Times Colonist reviewers Amy Smart, Adrian Chamberlain and Cory Ruf are covering the Victoria Fringe Theatre Festival, running through Sunday. All critiques use a five-star grading system.
What: Temple of Khaos: A Modern Myth
When: Sept. 1, 2
Where: Metro Studio, 1411 Quadra St.
Rating: 4
You know those buffoons in every play who chime in periodically for comic relief? This is a show about four of them.
It's thousands of years in the future, and the 1980s are re-framed in the tradition of a Greek myth. The loose story is about a boy king building a temple.
Characters include a blind oracle and the womanly monster Khaos, who spews apple on anyone who displeases her. The storyline is punctuated with relics from the '80s - from Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time to unionized temple-builders who will do anything for dental benefits.
If it sounds absurd, it is. Entirely. But somewhere in the silliness, there's quite a lot of intelligent clowning going on. When a lighting glitch kept them in the dark for the first portion of the show - the god of Khaos at work? - they proved the strength of their improv.
Physical comedy is a big part of the show, as is timing, with frantic and uncooperative characters hamming it up to compete for the spotlight.
This is a form of humour that doesn't see the spotlight very often anymore. If you like Monty Python, this will be right up your alley.
- Amy Smart
What: First Day Back
When: Aug. 31; Sept. 1
Where: St. Ann's Academy, 835 Humboldt St.
Rating: 3
In First Day Back, Toronto's Rob Salerno takes an aboutturn from the satirical humour of F***ing Stephen Harper and screwball comedy Big in Germany, by tackling the more difficult material of teen suicide.
Fourteen-year-old Ollie kills himself after enduring months of abuse from bullies for being gay. This story takes place in the "safe space" set up for members of a high school community looking for answers.
Salerno assumes the role of various high schoolers struggling with their own sense of guilt and confusion, as well as the art teacher leading the session with sensitivity. But his acting chops may be better suited for comedy, with characters such as self-promoting class president Joanna Fairchild carrying caricature-like qualities, despite the heavy material.
That doesn't mean it's funny by any means, just that it would be strengthened with a more confident move away from stereotypes.
While the truths revealed aren't anything new (bullying often stems from pressures in the aggressor's own life), the subject matter is important, and Salerno's choice to leave his characters without answers is an appropriate one. It's also timely. Though Dan Savage's It Gets Better campaign continues to spread and we see more and more positive representations of gay characters in pop culture, the war on homophobia isn't over. - AS
What: Little Orange Man
When: Aug. 31; Sept. 1, 2
Where: Downtown Activity Centre, 755 Pandora Ave.
Rating: 4
It's hard not to watch an adult playing with stuffed animals and chomping on pieces of Wonder Bread without feeling like you've landed on a stage version of The Big Comfy Couch intended for your four-yearold niece. But once you get over the adult-playing-achild thing, Little Orange Man has a lot to offer.
Ingrid Hansen returned her Fringe hit to the stage Wednesday before a soldout audience. She plays Kitt, a hyperactive Danish girl with an active imagination who posts a Craigslist ad for fellow dreamers. If the child's play isn't new, the inventive way Hansen and fellow creator Kathleen Greenfield evoke a world of wonder is.
Using everyday objects - celery sticks become dancing legs and a small suitcase becomes the stage for a strawberry farm - they remind their audience that the ordinary is rife with extraordinary potential. Precise lighting is their secret weapon, and in one especially beautiful piece of storytelling, Kitt creates her own lore using only a flashlight, circular screen and stencils of whimsical scenes.
This is a show for those willing to open their minds and reactivate their imaginations. - AS
What: The Human Body Project
Where: Wood Hall, 907 Pandora Ave.
When: Sept. 1 and 2
Rating: 4
Tasha Diamant's The Human Body Project is not a "show," at least not in the conventional sense.
Boldly, though with apparent reluctance, the 50year-old university instructor, activist and mother stands fully nude in front of a live audience, engaging viewers in conversation.
It's a social experiment that doubles as performance art. Unscripted and interactive, each display is different from the last.
About 20 minutes into her Wednesday night performance, the Victoria resident asked whether any audience members wished to undress as well. During the course of the 90-minute affair, about 10 attendees, representing a wide array of ages and body types, elected to join in. Most did so with initial trepidation but grew increasingly comfortable as the evening wore on.
Don't get the impression The Human Body Project is intended to shock or titillate. A giant banner hanging from the curtain at the back of the stage - one that reads "vulnerable" - hints at Diamant's objective.
Nakedness, she stated, functions as a display of vulnerability. Making this bold statement and encouraging others to do the same, she reasons, helps to promote empathy and understanding, qualities she believes our society woefully lacks.
In this sense, Diamant was mostly successful. There was a palpable intimacy in the room, inspiring a lively, heartfelt discussion on a host of sensitive issues, including politics, beauty, death, love, work and spirituality.
But one has to wonder whether Diamant is preaching to the converted. Presumably, the forum attracts viewers who are already primed for a hearts-firmlyon-sleeves powwow.
It raises the ever-important question: If the audience were to consist of a random sampling of Canadians, would the outcome be so uplifting? - Cory Ruf
What: Little Lady
Where: Wood Hall
When: Aug. 31 to Sept. 2
Rating: 3 1/2
Though a veteran of Cirque du Soleil, Sandrine Lafond hasn't brought a dance show to town.
In Little Lady, she employs her prodigious flexibility, strength and body awareness for a different purpose: clowning around.
At the beginning of the 45-minute work, the French-born performer, wearing an orange unitard, pleated skirt, a fur vest and Coke-bottle glasses, projects a caricature of a shrivelled old woman. Hunched over, she traipses around on the balls of her feet, leaning on a tiny cane for support.
Wordlessly, she interacts with her environment with a childlike sense of wonderment, laughing at her own grotesqueness and sticking her tongue out at the audience.
As the show progresses, the character undergoes a physical metamorphosis.
Her posture lengthens and her movements become more assured. It's as if she's aging in reverse.
At one point, Lafond slips on a bra and panties - stuffed to brim to parody giant breasts and buttocks - over her costume. Initially pleased with her reclaimed womanliness, the titular lady, no longer so little, comes to resent how the exaggerated curves limit her movement.
But don't worry: The transformation has a happy ending.
Though funny, Little Lady won't inspire hearty guffaws. Rather, it's cute, inducing the kind of precious titters you'd expect at a children's puppet show.
Fittingly, it boasts a feelgood, take-home message to match. - CR
What: The Water Is Wide
Where: St. Andrew's School Gymnasium, 1002 Pandora Ave.
When: Aug. 31, Sept. 1, 2
Rating: 4
For years San Francisco's Randy Rutherford has performed autobiographical solo shows at the Victoria Fringe.
Popular offerings such as Weaverville Waltz and My Brother Sang Like Roy Orbison chronicled early experiences - life as a working-class kid and then as a teen who dated the prettiest cheerleader in high school. The Water Is Wide is a snapshot of Rutherford's life today.
He's a gifted storyteller clever at crafting a poignant script. Whenever things threaten to become maudlin, Rutherford seasons his tale with a piquant pinches of irony.
With The Water Is Wide, his gifts - which include being a very good folksinger - remain intact. However, here his world has become much smaller.
One of the show's climactic scenes, for instance, is the argument he has with his girlfriend about a container of potato salad.
Overall, The Water Is Wide is an examination of how Rutherford's physical impairment (he's lost 70 per cent of his hearing) affects their relationship. This is interesting, but there's still the sense he's now turning toward autobiographical minutiae - at the risk of losing the life-affirming universality that made his early work so remarkable.
- Adrian Chamberlain
What: Wind in the Pines
Where: St. Andrew's School Gymnasium, 1002 Pandora Ave.
When: Aug. 31, Sept. 1, 2
Rating: 3
Wind in the Pines is a curious little show. Some, as I did, will love its poeticism. Others will leave the theatre (or rather the gym) scratching their heads.
It's an adaptation of a traditional Japanese play attributed to Zeami, the celebrated 14th/15th-century Noh playwright. Sisters Mursame and Matsukaze are ghosts keeping vigil on a pine tree, hoping their dead lover will one day return.
Here, two versions of the tale are told. The first is traditional, depicting the sisters hauling sea water in order to make salt. They tell their tale to a travelling priest who asks to stay the night.
In a second version, the ghostly siblings pick up garbage on a beach (mostly discarded plastic water bottles, recalling Japan's recent earthquake/tsunami disaster). Another woman, carrying a cellphone, comes by. Once again, the sisters tell their tale. But in this version, the newcomer tells a similar story about lost love and longing.
The show, delivered in Japanese with surtitles, is weak on direction and theatricality. The translation is projected onto a large screen - I wondered why an image of a pine tree or a forest wasn't also projected. There are virtually no props. Much of the script is read. And the acting is tremendously subdued which - while perhaps in keeping with stylized Noh tradition - gave Wind in the Pines a tentative feel.
That said, there is something stirring and elemental about this strange offering, performed by Misaki Hotaka, Joyce Ishii and Ayumi Hamada. Wind in the Pines is a singular meditation on death and memory, longing and regret. - AC
