Fringe Theatre Festival 2016 Wraps Up
Award winners and five more play reviews
By Byron Toben
The 2016 St-Ambrose Montreal Fringe Festival wrapped up last Sunday with awards in various categories.
Six awards from local theatres or festivals may include reprises at their events. Those are:
Free Standing Room Award – Howard Le Rookie
Solos Festival, Best Solo Production – The Passage
Main Line Theatre, Creativity – Beaver Dreams
Segal Centre, Most Promising English Company – Miranda And David Begin Again
Just For Laughs, Best English Comedy – ATM: The Musical
Centaur Theatre, Best English Production – Self Exile
For full details on these and other awards, click HERE.
WestmountMag.ca reviewed five Fringe plays each in the issues of June 12 and 16. A final five appear below in this wrap:
Honesty Rents By The Hour
The most memorable moment in the 15 plays I actually saw at this year’s Fringe was not a spoken phrase, nor an innovative movement, but a brief stare in this perfectly executed play that emerged from last winter’s annual Infinitheatre Pipeline reading Series.
This three hander brought Catherine Yale as a frustrated Quebecoise housewife, Patrick Keeler as a young secular Jew and Howard Rosenstein as a Hasidic member together in a motel for a ménage à trois arranged on the internet. Both males are bisexual and fearful of being exposed. Lots of clever dialogue by playwright Michael Milech highlighting the hypocrisy of all three, especially the clash of religious identity.
When they finally get down to business, and Mr Rosenstein doffs his black hat and coat and Ms Yale rips off his shirt, she also throws his talit (prayer shawl) on the floor. At that moment, Mr Rosenstein lifts his face in momentary astonishment at this irreligious act before resuming vigorously to business.
His brief stare at the floor and the audience brought the house down. Whether this nuance was suggested by director Matt Jacobs, or written in the text, or, I suspect, an innovation by Mr Rosenstein, I know not.
The text wisely places some redeeming features into each character despite their hypocrisies.
A good candidate for remounting.
A Perfect Picture
This immersive one-man show is also a good candidate for remounting. Laurent McCuaig-Pietre, a recent Concordia theatre grad, has written an amazing show.
It is based on the disturbed life of South African war photographer Kevin Carter who won a Pulitzer photo prize in 1993 for his shot of an emaciated young Sudanese girl lying on the ground while a vulture lurks nearby. Despite the professional accomplishment, public criticism of him for not abandoning the shot and trying to save the child was such that Carter committed suicide that same year, at only 33.
Mr McCuaig-Pitre played the vulture as well as Carter. Others voiced other off stage war photographers, a special breed belonging to a Bang-Bang club. Well directed by Len Richman.
I bonded with this show as it brought back memories of my trip to India years ago. Armed with my then high tech Minolta super 8 camera, I took a shot of a legless beggar on a wheel board approaching me and thinking that I had a 3-minute shot, only to discover it was only 10 seconds. Mixed emotions about balancing the chance to get a unique picture with wondering if the film cartridge was long enough, coupled with guilt at capitalizing on human misery made it seem so much longer.
Here, the talking vulture defends his role in recycling matter, thus contributing to the ecology. Indeed the Parsee community in India lay out their dead on high towers for the vultures, as some Inuit used to leave the frail for the polar bears.
Several others felt that this show, deserving of a remount, was, at 90 minutes, a bit too long for a Fringe show.
Atomic City
What’s this? I keep recommending Fringe shows for remounting. Here’s another so deserving.
I happen to have read a lot about the secretive Manhattan Project in New Mexico, leading to the 1945 explosion of the world’s first atomic bomb, “Brighter than A Thousand Suns” as described (predicted?) in the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata.
However, I did not appreciate the importance of the equally secret project to develop an ignitable fuel for it. This had been started in 1941 in Oak Ridge Tennessee and was aimed to refine Uranium 238 into the more explodable Uranium 235, through the use of gaseous Uranium hexafluoride.
All this secrecy was essential as the Nazis were also working on such a project. The hit Broadway play Copenhagen described their unsuccessful efforts to wrest certain secrets from Danish nuclear scientist Niels Bohr. That play was later staged at the Centaur, starring Maurice Podbrey.
Here, local actors Jeff Gandell and Mariana Vial have developed a fictional story of the Oak Ridge project, largely based on Doris Kieran’s account. Momentous events still involve human attraction despite fears of sabotage or betrayal.
Well-paced acting directed by Sara Rodriguez.
Get Lost jem rolls
The ever lower case jem rolls adds his name to the title of his latest dynamic performance poem piece which both celebrates and bemoans his getting lost in remote places around the world where he spends his winters developing his next show for Edinburgh and the Canadian fringe circuit.
Here his rapid fire, clear elocution describes lost paths in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Africa, even Croatia. Always funny, always humorous while pointing out our human inconsistencies and hypocrisies.
Mr rolls is one of the few individuals who manages to make a living from Fringe shows.
If you are a cult follower, you will catch his show next year. If you have never seen him, make sure you do next year… unless he really gets lost somewhere exotic this winter.
Get Your Shuffle On
Cheerful Laura Flynn, cleverly disguised as alter ego Flora Lynn, brings a blend of Irish charm and a mix of chatter, dance, audience involvement and playing cards to the stage. So whether you draw a club, a spade or a diamond, this type of low-key variety may win your heart.
Previously back and forth between the Emerald Isle and Montreal, this a/k/a lass is now here to stay so keep your eyes peeled for her next creation.
Special! Save this date… November 16 to 18, 2016.
Montreal has been chosen as the first city outside Europe to host a fringe world congress. More at edfringe.com
Feature image: Saima Ahmed (Atomic City)
Byron Toben is the immediate past-president of the Montreal Press Club
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