FRINGE 2019: 2 scary HORROR SHOWS
It’s been a years-long quest to find a good horror at the Fringe that isn’t a comedy. Pickin’s are slim, lemme tell ya. Are artists SCARED they won’t be able to really scare people without having to yuk it up at every turn? Must they laugh in the face of DEATH?
Short answer: Maybe.
However, I found two truly chilling ones this year – and there may be more, lurking. LURKING, I say!
FEAR and LOATHING and LOVECRAFT
Stage 13 (Old Strathcona Public Library)
There’s been a mania of pop culture reference-riddled shows at the Fringe in recent times – including by local Mark Meer in his Walking Dead parody last year. I never watched the show, so I didn’t get it.
Now he’s got a new one-man show – a mash-up of Hunter S. Thompson and H.P. Lovecraft. The question remains: Does one have to be familiar with the source material to enjoy it?
The surprising answer is no.
This gonzo adventure stands alone – and you don’t need to have read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (or seen the movie) to guess what “gonzo” means. It means “blitzed.” On drugs. Free mind. It’s a term for a style of journalism invented in the ‘70s by the late author Hunter S. Thompson, wherein the chosen gonzo writer spews out every twisted thought or experience that pops into his head, into a typewriter, in those days. Gonzo journalism.
This inspired play fits the bill perfectly. Meer does a bang-on impression of Johnny Depp impersonating Hunter S. Thompson in a fascinating “what-if” scenario, written by Meer and TJ Dawe: What if Hunter, with his drug-induced “imagined” terrors in Las Vegas, was introduced to the actual nightmare of the H.P. Lovecraft universe in the mysterious “Miskatonic County” in Massachusetts? Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
And no, you need not have read Lovecraft. This literary horror legend is best experienced for the first time. In the dark. Alone.
No LSD needed for this journey! Although Hunter did ingest some strange ‘shrooms given to him by an amphibian mutant that eventually led him to Nixon. Long story.
And we’re not going to tell it here! There’s a Greyhound bus trip, odd encounters, hysterical commentary, confusion, lots of drug taking, and violence. It doesn’t end well. Nixon was the Trump of Hunter S. Thompson’s day, a president reviled and disgraced – and lampooned here by Meer with another bang-on impression. The depth of the Republican’s evil that Hunter touched on is made even more disgustingly vivid in FEAR and LOATHING and LOVECRAFT – complete with tentacle porn monsters, the erotic electroshock torture of a prominent senator, the Freemasons (of course), and an evil Lovecraft monster named Cthulhu who sleeps deep under the Earth, dreaming. And waiting.
And OK, damn it, this is billed as a comedy, and Meer is a Canadian comedy legend. But while there are some good jokes here and there, the core of this piece is genuinely horrifying, thanks to a gonzo idea, and a flawless feat of convincing performance loaded with a message far more frightening than anything H.P. Lovecraft ever came up with.
5 out of 5
