PLAYBOT: Earnest goes to camp
What great news it is that the respected Edmonton theatre company Teatro La Quindicina has dramatized and condensed for the stage all of the Ernest movies – which starred the late Jim Varney and will now feature Jeff Haslam in the titular role.
What? OK, got to read these press releases more carefully. It’s “Earnest,” not Ernest, and it’s not a guy but a character trait meaning honesty and conviction. Having very little of these are some of the characters in The Importance of Being Earnest, which has already been written – by Oscar Wilde more than 100 years ago. It’s billed as a “trivial comedy for serious people” – which certainly sounds like Teatro’s target market – and stars local legends Mark Meer and Ron Pederson as two guys who pretend to be “Ernest,” the guy, a different guy than Jim Varney’s Ernest, and not “earnest” as in honest.
Clear?!
Jeff Haslam directs the play, at the Varscona Theatre July 12-28.
Edmonton International Street Performers Festival
Clowns, fools and jugglers … but enough about City Council.
Man, that joke never gets old – nor for the most part does the entertainment at the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival. Hand-picked buskers from around the world, some from Australia, will congregate in Edmonton July 10-15 to elevate “street performance” to an ever higher art form than it already is. The bar keeps being raised – sometimes literally.
Don’t go downtown. Nothing but construction there. It’ll be nice when it’s finished. The street fest is now being held in “Gazebo Park” in Old Strathcona. You know, where the Fringe is – where, coincidentally, several of these aforementioned street performers will be next month. You see, when it’s winter in Australia, their buskers come here; vice versa in the Canadian winter. It’s a fruitful street performance cultural exchange program that assures more or less steady work for buskers the world over.
Which brings us to the awkward matter of monetary protocol: How much money should we give them? Should they have to give us money if they put us in their act against our will? Maybe. Some of them actually do.
Think of it this way: The average Fringe show costs about $12 a ticket and lasts an hour or more. A busker set usually clocks in around 10 minutes, so do the math and it’s $2 per person. That sounds a little low. They say you should pay more if you really liked it. Can we sell entertainment like a time share condo? Most professional street performers have a clever pitch for hat money they insert before, during or after the act; sometimes they try make you feel guilty for being cheap – sees a guy leave without paying and says, “Sir, when you get home, your dog will be dead.”
Also popular: “I’m not on welfare, so you can pay me now or you can pay me later” or “I don’t have to be perform for a living, I could be robbing your homes.”
Also think of it this way: You can decide for yourself in the first 30 seconds if an act is worth seeing. Don’t get that sort of sneak peek with indoor theatre.
Dirt Buffet Cabaret
Fans of “happenings” won’t want to miss this fundraiser for Mile Zero Dance, a one-off of “freaky fun and ecstatic experimentation” happening – hence the term – on Saturday, July 14 at 8 pm at the awesomely-named, if little-used Spazio Performativo, 10816 95 Street.
Next to Normal
Sometimes an amateur theatre company can take chances like pro companies can’t. It’s not just that all the actors are unpaid volunteers doing it for love, so expenses are down; it’s that the expectations maybe aren’t quite as high – which some might think is an insult to point out, but then the amateur companies can often get away with whatever the heck they want to do, with the results more often than not a pleasant surprise for everyone.
As it is with Next to Normal.
The venerable Walterdale Theatre has selected a difficult work for its latest show – a “rock” musical about mental illness. Playing July 4-14, Next to Normal is about a mother who suffers from bipolar disorder, and how her struggles affect her family. With book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, and music by Tom Kitt, it won three Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2010 – and Walterdale pulls it off.
Freewill Shakespeare Festival
Hamlet, I am your father!
No, that’s not true! That’s impossible!
Search your feelings. You know it to be true, forsooth!
NO! Goodnight, sweet Prince … ARRGHH!
That’s how it goes? A little foggy on our Shakespeare – which is why the Freewill Shakespeare Festival at Hawrewlak Park until July 15 is such a swell event to bone up on the guy considered the Western world’s finest playwright. Don’t argue.
If Hamlet (playing on even dates) is a little heavy for you, try Comedy of Errors (odd nights and matinees), which is a classic farce from the real olden school. In that one, we’re not sure whose father is whose!
READ: Review of Comedy of Errors
Forever Plaid
Imagine a hell where one is doomed to croon corny doo-wop numbers for all eternity, trapped at the very moment when that sort of stuff was being shoved aside to make way for the Beatles and other real rock ‘n’ roll.
But maybe one man’s hell is four men’s heaven – four guys with big dreams who formed a singing group in 1964, but were killed in a car crash on the way to their first big gig. They never got to enjoy the fame of their peers The Four Tops, The Four Aces and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The production in full swing at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre seems to bring a full ironic understanding of all the hokey comedy bits, deliriously awful choreography and painful patter one sees – or rather, saw – with the height of doo-wop music. At the same time, director Kate Ryan and her cast bring appreciation to these unforgettable pop ditties so firmly rooted in their time, celebrating a rock ‘n’ roll history that never was. Every night for all eternity – or when the show closes on July 29, whichever comes first.
