Die Roten Punkte — Super Musikant (Super Musician)
By Otto & Astrid Rot
Presented by Tobian & Bartholomew from Berlin, Germany
Featuring Otto Rot and Astrid Rot
Tarragon Theatre Mainspace
Reviewed by Matt McGreachy
Every so often, we meet people who are born entertainers. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a family dinner or a parody of a German glam-punk-rock band, they are always on the ball and always on exhibit. Otto Rot and Astrid Rot, the duo behind Die Roten Punkte, are clearly such people.
Throughout their show, they deliver consistently hilarious performances, and their seamless ability to mix the glam-punk sound and the clearly fucked up relationship this brother-and-sister duo have was impressive. It was like watching a mixture between an Eddie Izzard stand-up routine and a tarted-up David Bowie fan perform music worthy not only of parody, but also perhaps of my beloved Scissor Sisters.
Particular favourites of mine were “Astrid’s Drinking Song,” which involved audience participation in singing the chorus, and “Ich bin nicht ein Robaten, I am a Lion,” which featured the best dance numbers in the whole show. The songs were funny, but they were hilarious in the context of the whole show.
These two clearly have a wonderful schtick, and stuck to it for the whole show, including afterwards when they were outside the theatre hocking Die Roten Punkte t-shirts and pins. In order to make such thorough and thoroughly enjoyable fun of a genre, you have to actually know it very well and have an appreciation for what it is and what its limitations are. This duo clearly loves the glam-punk they parody, and that love infects the audience throughout. A show not to be missed!
‘Beth
By Andrea Rosenfield
Presented by Zero-Sum Games
Featuring Andrea Potvin and Vladimir Cara
St. Vladimir’s Theatre
Reviewed by Matt McGreachy
Normally I’d love to write a review trashing a show: after all, it’s a lot of fun. But I take no pleasure in telling you that Andrea Rosenfield’s ‘Beth, a play inspired by the Scottish Tragedy, sucked the fun out of it for me. After all, where do I begin?
Perhaps I could start with just the basics: actors Angela Potvin and Vladimir Cara were often difficult to understand onstage, were poorly lit for major monologues, and lacked any genuine portrayal of the characters of an evil mother-and-son duo. I felt that the best they could do was to memorize the words on the page, and then spit them out at the audience. I’ve seen more compelling acting in documentaries. The staging of the work was laughable, with actors often doubling roles on stage and speaking to “each other” in a mirror. While this was no doubt a deliberate choice designed to heighten the strangeness of the play, it was all I could do to keep from laughing in the silent theatre.
The bigger problem is the writing itself. Rosenfield seems to believe that profound writing and august themes can just happen; that if someone just works hard enough, they will produce a work that is enduring and canonical. Profundity is not written like a review: just sit at the computer and go. Profundity is discovered, gradually unearthed, and mined. This conceit, that by borrowing a theme one can write a play of Shakespearean proportions, is so flawed that not even William Hutt could have saved it.
Crude Love
By Gillian Bennett and Russell Bennett
Presented by Big Smoke Productions from Vancouver
Featuring Gillian Bennett and Russell Bennett
Glen Morris Theatre
Reviewed by Daina Valiulis
My intention going in to every show I see is to look for things I like. I always root for the show and the performers until I find reason not to, which usually takes time, so it came as a bit of a shock to me when not even thirty seconds into this show I felt like a trapped rat in a cage.
I spent the next hour just waiting for it to be over.
The story is about a crude-oil-extraction worker, Phil, who falls in love with a tree-hugging, crazy environmentalist named Abbey. I do not, for the life of me, understand the need for the terrible Newfoundland accent put on by the actress playing Phil and I found the actor playing Abbey extremely irritating — he yelled a lot and didn’t have a moment of honesty. I didn’t believe in their relationship, I thought they had no chemistry, and the script was awful: I didn’t find it funny (although the audience I was seeing it with seemed to like it)
The message behind the play was to stop the Alberta tar sands: a very valid message but so poorly delivered. I do not understand why this show was the pick of the Fringe in Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Vancouver. Save the environment. Stop the tar sands. Don’t see this show.
Sherlock Holmes and the First English Gentleman
By Doug Warwick
Pesented by Seventeen Steps
Featuring Tina Sterling, Nicholas Cumming, and Peter Treadwell
Robert Gill Theatre
Reviewed by Daina Valiulis
I’ve never read Sherlock Holmes, but I’m familiar with the idea that he’s a supersleuth with an unbelievable attention to detail and capacity to solve even the toughest crime. Sherlock Holmes and the First English Gentleman has a complicated plot I don’t even think I could begin to describe. I must admit, I found the plot very hard to follow because of the amount of information being thrown at you constantly, not because the writing was bad.
However, despite this, I found myself entertained sheerly on the strength of the performers. Done very tongue-in-cheek with British accents (even the accents weren’t always convincing or consistent and yet, this didn’t bother me!). I found all three performers to be extremely committed to telling the story and making whatever multiple characters they played as distinct as possible. I loved the musical interlude in the show! It was campy and fun and the performers looked like they were enjoying themselves. So, if you’re going to watch this show, make sure you pay very close attention to the plot (you might even want to take notes), or you won’t get it. Or, you may very well just enjoy watching some good performers have some fun on stage!
Inferno Sonata
By Scott Sharplin
Presented by The August Assembly from Edmonton, Alberta
Featuring Scott Sharplin
St. Vladimir’s Theatre
Reviewed by Matt McGreachy
“Theatre,” August Strindberg tells us in this production, “is the domain of lies.” Once one becomes addicted to the thrill of these lies, it’s difficult to rival that level of excitement in ordinary life. Strindberg went mad searching for that level of excitement at the end of his life, becoming obsessed with alchemy and the pursuit of manufactured gold.
Inferno Sonata, adapted from the journals of Strindberg by author/performer Scott Sharplin, is a wonderful production that shows Strindberg’s descent into madness and his pursuit for gold and the excitement he once felt in the theatre. Set entirely in his attic room in Paris where the mad author concocted various poisonous elements in his quest for gold, and addressed directly to his “learned audience,” this show is a brilliant story about one of the most important playwrights of the modern period.
Sharplin’s wonderful adaptation and performance was enthralling from the moment the audience entered the theatre. His portrayal of the author’s descent into madness was extremely high energy without lapsing into irritation; the audience was afforded the opportunity to see the character’s paranoid ramblings and the emotional torment he experienced as rival Scandinavian Henrik Ibsen eclipsed his fame.
The show’s design was extremely complimentary to Sharplin’s performance. The set looked as you’d expect a paranoid schizophrenic’s room to look: like the room of a broken man obsessed with rediscovering his happiness. The incorporation of music by Grieg was a nice touch (the Peer Gynt Suite never seemed so haunting as it did when it was haunting the obsessed Strindberg). This show is a must-see for anyone who has caught the theatre bug, and knows the feeling that nothing else will seem so real as performing in the domain of lies.
