I couldn’t afford to see any shows, and the friends I had hoped would cheer me up had mostly moved on to other things in the year I’d been away. (The exception to that being George, Alan and Audra, whose charity and friendship at that time I will never forget.)

Then one night at the King’s Head found me at a table with the folks from the Jenny Revue. We had gotten to know each other a little bit in previous years, at least enough that they were happy to let me help them type up reviews, which back then all came scribbled illegibly on scraps of paper. They asked if I had anything to review, but I told them honestly I had seen nothing due to my financial situation (except for Improvision, who had comped me in twice by then). They very graciously offered me a media pass, for a day, if I could see the list of shows they gave me that had not been reviewed yet. And they bought me a beer.

Such small gestures. And really they were helping themselves more than they were helping me. But they invited me into their family and made me belong to something. I was home.

The Jenny Revue has such a rich history in this festival. It helps us create a community that we can all be a part of rather than just a collection of plays. We are performers, audience members, reviewers, and friends. We all have voices, and we are all ready to hear them, and the Jenny has helped me find a voice here. And a family.

Shawn Kowalke