It is Friday. We are headed into the last weekend of Halifax Fringe. It seems unbelievable that the days have gone by so fast. Here’s a #FlashbackFriday for you to some reviews of shows that I saw on Monday and Tuesday. I’m a little behind, but I’m determined to catch up! Here we go!
Irreconcilable Differences: An Improvised Adventure with Kitty and the Bee. By Adrianne Gagnon and Bob Banks. The Old Pool Hall Theatre (6050-6070 Almon Street, down the first alley between The Waiting Room and Velos Pizza. The signs become more and more clear the closer you get to the building.)
Kitty and the Bee, the improv comedy duo of Adrianne Gagnon and Bob Banks, bring their show Irreconcilable Differences to the Halifax Fringe this summer. Their long form improv show brings us an entirely improvised play based on a suggestion from an audience member. At the show I attended Halifax Fringe Chairperson, April Hubbard, suggested “the lobby of a Fringe Show” as the location for Gagnon and Banks to play, which led to a hilariously meta-theatrical play about a couple going on a date and being thwarted by their inability to find the Halifax Fringe’s Old Pool Hall (the venue where we were sitting watching the show).
Gagnon and Banks are strong improvisers who support each other’s ideas and have a strong sense of pacing, both for plot and character development. Our story began with an extreme empath (Gagnon) struggling with the anxiety of not being able to find the venue for their date, and her partner (Banks) being extremely supportive and nurturing. Things escalated from there, as Gagnon and Banks continued to raise the stakes culminating in a marriage proposal, the implosion of all their deep-seated issues with one another, and the revelation of a secret from Banks’ character’s past that gave Gagnon’s character a disturbing (and hilarious) new insight into his psyche. We were treated to an extra layer of fun, since the play was set in Halifax and this is Banks’ first visit to our city, and he kept trying to make specific Haligonian references, which were not always entirely accurate, but were always funny. However, there was one line that he said, which shows that even though he hasn’t been here long, he has a deep understanding of our people, which was, “If the Vancouver [Fringe] show sucks, we’ll feel good about our Coast.” Great to have you here, Bob, stay as long as you’d like!
Irreconcilable Differences is a lot of fun, the play is always different, so you won’t know what to expect beyond a solid 45 minutes of laughing.
Irreconcilable Differences plays at the Old Pool Hall Theatre (6050-6070 Almon Street) at the following times:
Saturday September 8th 4:30pm
Sunday September 9th 12:30pm
Jon Blair: Live From the Garbage by Jon Blair. Plan B Co-Op (2180 Gottingen Street).
jon blair
Often when you examine the ways comedians congregate to create funny things you find groups of two or more people doing improv, groups of three or more doing sketch, and one person doing stand up. Enter: Jon Blair the solo-sketch artist, and immediately I’m impressed that what he’s doing on stage is even possible.
Jon Blair: Live From the Garbage feels like the Greatest Hits Record of Jon Blair’s solo sketches. As a solo-sketch performer it’s not just the premise of the sketch that is interesting, it’s also the imaginative way that being the only person on stage is used, both thematically, and also practically. Blair makes great use of voice overs to create the outside world, whether it’s a mom embarrassing her son in the midst of his weird demon-masked cyber dance party, or viewers calling in to connect with the host of sad new “reality show” called Cables and Cords, or rewriting the lyrics to Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys are Back in Town.” Blair also makes great use of props, specifically in a sketch where an employee is having a serious conversation with an action figure, for example, and his movement of said action figure is well choreographed and precise to great effect.
Nearly all the protagonists in Blair’s sketches are people who have been isolated and who have either been placed or have placed themselves in completely silly situations in order to try to connect with others. Blair continues to find the funny, the weird, and the absurd, but also gives us a touch of empathy for these bizarre characters and their shenanigans. My favourite sketch involves Dave Seville from Alvin and the Chipmunks. I won’t ruin it for you, but it’s a bit dark, it’s hilarious, and there’s pathos in it too, which I feel like sums up the best of Jon Blair.
Jon Blair: Live From the Garbage Plays at Plan B Co-op (2180 Gottingen Street) at the following times:
Friday September 7th 7:30pm
Saturday September 8th 11:30am & 9pm
Sunday September 9th 2pm & 7:40pm
Next to Normal by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt. Saints Alive Theatre Society. St. Ignatius Church (1288 Bedford Highway, Bedford).
Saints Alive! Theatre Society brings Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s Pulitzer Prize Winning musical Next to Normal to St. Ignatius Church, as part of the Halifax Fringe’s Bring Your Own Venue program. The musical centres on Diana, a wife and mother who struggles with bipolar disorder with delusions, and the ways in which her illness and the management of her illness affect her life and the lives of her family members.
The cast of Saints Alive’s production are all strong singers, so Yorkey and Kitt’s rock score is served well. The musicians are great, and the balance of sound within St. Ignatius Church is a good mix, although the cast’s giant microphones are distracting to the point that they seem to encumber the actors’ ability to get close to one another. The challenge in this production is that Next to Normal isn’t the kind of musical where performers can get by on their beautiful belting abilities alone. These characters are all incredibly complex, nuanced and three dimensional, and they need actors who are able to do justice to their intense emotional journeys. Becca Guilderson plays Natalie, Diana’s daughter, whose struggle with Perfectionism leads her down a dangerous path, and Deves Matwawana plays Henry, her boyfriend, who manages to be simultaneously a bad and a healthy influence on her throughout the show. Guilderson and Matwawana are the show’s strongest actors and we see Natalie and Henry and their relationship grow and change and we believe that they both really care about one another, which is crucial to the plot.
Dan, Diana’s husband, is characterized by the musical’s creators as, “Genuine. Constant. Tired,” but Brian Hart’s Dan comes across as constantly furious, to the point that there’s one scene where I thought he was going to hit Diana. This adds a level of psychological abuse, both to Diana and to Natalie, that doesn’t exist in the script, and it leaves the audience hoping Diana will leave. Similarly, Doug Van Loan plays Diana and Dan’s son, who is supposed to represent a perfect child, whose perfection is what lures Diana away from her imperfect reality and into a utopia in her mind and contributes to Natalie’s feelings of constant inferiority. Too often Van Loan acts like he’s an evil demon with truly malicious intentions towards his mother, which again, does a disservice to the metaphors in the story. Diane Carey’s Diana is well rooted in her detachment from her husband and her daughter and I liked the mixture of fear and flirtatiousness that she exhibits with her doctor. I wanted to see a stronger change in Diana between when she is medicated, when she is not medicated, and when she is grappling with memory loss after her ECT treatments. I think it would be helpful for all the cast members to continually think about tossing musical theatre stereotypes aside and finding ways of grounding their characters in reality, so that the scenes where Diana’s delusions manifest are more clearly in their own separate psychological sphere.
Next to Normal is an extremely ambitious undertaking for Fringe. It’s an important story, with an important message, and this production really does gorgeous justice to the music. I think some additional clarity about the characters, their relationships, and looking at the musical as though it were a dramatic play with music, would help raise the level of the acting to where the singing already excels.
Saints Alive Theatre Society’s Next to Normal plays at St. Ignatius Church (1288 Bedford Highway, Bedford) at the following times:
Friday September 7th at 8:00pm
Saturday September 8th at 8:00pm
Follow Saints Alive Theatre Society on Social Media. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram (@SaintsAliveTheatreSociety).
Halifax Fringe runs from August 30 to September 9th, 2018. For more information and to purchase tickets please visit http://halifaxfringe.ca or stop by The Bus Stop Theatre in person at 2203 Gottingen Street. The Bus Stop is the Festival Hub and the Main Box Office. You can also pick up a Fringe Guide there.
You can follow Halifax Fringe on Social Media: Facebook. Twitter. Instagram (@HalifaxFringe)
Hope to see you at Halifax Fringe!
