The acting is good, the direction clever, but Stay at Home Dead’s script doesn’t satisfy. The luridly prolonged final moments have a penny-dreadful quality, affecting audiences’ stomachs more than their minds. “Why did he do it?” teases the Stay At Home Dead write-up in the Fringe guide. Why did he do it? I’ve seen the play, and I still don’t know.

60 Minutes, $10

Parental Guidance

North Street Church Theatre

Sunday Sep 9, 6:45 PM

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• Rhys Bevan-John

Fringe Invocation Experiment: Rhys, Gina, Ailsa is a collective creation piece by Rhys Bevan-John, Gina Thornhill and Ailsa Galbreath in conjunction with Misery Loves (theatre) Company as part of the Atlantic Fringe Festival.

Collective Creation is often more about the process of creating theatre than the product that comes from it and often these pieces are offered up to audiences before they are fully-formed to let the audience in on this process and to allow this new interaction inform and influence the work. This is really ideal for something like the Fringe Festival, which is like an incubator for new local work, and I think Fringe audiences often enjoy, as I do, watching theatre this is actively being born rather than skillfully (or not so skillfully) mass produced.

There are some terrific moments in this show and I thought the strongest and most poignant and beautiful of them was the ending. The story centers around a brilliantly esoteric question, “What happens to us when we die?,” which leads into all sorts of fascinating directions, including a theatrically brilliant monologue by a wizard hobo (played by Bevan-John) with a sparkler. The play at the moment is only 35 minutes but I think the potential for where this question can go is mammoth, which is really exciting and in the hands of these three performers I really liked when those directions were strange and unexpected. I have never seen a hobo wizard onstage before. I would have enjoyed being led deeper into his world and his psyche.

The three main characters in the central conceit of the play are best friends, Maggie (Galbreath), Chris (Bevan-John) and Bea (Thornhill) and the plot hinges on how Maggie and Bea cope with the sudden loss of Chris. The difficulty I had with this was Chris was characterized as this exuberant, boisterous, creative and fun-loving guy, a terrific one, who made awesome puppets from junk and had IPod dance parties in the forest. Yet, both the girls seem “too cool for school” for it, even after his death, even though they are obviously grieving, they still would rather throw out his puppets than keep them and even the smallest glimmer of fun and playfulness they have together is alcohol and not joy induced. If Chris and Maggie and Bea are awesome best friends, I want to see this awesome best friendship because it makes it so much more tragic (and easy to empathize with) when it suddenly is taken away.

I loved that Bea and Maggie were grieving in completely disparate ways and that a rift grows between them as a consequence of it. If Bea is going to shut down and reject the silly and playfulness that Chris represents to her, that is a terrific choice, but it would be stronger if we see her as being less repressed, serious and judgmental at the beginning so the shift in her personality is even more clear and profound. There is a lot of room for all three of them to more fully explore these three characters, and the actors are dealing with some lovely complex, and at times subtle, emotions, which I think will help to make them come even more alive, unique and three dimensional if these performers continue to develop this show.

Fringe Invocation Experiment: Rhys, Gina, Ailsa plays at DanSpace (1531 Grafton Street) plays at the following times:
Saturday September 8th at 9:30pm
Sunday September 9th at 3:00pm
$6.00

Reprinted with permission from The Way I See It Theatre Blog twisitheatreblog.com

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Choreographer Petra O’Toole brings Obsession to the Atlantic Fringe Festival, which is like a very short play, or the early stages of one, with an extended dance sequence melded into it to help dramatically express the intense emotions of our protagonist.

According to the notes in the Fringe guide this 25 minute piece is a “first glimpse” of a new work that is in development by O’Toole with Vivika Ballard. It feels very early in the process for these artists, but the work that is being presented here is visually fascinating and I am very intrigued at the direction that this work will take in its future incarnations.

The strongest aspect of this piece is certainly the dance. Even though the space in The Living Room feels a bit restrictive, that only adds to the feeling that our protagonist is trapped in dire anguish. The stakes here are wonderfully high and Ballard’s movements are at times chilling and at times beautiful.

Since the dialogue between the protagonist, Dalia, and her brother in law, Jason, is so short it is difficult for these characters to find depth without dancing, but presumably that is one aspect of the piece that will be further developed. The one thing that I found a little confusing was that in the first three images of the characters and their relationships I got the very clear impression of a love triangle between the two sisters and the brother in law and then when it was revealed that actually Jason and Dalia’s relationship was far more ambiguous I wasn’t sure where that definitive image had come from. Was the Opening Sequence in Dalia’s imagination and fantasy or had Jason’s feelings toward her changed and if so, why?

A girl dancing while essentially chained to a wall is an immediately strong image and I look forward to seeing what shape this piece takes in the future.

Reprinted with permission from The Way I See It Theatre Blog twisitheatreblog.com

One of my favourite things about the Fringe is the chance to see quirky pieces in quirky spaces.

Thom Fitzgerald's 7 Deadly Sins certainly fits the bill.

The tiny audience (two people at a time) enters one of Pier 21's train compartments where they are confronted by a living, breathing fallen angel or a by sound recording...or in the case of the last car, something all together different.

The quarters are close and hot, the subject matter is dark and the actors are literally in your face. It's a creepy, brief and fascinating experience.

I found my knowledge of cardinal sins shamefully lacking, and spent some time afterwards playing "match the train car with the sin". (Here's a list for those who want to play, too: pride, envy, gluttony, avarice, lust, anger and sloth.)

7 Deadly Sins: Frommer’s Guide To Hell plays at Pier 21 (Bratty Hall, Upstairs) at the following times:

Wednesday September 5: 6:30pm to 10:30pm

Thursday September 6th: 6:30pm to 10:30pm

Sunday September 9th: 6:30pm to 9:00pm

Each sin is 2 minutes in length, if you see them all it’s approximately 15 minutes. The price is 7.00 for all the sins or $1.00 a piece.

It is $7.00 to book tickets please visit this website or call (902) 999-7469 or visit the Box Office at the Seaport Farmers’ Market at Pavilion 20 on Marginal Road. Tickets are also available at the venue A HALF HOUR before the show.

These plays, each one ten minutes in length, have all been winners at Short Play Festivals and they have a really Summerstock feel-good, wholly unpretentious, comedy feel to them. They are well written, tightly constructed and very charming with some big, broad humour and hammed up performances.

Some highlights for me were the twist in Totally Organic, Leslie Milne as Miss Travers in Drawing The Line, the visually hilarious presence of Ian MacDermid and Kate Waterfield in Totally Organic and Jill Curley’s hilarious lust for blood and sex in A Business Arrangement.

This type of theatre has a wide, but specific, audience and it is one that is often quite different from the typical “Fringe going” crowd, but if you like Norm Foster plays and frequent places like Theatre Arts Guild, Dartmouth or Bedford Players or The Chester Playhouse and Festival Antigonish in the summer, you will likely really dig this show!

A Quartet of Devious Dealings plays at the North Street Church (5657 North Street) at the following times:

Friday September 7th at 8:00pm
Saturday September 8th at 4:30pm
Sunday September 9th at 8:15pm

It is $10.00 (or $2.50 per play). To book tickets please visit this website or call (902) 999-7469 or visit the Box Office at the Seaport Farmers’ Market at Pavilion 20 on Marginal Road. Tickets are also available at the venue A HALF HOUR before the show. Happy Fringe!

Reprinted with permission from The Way I See It Theatre Blog twisitheatreblog.com

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• Ned Petrie

The Panel Show comes to the Atlantic Fringe Festival from Toronto and plays at the DanSpace. It is a game show hosted by Ned Petrie where a panel of three comedians are asked questions pulled from REAL LIFE Stupid News and then points are allotted for the chance to win a giant mock-up cheque for $1,000,000.

Our guests for the evening were Brian MacQuarrie, Rhonda Riche and Mark Little. The set up for The Panel Show is an interesting one because it doesn’t really fit into any of the categories one usually associates with the genre of comedy. The comedians show up unrehearsed and with nothing prepared, yet I wouldn’t say the show was improvised, the humour just comes naturally from their own personalities and their own interactions with one another and the material that Petrie provides them with. I would assume that certain performers thrive in this concept more than others and it generally is a lot more laid back and casual than most shows audiences are used to seeing. The subtitle of The Panel Show could be something like: Chillin’ With Funny People.

What works really well is when the comedians are able to create a sort of absurd narrative out of the material that emerges from the guesses and the (often weirder) right answers to Petrie’s strange questions so that new jokes build on the ones that came before, as Pat Thornton does all evening in his annual 24 Hour Stand Up Set, until eventually you have drunken bears and pigeons permeating the entire show.

I also loved Little’s penchant for making a self-judgemental face and leaving the stage to find a different puppet to play with and then returning with it. It was great to have that sort of running gag emerge out of the show. (All the puppets were borrowed with love and carefulness from Fringe Invocation Experiment). It was also a magical moment watching Brian discover that, according to the customs of The Day of Conception in Russia, TODAY (September 3rd) was in fact Brian MacQuarrie Day.

Every show of The Panel Show is different and the cast of comedians includes people like Merv Hartlen, Paul Warford, Amanda Bulman, Kyle Hickey, Cheryl Hann and Jay Wells. You will not only laugh at the cleverness of the guests, but you will probably also be disturbed, confused and fascinated by much of the STUPID NEWS stories that Petrie has unearthed because people really do the weirdest shit and truth really is stranger than fiction.

Reprinted with permission from The Way I See It Theatre Blog twisitheatreblog.com

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Could you turn your life story into a business—script it, package it, take it on the road—and maintain your authenticity? Steven Fales’s autobiographical one-man Confessions of a Mormon Boy (directed by Jack Hofsiss) seems to do just that, charting Fales’s journey from LDS missionary to NYC hustler and beyond. It’s a polished piece of theatre that knows what notes to hit, but there’s a human heart beneath the slick showbiz veneer.

Steven Fales is a whiz-bang actor who gets a lot of mileage out of his gleaming smile. His script is gracious to the church that excommunicated him, lampooning spiritual hypocrisy without apparent malice. Confessions of a Mormon Boy is a fascinating glimpse at the skeletons in (and in this case, out of) a stranger’s closet.

90 Minutes, $10

Mature Audiences

Bus Stop Theatre
Thursday Sep 6, 8:00 PM


Friday Sep 7, 7:15 PM


Saturday Sep 8, 9:00 PM


Sunday Sep 9, 2:30 PM


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Bill Wood Presents: Magic You’ll Enjoy consists of a string of standard parlor magic tricks – minds are mysteriously read, ropes do unropely things, and so on—linked together by Bill Wood’s self-effacing banter. Perhaps unintentionally, the show demonstrates that the actual “magic” in a magic act can be largely incidental: Wood is a competent illusionist, but it’s his wacky personality that really sells the performance. I have, for example, seen a coin disappear and reappear many times before. I have never seen a finger puppet of the Virgin Mary become involved.

I don’t know how well Bill Wood Presents: Magic You’ll Enjoy would stand up against the full-time magic acts at, say, the Busker Festival. But at the Fringe, it’s a welcome diversion from the norm.

35 Minutes, $6

All Ages

Pier 21 Museum Railside
Thursday Sep 6, 9:15 PM

Saturday Sep 8, 9:00 PM

Sunday Sep 9, 2:30 PM

Sunday Sep 9, 8:00 PM

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Fairy tales are powerful: reduce them to their bare bones, and they’ll still hold children rapt. Hansel and Gretel, directed by Zara Tufts, retells the classic story of baked architecture and witchicide by oven. Adults Emily Pettet and Nick Piovesan give earnestly unwinking performances as the frightened children, and the set is ingenious, if minimal (points for the pool noodles).

But the best children’s classics appeal to children of all ages, and that’s where Hansel and Gretel falls short. The script—co-written by Tufts and Carolyn Thomas, who plays the stepmother and witch—is too basic to interest adults who already know the story. Hansel and Gretel captures the kids in the crowd, but more oomph is required to keep their parents spellbound.

50 Minutes, $5

Younger Audiences

DANSpace

Thursday Sep 6, 5:30 PM

Friday Sep 7, 5:30 PM

Saturday Sep 8, 4:20 PM

Sunday Sep 9, 12:00 PM

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Shakespeare on Trial gets a lot of laughs at its audience’s expense, batting us back and forth between drama (“to be or not to be” is performed in full, beautifully) and farce (Ophelia has a beard). You won’t mind the theatrical whiplash: it’s all in the service of taking the Immortal Bard down a peg (and maybe, possibly, raising him back up).

Simon Henderson and Jeremy Webb are superb as Shakespeare and everyone else, respectively. And although it would have been easy to turn this show into an exercise in finger-shaking, Webb’s script never patronizes its audience—well, never unintentionally.

Shakespeare on Trial is irreverent, exuberant, childish and scholarly. You’re likely to leave knowing you saw something astounding but not knowing what it was, exactly.

I was totally blown away last night by Cross Your Heart, a new play by Amanda Campbell, the pen behind the Way I See It (TWISI) theatre blog and guest blogger for The Coast.

I have become friends with Campbell as our schedules have crisscrossed in theatre spaces across the city, but I did not know she was also a playwright. (And after seeing this play, I’d say a playwright to watch.)

The premise is that Mary Magadalene, Wendy Darling and William Shakespeare cross paths while waiting for the bus that will whisk them away to new lives in New York City. At first they seem to have as much in common as oil, water and gunpowder, but soon their tongues loosen, their stories spill out and friendships sprout.

The premise is rife with comedy, and Campbell writes funny very well. She also brilliantly mines the story for pathos and resounding truths.

The cast of this show could not be more perfect. Marietta Laan is the most darling Darling one could imagine, conveying sweetness and purity with every line. Taylor Long nails the flamboyant Billy, with his poetic speech and his tragic and oh-too-real love story. And Johnelle Sciocchetti’s Mary is equal parts vitriol and tenderness, tough outside with a true heart of gold.

There are a lot of amazing shows at this year’s Fringe, but if you only have time for one, let it be Cross Your Heart.

30 Minutes • $7

*Mature Audiences* Strong Language, Mature Themes

Pier 21 Museum Railside

Tickets are $7.00 and are available in person at the Halifax Seaport Farmer’s Market Pavilion 20, by calling 902.999.7469, online at http://crossyourheart.eventbrite.com/ or at the Venue 1 Hour Before the Show.

Monday Sep 3 • 8:15-8:45
Tuesday Sep 4 • 6:30-7:00
Wednesday Sep 5 • 6:30-7:00
Saturday Sep 8 • 7:00-7:30
Sunday Sep 9 • 4:45-5:15

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Writer/director Michael McPhee may have created the world’s first dada film noir in Blood and Quick Silver, which charts the professional misadventures of “private dick” Sam Silver (Michael McLeod). The players handle this anachronistic gem deftly—Annie Valentina is never misses a beat as no-good dame Emma Fatale—and the skilled use of cardboard props creates a comic-book effect. If you smashed together a Lichtenstein painting and Double Indemnity, you would get Blood and Quick Silver.

You may feel a little cheated by the ending, which dodges the anticipated film noir narrative gymnastics. And you may ask yourself, “was that gorilla really necessary?” But after an hour of pitch-perfect parody, these are minor quibbles. See it. Bring friends who don’t like theatre. If anything will convert them, it’s this.

65 Minutes, $10
 Parental Guidance 
Bus Stop Theatre Monday Sep 3, 9:15pm
 Tuesday Sep 4, 8:10pm
 Thursday Sep 6, 5:25pm 
Friday Sep 7, MIDNIGHT NOIR SPECIAL Saturday Sep 8, 3:50pm

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Athena in Love, directed by Garry Williams, reimagines the Greek myth of Pallas and Athena (in which Pallas is killed) as a fable of mutual healing. Seeking to fulfill her dying friend’s wish that she aid the Gorgon Medusa, Athena (Keelin Jack) embarks on a quest that takes her beyond the limits of Greek mythology. It’s the performances that make this play: Kim Parkhill and Andrew Kasprzak deliver especially impressive hat-tricks as Pallas/Medusa/Eve and Oedipus/Orpheus/Hephaistos respectively.

Julie Strong’s script suffers from an uncertainty of tone—sock puppets just aren’t as funny after an attempted rape—and its humor wavers between cheesy and charming. But it is unfailingly sweet and well-intentioned, and its cheeky ending made me grin. Ticket sales are donated to Laing House.

60 Minutes, $10
Parental Guidance

DANSpace, 1531 Grafton

Monday Sep 3, 1:30 PM

Monday Sept 3, 6:30 PM

I guarantee you’ll leave smiling and humming from the once Upon a Theater Collective’s short, sweet production Some Sunny Day.

I don’t want to give away any of the gentle surprises, so suffice it to say it’s a modern-day love story with a twist from the 50’s. The ending is sad, but inevitable.

Jessica Barry and Meghan Hubley play the starry-eyed lovers and Lesley Smith plays the cute and kooky friend. This trio of actors has real chemistry and charm, and their acting is delightfully naturalistic.

The music, both recorded and live, hits all the right emotional chords. Barry’s voice is outstanding.

Some Sunny Day is one of those Fringe gems that delivers a memorable theatre experience for mere pocket change. Burn rubber to this boss show!

40 Minutes
$7
Parental Guidance
Theatre Nova Scotia’s The Living Room

Saturday Sep 1 • 8:15-8:55
Sunday Sep 2 • 8:15-8:55
Tuesday Sep 4 • 9:00-9:40
Thursday Sep 6 • 7:30-8:10
Sunday Sep 9 • 7:30-8:10