Review by Kristin Ramsey

This show has heart, and I commend Rob Salerno and Ten Foot Pole Theatre for putting this production on—the content is timely, challenging, and necessary.

It’s the first day back at school in Oshawa, Ontario after 14-year old Ollie killed himself. Ollie figure skated, sang, and was a big dreamer who believed that by being himself on the first day of high school and open about being gay, he could have a fresh start, make new friends, and share his zest for life; instead, he was tormented to tears, and ultimately took his own.

The school’s art teacher sets up a safe space after school for students to talk freely about Ollie and his death, and so begins Salerno’s one-man show on homophobia, bullying, and the cycle of victimization.

While the characters felt a bit one-dimensional—Salerno portrays the usual high school stereotypes: the nerd, the jock, the student class president, the freak—it was somewhat necessary in order to get through numerous perspectives in a one-hour show; without enough time to get to know each individual in-depth, having the immediately relatable stock characters worked. (And these personalities are, to varying degrees, still realities of high school.) Certain characters did feel more authentic, particularly Leyla, who was closest to Ollie, and Salerno’s portrayal of her mixed emotions of guilt, confusion, and sadness was powerful.

The show takes a look at what it means to be a perpetrator, a victim, a witness, and an authority figure, and brings to light the sobering reality of bullying, reminding viewers that it’s much more serious than Slurpee sloshing on Glee. A good point is made by one character in the performance: if this harassment happens to adults, it’s considered slander and assault, and treated as such. But what recourse exists for kids in schools? And how can we change this? While Salerno takes no sides and these questions are left unanswered, First Day Back offers a good starting point for these conversations. At times funny, at others heartbreaking, Salerno’s performance deserves your support, and with two shows left there’s just enough time.

Details and showtimes at the Vancouver Fringe Festival website.

Watch your wallets, ladies and gentlemen. Felony—part history lesson, part how-to session, part medley of misdemeanours—was a show unlike any I’ve ever seen…or I should say, participated in. This is one of the Fringe Festival’s on-site performances, and it takes you on a wild chase through the parking lots, alleys, and shadowy sidewalks of Granville Island. Without giving too much away, be prepared to move quickly and get hands on in this one.

Your night starts with a Fringe Festival volunteer recounting tales of past drug smuggling and bootlegging in the area, setting the mood for what awaits you as you walk down a cement stretch towards a hooded man. Under the Big Yellow Crane, you meet your host, Chris, who (according to the Fringe Festival guide) is Vancouver’s most notorious pickpocket. And he knows his stuff. He introduces himself—he’s disarmingly likeable and personally shakes everyone’s hand—and then proceeds to teach you the tricks of the pickpocket trade, lingo and all. After an unexpected turn of events and an encounter with an irritated law enforcer, it’s time to get down to some shady business.

Chris, played by Allen Morrison, is a convincing instigator and ringleader as he whisks you through Granville Island, and there are plenty of opportunities for misconduct along the way. So what do you dare do? And of course there’s that inevitable question in the back of your mind: what happens if you get caught?

Felony offers a good mix of fun and provocative content. From the moment you meet Chris, who charismatically pulls you into his world and cleverly acquaints you with your fellow felons, you find yourself part of an adventurous chain of criminal events. Whether or not you choose to partake in them, you’ll certainly never be fooled by a “reco” again.

Get showtimes and details about Felony. 

The Best, Man is a surprisingly sweet play, considering it starts with the lines “Fuuuck!” and “Open sesame, bitch!”

The first is uttered by a groom who is contemplating making a run for it with less that an hour before his wedding ceremony, and the second is spoken by the rambunctious best man of the title, who falls flat on his face drunk (and barefoot) just after entering the hotel room.

The Best Man at first seems far too wasted to be of much use for anything but spitting out hilarious and filthy diatribes about Forrest Gump, identical twins, and strip clubs (“I just want to talk to those girls about their self-esteem and give them a happy meal.”) He accidentally spills coffee all over the Groom’s shirt, and the nervous breakdown this event triggers reveals the deeper truths, worries and resentments at the heart of both the relationship of the groom and the unseen bride, and that of the two male friends.

Arlen Kristian Tom’s script hits hard with a flurry of one-liners that had the crowd at the performance I attended howling. Some attendees were chanting “Threeway town! Threeway town!” outside after the show, which is a pretty excellent tribute to the quality of the jokes. The play takes a major tonal shift in the third act, and while the more serious material was quite effective, the change in tone could have been foreshadowed better earlier. Mack Gordon is moving and emotionally convincing as the frustrated and neurotic Groom, while John Voth as the Best Man owned the crowd from the moment of his entrance with a full throated physical performance. A pitfall of two-handers is that there’s often an imbalance between the two characters, and the Best Man does indeed get most of the best lines, and gets to both bully the Groom and play the hero.

Underneath the swearing and hilarious crudity, The Best, Man is wise about the envies and pleasures of male friendship. It accurately captures the tense feel and the epiphanies of a night of crisis. One of the Best Man’s monologues, a seemingly pointless reminiscence about a drunken high school night that turns unexpectedly poignant, will stay with this reviewer. And that line about what else is like a box of chocolates, probably will too.

Hip Hop Shakespeare Live Music Videos packs loads of fun into its 45 minute running time. It is virtuosic, danceable, provocative, and to those that know either their Shakespeare or their hip-hop, awe-inspiring.

Melanie Karin and David Benedict Brown, who married five days before their Fringe debut, take some of the best and biggest songs of 90s and 00s hip-hop, but change the lyrics to reflect the plots of Shakespeare plays. They maintain the complex flows and rhyme schemes of the original songs, dancing with energy and wit all the while. Clever references to Taylor Swift and LL Cool J videos are blended with an audacious and irreverent script that frequently causes the listener to make new connections between the violent worlds of gangsta rap and Shakespeare tragedies. The individual reinterpretations are often brilliant, as well: Othello is redone as “99 Problems” (“You crazy for this one Shakes! It’s your moor!”) with Iago playing the clueless cop. Ms. Jackson is retold as a tale of two households in Verona, with both Karin and Brown belting out “I’m Sorry Ms. Capulet!” And their choice of song for Hamlet is so genius, I don’t want to spoil it in this review – but rest assured I will be raving about it to anyone willing to listen for at least the next few months.

Oh yeah, and these kids can rap, too: Karin flows ferocious while successfully impersonating a group of very different rappers, and Brown’s solo turn on 2Pac’s “Hit ‘Em Up” (Richard III) just about knocks the crowd dead. They received a well-deserved standing O at the performance I watched, and after the show Sad Mag caught up with the couple to chat over some drinks.

SM: So how did you get the idea for Hip-Hop Shakespeare?

Melanie: I’m a huge Shakespeare fan and a huge hip-hop fan, obviously. And then a few years ago, I was auditioning for the national theatre school acting program, and I got a callback. At the callback, they make you do a play in three minutes, but when I was thinking about what play I wanted to do, Macbeth is my favorite play. But I was doing a lot of hip hop karaoke at the time and I really loved that and I was just like “I just wanna rap!” That’s how I feel most comfortable performing. And then I started thinking about making a rap parody out of Macbeth. I wanted to do a rap song where there was a little bit of back and forth. When I did Macbeth in school, my teacher said, “It’s so much sexier than people think it is,” and when I think of the sexiest hip-hop song, it’s “Doin’ It” by LL Cool J and Leshaun, because when that song came out, that was the song that you didn’t want your parents to know you were listening to. Because you’re like, “What if they think I’m masturbating right now?” Then I showed it to Dave…

Dave: I was almost in tears with pride, even though we had just started dating I was absolutely beside myself. That’s what then inspired me, because I wanted to be with Mel. I wanted to show her I could do it too. Even though she hadn’t seen Richard III the first time I did it, I essentially wrote it for her, which I guess I’ve never even told you.

SM: What do you see as the similarities between hip hop and Shakespeare?

M: People don’t realize how controversial Shakepseare was in his day, that people saw him as sort of uncouth and base. Even though he had the queen’s endorsement there were a lot of plebes that would go and see Shakespeare. There is so much violence and misogyny and a lot of the things people hate about hip-hop is actually all in Shakespeare.

D: There was a reviewer in Ottawa who said that the violence in the gangsta rap world correlates very well to the violence in the Shakespearean world.

M: I think the easiest comparison is that it’s rhythmic language. Nobody ever spoke in Shakespearean verse, ever. It is a rhythmic poetic language, so in that sense hip-hop is very similar. and hip-hop is also all about storytelling and personas and egos…

SM: And monologues.

D: And it’s a real window into the human condition.

SM: Are you concerned at all about audiences understanding the references?

D: Well, it was a concern for me from the get-go, but I think even just giving people glimpses is good. It’s the same with Shakespeare: I think there are very few people who go see a Shakespeare play, who and know and understand everything that’s going on, because it’s an advanced rhythmical language, just like hip-hop. You have to listen to it many times before it ever sets in, unless you’re Melanie, who can memorize it after listening to it once.

M: But the cool thing is, it means that people come to our shows more than once, which is great!

D: We planned that…

M: It’s like a hip-hop song, you hear it once and you’re like, ” That was amazing! I have to listen to that again so I can get it.”

SM: What kind of responses have you received from the audience?

M: The best was this older lady and her husband who saw our show the first time asked, “How did you come up with those lines? For Othello, you said ’99 problems and a bitch ain’t one.'” She didn’t get that we were parodying real hip-hop songs, which I thought was adorable. And I said “Oh, that’s actually a Jay-Z song, you should listen to him”, and she was like, “Maybe I’ll start.”

I think some people are so put off by hip-hop and are think, “I won’t like that!” and so they never expose themselves to it. And then when they actually hear it and see the energy and excitement behind it they’re like, “That’s actually kinda cool!”

Get showtimes and details at the Vancouver Fringe Festival website!

Review by Kristin Ramsey

“Night after night…”

Whether drunkenly shouting, sitting in devastating silence, or recounting movie plots, the characters in Three More Sleepless Nights bring to life uncomfortably strained human relationships. In the late hours of the night, when the world becomes quiet and they can’t ignore their troubles any longer, each couple reaches a breaking point—and you’re invited into the bedroom to watch.

New theatre company “O, o, o, o” has mounted an innovative production of Caryl Churchill’s three-act play. The show takes place in a different apartment each night—the first half of the run took place in east Vancouver, and the remaining shows are staged around the South Granville area. Finding ten willing hosts within walking distance of the two meeting locations (all remaining shows begin at Studio 16 on Granville Street) was clearly no small feat, just one example of O, o, o, o’s commitment to creating a distinct audience experience.

Themes of intimacy transcend the play and become part of the viewing experience too. As we’re told by director Conor Wylie after walking (alongside the cast!) to the evening’s venue, each member of the audience is responsible for his or her own viewing experience. Wylie likens this to being your own cameraman: choose close-ups or long shots as you please, walk around, sit down, follow the action. You’re watching the story unfold in someone’s real personal space, so be prepared to get close to the actors and cozy with your fellow audience members.

Furthermore, like the audience, the actors have never been in the space before, so they encounter and explore their set and props live in front of viewers. Watching the rehearsed alongside the improvised adds yet another unique dimension to the production, and it is captivating from start to finish. Three More Sleepless Nights is certainly a standout in the Fringe’s 2012 lineup, snag one of the last few tickets if you can.

Find more information and showtimes for Three More Sleepless Nights at the Vancouver Fringe Festival website.

Neither a recent refurbishment nor a growing clientele of young urban sophisticates can displace the storied history of Vancouver’s Waldorf Hotel. Since 1947, the squat two-storey complex on the corner of Hastings and Maclean has served as a home, a waypoint, and a signpost for all the in-betweens and not-quite-theres passing through Vancouver. It’s a place where stories overlap, but are never fully told, where “friends” always come in air quotes, and where everyone is on a need to know basis.

In Squidamisu Theatre’s current Fringe Festival production of George F. Walker’s Suburban Motel cycle, this ragged history plays a starring role. Mounted entirely in one of the Waldorf Hotel’s guest rooms before a tiny audience of seventeen, Squidamisu’s iteration of Suburban Motel revels in the legacy of its stage and makes good on the text’s deep commitment to a kind of gritty, urban realism

Lit using only with the room’s fixtures, and relying completely on the sounds of the street and bar ruckus below for ambience, the cycle tells six distinct, but vaguely overlapping stories of loss, desperation, crime, and betrayal.

In “The End of Civilization,” which I was fortunate enough to attend on its opening night, Henry and Lily have lost it all. Out of work and low on funds (thanks to Henry’s recent firing), they’re forced to trundle their two children off to Lily’s sister’s house while they bed down in a seedy motel. Henry spends his days desperately looking for work in a world he can’t stand; a world filled with greedy, profit-grubbing bosses and the “poor bastards” forced to kiss their feet, trading in their principles for a crack at what little money there is to go around.

Meanwhile Lily, with nerves and patience wearing thin, turns to sex work after befriending Sandy, the razor sharp but still gentle prostitute who lives in the next suite. Add to the mix a string of violent crimes and a mismatched pair of homicide detectives and you end up with a wonderful, claustrophobic, tremendously well-acted drama shot through with clever laughs, blistering tension, and a truly noir sensibility.

It likely goes without saying that pulling this all off in a tiny, sweltering (seriously, if you go, hold on to your program. You’ll need it to keep cool) hotel room is no mean feat. Cycle producer Richard Stroh, who also appears in “The End of Civilization” as buttoned-down detective Max, however, says he thrived on the challenge.

“People,” says Stroh, “will often do ‘Risk Everything’ and ‘Problem Child,’ or maybe they’ll do ‘Problem Child’ and ‘End of Civilization,’ ones that are a little more popular. We said ‘No. we’re gonna do all six.”

Working from Walker’s only staging direction–that all six shows must take place in the same run-down motel room–Stroh, Associate Producer Matthew Kowalchuck, and their team of directors made an absolute commitment to a hyper-realist production. “Let’s make it so it’s dogma,” he said, ”where we’re using the reality of one space, one seedy hotel room–and that’s your set. You gotta deal with the elements, the noise, the club downstairs. And that’s when we thought of the Waldorf.”

Such a bold staging choice is certainly a gamble, but for Stroh and crew, it pays off handsomely. As Max grills Henry on his erratic behaviour, sirens scream down Hastings Street; as tensions mount and emotions reach a boiling point, the room grows hot and humid from the crowding of bodies; as Henry confronts the painful reality of an economy more concerned with executive profits than the well being of workers, we’re reminded of Vancouver’s own economic injustices which, only a few blocks away, rear their heads.

These resonances between Walker’s words and the performance site anchor the production’s almost single-minded commitment to realism. As Stroh puts it, “we wanted to create an entity that has a prime directive: simplicity, real space, real lighting. In the realism of Walker, do the text respect.” In this regard “The End of Civilization” succeeds admirably.

But, in the true spirit of the Waldorf, even this commitment to realism isn’t necessarily what it seems. After all, the show ultimately shirks the voyeuristic mode of “peering in,” often deployed as a realist trope, in favor of a decidedly more exhibitionistic presentation. As audience members, we’re not asked to sneak glances through drawn shades at something “actually” happening. Rather, we’re directly inside the suite, perched on the stage, implicated in the action. In this way, we are constantly alerted to the fact that, despite the hyperrealist trappings, the ensemble is performing for an assembled group, and that group is itself performing the role of audience.

This tacit nod to the inescapability of performance resonates wonderfully with Walker’s text, making visceral the identity play, secrecy, and denials at its centre. In Stroh’s words, Walker’s characters are “always on a show. With the detectives, we’re constantly playing games and tricks with the people we’re dealing with. We’re constantly lying to people, pretending to be people that we’re not.”

The rest of the cast is caught in similar circuits of deceit. Henry must perform modesty and gratitude for his would-be bosses, even as he smolders against them, and Lily must play to male desires if she is to preserve the illusion of sanctity in which she swaddles her children.

Ultimately, “The End of Civilization” becomes a bewildering game of smoke and mirrors in which everyone, even the audience, is caught. Lucky for us, it’s a game that entertains, entices, and shines with outstanding performances. “The End of Civiliation,” and the rest of the Suburban Motel cycle, is sure to be one of the highlights of this year’s Fringe.

Get showtimes and details for Suburban Motel at the Fringe Festival website. Shows until September 16, limited seating.

Chlamydia Dell’Arte is billed as a “sex-ed burlesque,” but it plays more like a two-woman variety show. Twelve acts on sexual topics- from oral sex techniques to the differences in meaning between “transvestite”, “transgender,” and “transsexual,” are punctuated by brief videos starring the same two women (Gigi Naglak and Meghann Williams) in granny (not tranny) get up, introducing the sex ed topics to the “class.” Other video segments between acts feature real women sharing their own experiences and views on sexuality.

I wanted to love this show, but like most sexual encounters it was a mix of pleasure and awkwardness. The weakness of a variety show is always that the best acts throw into sharp relief the shortcomings of the ones that don’t quite work. My favourite was a recitation of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, performed as a frenzy of mutual masturbation “O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?” moans Williams clad as Romeo. Naglak’s dance routines- a menstruation ballet and a feathery fan dance- are sparkling. But a monologue by Williams that starts out with a slyly humorous recanting of pre-date grooming rituals suddenly veers into a dark rape anecdote was unsettling and out of place in a show highlighting the weird and wonderful aspects of sex.

A few technical glitches cropped up- not unexpected for a first Fringe show- and Naglak and Williams confidently and gracefully carried on. They make for an entertaining contrast, and their different styles keep each segment entertainingly different and unexpected. And from a lady’s perspective, I loved seeing a show that explores sex and sexuality from a female perspective- after all, you’ll never find another show out there in which a woman converses in depth about contraceptive options with her talking vagina. If the phrase “talking vagina” appeals to you, don’t miss it. If the phrase “talking vagina” weirds you out, then you could probably use the perspective offered by Chlamydia Dell’Arte anyway- so don’t miss it.

Catch Chlamydia Dell’Arte at the Vancouver Fringe- details here!

Combining scientific theories with an endearing group of misfits, Fishbowl offers the Fringe Festival’s trademark quirkiness and thought provoking content in a hilarious one-man show. The play, written and performed by Mark Shyzer and directed by Evalyn Parry, is a festival favourite and has received widespread acclaim for its clever look at loneliness, relationships, and unexpected connections—it didn’t disappoint.

The characters, while eccentric and outrageous, are relatable and believable: the quintessential high school science nerd confides in her pet goldfish; the angst-ridden teen rejects his privileged suburban name (Francis) in favour of “Ravyn” and gripes that he doesn’t relate to anyone he is related to; the quick-witted but bitter dying old man ponders his last words with his only companion, his comatose neighbour in the nursing home he resides in; and a jaded middle-aged woman clings to her gay ex-husband and gives shameless accounts of mishaps aboard a gay cruise (“a boat, not the scientologist”, she notes).

Shyzer moves seamlessly from one character to the next, transforming his voice and mannerisms to great effect, in a cycle of monologues that connect in unexpected ways by the end of the play. A sparse set and minimal use of props (a solitary chair, a hanging aquarium, a science report, and a flashlight) are all that is needed—Shyzer and his motley quartet of characters take centre stage.

You can appreciate the piece for its humour and wit—Shyzer peppers the play with awesome one-liners (“What’s your favourite vegetable?” the old man asks his neighbour) and physics buffs will appreciate nods to Stephen Hawking and the Heisenberg principle—but there are also layers of meaning as the play cleverly incorporates theories of physics and interconnectivity throughout. Brilliantly written, from start to finish Shyzer’s Fishbowl is a force.

Click for more details about Fishbowl at the Vancouver Fringe Festival.