FRINGE: 4 plays for short attenti …
In the mood for a quickie?
Not that kind of one, mind you, but Dentures (Stage 28) is a 32-minute square-on-the-nose production works well for those short in attention spans.
This production is a comic farce of a tale of what happens when two homeless bros in their 20s move into an old folk’s home on the sly, and one on them, the caddish, fittingly named Chad – you know, of Chad and Stacey fame – puts the moves on the geriatric sweetheart of Abe, the elderly cherubic landlord. The actor playing Abe may have been in his 20s but he had such an awesome Santa Claus beard he needs to start hiring himself out for Christmas parties.
The play is tautly written, with such an economical script it’s pretty much been carved right to the bone. If it was an entree at a fashionable Beverly Hills restaurant, half of Hollywood would be lining up to chow down on its 0% fat content. Viewers should know that what is there is utilized to 100% of its capacity. This piece is humorous, entertaining, and well acted in most places by four skilled performers with a bit of an undersold gift for physical comedy and cute sight gags – but alas, something was missing. No, it wasn’t the laugh track-sound effects controller missing around half of their cues. It wasn’t until the curtain call that the remaining puzzle piece could be put into place.
If you have an hour to spare, or God forbid are a 20-something male jones-ing to live out a GILF fantasy by proxy, by all means pencil this one in.
3 out of 5
***
Business As Usual (Stage 23) shares the comic misadventures of Jergenson and Jonson, two workaday schmoes who just happen to work for the worst company ever: or, as the latest pop psych prattling pundit for corporate wellness would describe it (insert name here) – THE BEST COMPANY EVER!!!
You might think the storyline would be centered around their emerging awareness of some greater version of life existing outside the corporations castle walls and attempts to get out – but no, you would be wrong: these guys’ brains melted and oozed out of their ears decades before.
The comic motif they riff on for the entirety of the performance quite ingeniously centers around the effects their indoctrination into their employer’s moronic system has done to their brains.
Writer Morgan Grau – also in the role of Jergenson – has already figured out all that HR garble you hear at your own place of employment is just a big steaming pile, and maniacally rips it to shreds, whacking us over the head with a few of the leftover chunks. It felt kind of nice, too, like a giant foamy hammer – until we can’t help but be thoroughly entertained by the entire escapade.
These two fellows are convinced they are living the dream: submitting their souls to endless vapid procedures, writing redundant reports that no one ever reads and “participating” in continual random monitoring of their “progress” by a cybernetic HR manager whose office is located somewhere between the sixth and seventh circles of hell. She sounded really nice, though. They think they are model employees, but they keep getting told they need to be more like Karen in Finances. These poor fellows try so hard to do things the right way and fail every single time. Where’s their breaking point?
We’ve arrived. Their lives enter full on meltdown mode when Jonson breaks a pen. They argue about how to respond and conclude the only thing they can do is consult the corporate manual. Complete chaos ensues – comically manic breakdowns, murders, wet willies, real live fight sequences – quite impressively done too, on so small a stage – along with tales of marriages to mattresses, and reports of entire families being purchased for the low, low price of $16.99.
Further deterioration in the already tragicomic sequence occurs as Jergenson struggles to accept that the fax machine he’s been using for years is actually a shredder, and on and on and on into the wild blue yonder of a truly inspired zaniness.
My God, Morgan Grau, what is going on in that head of yours? This is a brilliant piece of work.
5 out of 5
***
A Golden Girls’ Tribute: Sofie’s Wild Ride (Stage 32) takes characters straight out of the ’80s sitcom Golden Girls and disguised them in name only. Fans of the show will easily be able to spot who’s who – and they tried to turn it into a morality play on how we should be actually treating our loved ones.
It fails.
Sofie is the cranky matriarch in a group of four who dies after an untimely gastronomic incident. God appears, and ushers Sofie through a series of past events in her life. The intention? To see if she can learn anything from past mistakes.
Much like the version of the same character on TV (Sophia, played by Estelle Getty), Sofie’s character never develops. She learns next to nothing about her behavior, as she’s too busy being impressed with her ability to pithily put others down with scathing one-liners.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with the performance in terms of the actors. Each of them milked the most out of what the script gave them, with the exception of the actress playing Sofie, who gave a remarkable performance pretty darn close to the sitcom, with impeccable comic timing and a persnickety personality.
The failure here was in the material. This play set itself up to go way further than was able to deliver. We may not have been expecting a 30-minute version of Waiting For Godot, but introducing a Dickensian plot device, doing virtually nothing with it, and delivering what was a half-assed sitcom plotline, turned it into the theatrical equivalent of a sucking chest wound. As for the God character, if the real version of this dude is as clueless as the one from this play, maybe the human race collectively committing suicide wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Shockingly little thought went into developing this character.
So after expressing angry judgment of Sofie’s narcissistic and destructive treatment of her daughter and her friends, “God” allows her to go back to her life in form of the patented Dallas TV plot twist. Why would the playwright seek to explore a real issue – how women can and do sabotage each other in their relationships with others – and then botch it so completely? It was a set-up and a let-down.
Golden Girls featured solid performances that ended up being criminally undersold by weak material.
2 out of 5
***
Editor’s note: The play Upright has now ended its run at the Edmonton Fringe festival.
Upright (Stage 19) is a much too brief exploration of a day in the life of two homeless men.
It starts not long after one of them acquires an easily identifiable former body part of the unidentified town’s number one hoodlum – one of his teeth. Chaos ensues in the life of one peace loving and easy going fellow (played by Colten Bear), who’s learned the value of staying out of trouble while on the street. He gets paid an untimely visit at his camp by a happy-go-lucky but manipulative and troublemaking friend (played by Kole Durnford) in possession of the bad dude’s tooth. The quiet fellow just wants his friend to leave him alone, as once he gets the skinny on what the friend has been up to, he (correctly) surmises trouble isn’t far behind.
The piece takes a gritty and unflinching glimpse at the dangerous situations homeless people are subjected to on a daily basis. At the same time, it takes time to affirm these characters humanity, allowing them to share a few moments of care and kindness for the other – mostly from Bear’s character to Durnford’s. They know as well as everyone else that life is not just about looking out for themselves. It also features a shockingly violent and realistic sequence – no actors appeared harmed in the production of this play – he level of which most Fringe theatre goers will never experience. The state of being homeless is outside the wildest imagination of most people – and this play injected a degree of reality into proceedings that most people could otherwise barely conceive.
The only flaw worth discussing is the play’s length. It was the theatrical equivalent of driving with half a tank of gas. With a little more foresight, they could have gone twice as far with it. Like some shorter pieces at the Fringe this year, Upright deserved greater depth. The characters are interesting and engaging, the story has a real element of suspense, and the performances of all three actors are superlative. Of note is Landon Nesbitt as the town dirtbag “Lopez.” It’s rare that a character in a play can make such an impression with so little time spent on stage.
3 out of 5
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