Pick Me A Show

Notorious Strumpet & Dangerous Girl  - ★★★★★  Summerhall Main Hall - Venue 26 - Ticketing Info 21:55 - Aug 3-12, 14-19, 21-26

Notorious strumpet: she stole my phone, like she stole my heart...but I still haven’t gotten my heart back.

Full disclosure, I was on my second pint when I went in to Notorious Strumpet. But I promise neither that, nor that fact that we were offered tea, coffee, and biscuits altered my opinion. OK, maybe the biscuits did. Note to performers: BRING BISCUITS, automatic five stars!

But even without the biscuits, this show is easy to love. This was another suggestion of my flatmate, B, but I was brought to it by our mutual friend R so lets just say they BOTH picked this one for me. Once again, this is one where I turned up without even knowing the name until we were in the queue to go in.

The show is framed as an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. While I’ve never been to one, I have known someone who was a member and so now I understood about the tea and coffee and biscuits...it all made sense! Very cleverly done and an initial tick in the favour of our featured performer, Jess Love.

One member of our group loves the chance to interact with performers, so insisted on sitting in the front row. Always terrifying, but in the performance you had no idea what might happen. Luckily, Love seemed to have a sixth sense for how far she could push boundaries and how uncomfortable to make the audience before, much like in her trapeze act, she pulled things back to safety.

This show is funny, insightful, and exciting. I was a little shocked by the nudity (you can take the girl out of the Bible Belt, but you can’t put a naked woman on stage with her saying “oh my stars and garters!”), but it’s nudity that makes sense within the context of the show. It helps tell the story, it doesn’t just shock you or titillate you, it exposits! (I’m coining the phrase Expository Nudity from here on out).

A lot was happening on stage, from circus performance, to comedy, to confessional, and there were lots of props and costume changes (see also: nudity), but the show didn’t rely on any gimmicks or props for the sake of props. Everything was a tool to tell the story, using the skills Love has in circus, comedy, and storytelling. 

Casus: You & I  - ★★★★★ Assembly Roxy Central - Venue 139 - Ticketing Info 15:10 - Aug 4-12, 14-19, 21-26

Another treat, courtesy of B, about which I knew nothing but the title. Basically, I just want everyone to go immediately and have no preconceived notions and not think that it’s amazing, because that can sometimes lessen your enjoyment. So, I thought it was worth a look.

But also:

B did give a little spoiler as we sat down saying, “she was ready to bawl the entire time.” Which convinced me that something bad was going to happen. Quite the opposite, it was just so beautiful and pure. This was a physical performance of movement and acrobatics, and unlike anything I expected going in.

Casus co-founders Jesse Scott and Lachlan McAulay have more trust in each other in the first ten minutes than I have had in any human being in my entire life. Without saying a word, they move across, above, and around the stage telling the story of a relationship, it’s ebbs and flows, and the growth of trust. 

This fantastic combination of contemporary dance/movement combined with some of the most impressive acrobatics I’ve seen is frankly astonishing. While I know they must have practised this so that nothing can go wrong, I found some of the feats frankly terrifying and was on the edge of my seat the entire time. 

I won’t say more, because what can words really express for a show like this? Go see it immediately, and thank me later.

Famous Puppet Death Scenes  - ★★★½  Kings Hall Theatre - Venue 73 - Ticketing Info 20:30 - Aug 2-5, 7-12, 14-19, 21-26

Famous Puppet Death Scenes...has to be pretty much what it says on the tin, right? My friend R had a spare ticket to this show, and so this was the afternoon pick.

Unrelated to the show itself. It’s the FIRST DAY of the Fringe and we went to get food an hour and half before the show and were told our chosen restaurant was so backed up it’d be an hour before we could get food. On the first day. Good Lord, I am not ready for this to be my life for a month.

Into the King’s Hall for the second time today, where upon entering the theatre were greeted by a dearly deceased puppet in his casket surrounded by flowers. On the stage was a frankly incredibly puppet staging area. I’ll admit, I was excited and the anticipation kicked in.

Since I’m not a real reviewer (Hey, look Ma! My second review!), I don’t know how much to spoil, but here’s one thing: The famous puppet deaths scenes, are not actually famous. You will not have scene them before, they are not drawn from history or popular culture, everything’s made up and the points don’t matter. (wait, is Who’s Line on this year?)

The performance of the Narrator puppet, Nathaniel Tweak< gives the show a strong start, with a kick of melancholic emotion that made me think about how long until I shuffle off this mortal coil. The show smoothly shifts gears into some short, but hilarious scenes that had myself and the rest of the audience rolling in the aisles.

The puppets themselves were detailed, complex, incredibly versatile, and used in a diverse number of ways. Each articulated differently, but unfortunately the puppets had static faces or at the most a mouth that would move. While the narrator and many of the characters were able to convey a huge amount of nuance an emotion through voice and gesture, not all shared this ability.

The puppeteers were often visible and even played roles in the show. This is where the lack of facial articulation on the puppets comes in, as these actors generally spoke very little but conveyed huge amounts through their facial expressions alone. 

Also, I would have liked to see black gloves worn when they puppeteers weren’t actually part of the scene as bright stage lights and pale white hands drew my attention immediately...but I know nothing about puppetry so that might have been a huge hassle.

The strong vignettes were incredibly strong: Nathaniel Tweak, the German children’s show, the sleeping woman, the farmhouse. However, that only highlighted scenes that weren’t as strong. Due to the complicated sets and puppets, there was at least one obvious filler scene, that could have been hilarious but didn’t match tonally with where it landed in the show. There was a mix of laughter and melancholy, that can work quite well, but I don’t think the current running order has it completely figured out.

Full disclosure: I have never written review before. OK, maybe some amazon reviews here and there, but I just thought this would be fun. Ratings are out of 5 stars.

Daughter  - ★★★★ Kings Hall Theatre - Venue 73 - Ticketing Info 12:30 pm Aug 1-5, 8-12, 15-19, 22-26

My flatmate, B, works for one of the PR companies so has got a lot of preview tickets she can give away. This is great, and so she’s sent me a whole list of shows and descriptions to pick out what I want to see. This was not one of those. This was an “I have a ticket for a show in 30 minutes if you can get here, wait I gave you the wrong venue, MOVE MOVE MOVE.” situation. I didn’t even know what show I was seeing.

As expected, everyone at CanadaHub is extremely polite and I went in with a warm fuzzy feeling. There was pop music playing as we filed in, surely this was going to be something feel good! Up Beat! Day time theatre/comedy! 

Adam Lazarus is The Father, and takes us in to an autobiographical comedy about fatherhood. He gets everyone in good humour talking about his daughter and how they play together. I relaxed into the seat, chuckling as he played both himself and his daughter in hypothetical conversations and dance battles.

Then there’s that moment where something seems a little off, a little glimmer of anxiety formed and knotted itself in my stomach. The discussion and performance of childbirth, where Lazarus comes across as an almost stereotypical confused but well meaning first time father, lets the comedy transform into and uncomfortable realism.

The narrative vignettes continue, always somewhat relatable initially. They’re easy to laugh at, if only to release some of that anxiety from the previous story. But gradually, the humour fades away and you feel like a man is standing on stage begging you to absolve him of all sins. Halfway through, I was actually gagging, convinced I was going to throw up. As the show rose to climax I was actually crying.

Going into this show I wanted to like this man, be it Lazarus or The Father (I honestly have no idea how true the stories are, and I hope I don’t give anything away by saying I really want them to be fiction). He had lost all sympathy and I felt only revulsion and pity, mostly pity for his family. He reminded me of an emotionally abusive boyfriend who could justify all his behaviour with a joke and some gaslighting.