A FAN’S NOTES
Combing the Fringe
Edmonton has its share of problems, big and small. The simultaneous
replacement of two bridges, both of which provide critical access to downtown,
is a year behind schedule. A simple light rail spur line from Central Station
to a nearby university and a neighbouring technical college is slated to perhaps
commence operations some 16 months later than projected. Apparently that train
will be safe to ride when the fall semester begins although savvy transit users
may not wish to be beta testing guinea pigs.
In softer news, the developers of the
city’s new hockey arena and its adjacent sister real estate projects hired and
paid a Calgary public relations firm to dub the area in question Ice District,
articles like ‘the’ strictly verboten. This instant branding tactic is unfortunate
on at least two levels. Cities age and evolve. Locals here were pre-empted in
providing a colourful and colloquial phrase for the shining jungle rising in
their concrete core. Also, social media wags quickly affirmed Edmonton as the
crystal meth capital of Canada, and that stung a little bit as City Hall had
recently and rightfully disavowed the puerile ‘City of Champions’ civic slogan.
(There’s no denying that people are clever. I want to meet the chemist who
contemplated the cleansers in the cupboard beneath his kitchen sink and thought,
‘Hey, I can synthesize an incredibly destructive and highly addictive drug out
of this stuff!’)
One of the more reliable and viable things
in this town is the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival. The 10-day
event is celebrating its 34th summer. To date, the Edmonton Journal has reviewed and rated
108 plays, musicals, improvs, one-person shows and God knows what else from an
advertised slate of 203. Most of the 43 performance venues are concentrated on
the south side of the North Saskatchewan River
hard by the Canadian Pacific Railroad’s end-of-steel. The festival’s main
grounds teem with buskers and street performers looking to lighten theatre
lovers’ wallets.
There is, thank Christ, a beer tent because
I am my mother’s son and I can spend hours just people watching, and ‘Oh! Mary
Riley!’ how some folk choose to dress down for hot weather can be waay too much to bare. The trouble with beer as an antidote, of course, is that one
may eventually start seeing double.
Real life is theatre. Daily we don our
costumes and play our roles at work and at home. The Internet allows one to
assume a new identity, a new persona. All of us are actors a lot of the time,
but it takes a type of courage I’ve never possessed to trod the boards for a
living. My theatrical experience is limited; I know that bad theatre makes it
impossible for me to suspend my sense of disbelief. I played juror number six
in Twelve Angry High School Boys. The
most memorable first run play I ever saw was David Fennario’s Balconville, a bilingual comedy set in
the Point, a working class neighbourhood in Montreal. I’ve endured A Christmas Carol. I dated an actress once, a nice, stable woman. I
think ‘On Broadway’ by the Drifters is a great song.
Cultural mavens that we are, Ann and I took
in four 2015 Fringe shows, none of which lasted longer than an hour nor cost
more than a movie. Meanwhile, veteran attendees mutter that the Fringe is
following the path of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, that it’s becoming too
big and too impersonal.
2
Ruby Knockers, 1 Jaded Dick: A Dirk Darrow Investigation was a cornball detective noir spoof involving stand-up,
storytelling, magic and sleight-of-hand. Afterward Ann complained about
soreness in her cheeks, who knew she could hurt herself laughing.
Mike
Delamont: Mama’s Boy allowed an actor to step out
of his comedic comfort zone (God Is a
Scottish Drag Queen III) to relate a bittersweet and affectionate portrait
of his late, adoptive mother who was both a widow and a troubled alcoholic. At
one point in his youth he engineered his own entry into foster care. Deft
handling of such harrowing material, perhaps a form of therapy for Delamont,
drew misty-eyed smiles.
A frantically paced multi-media show
entitled The No Bull$#!% History of Canada
easily trumped Conrad Black’s recently published Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the
Present for brevity. Humour and history can make for complicated bedfellows;
this mildly amusing amalgamation of factoids and punch lines was incapable of
offending anybody at all.
The Garneau is the last art deco cinema
left in Edmonton.
Saturday afternoon it revisited its roots in vaudeville, hosting a one-man
musical revue called Six Guitars. The
actor/musician/comedian alternated playing the role of one of six clichéd
archetypes: a head-banger, a folkie, a jazz cat, a bluesman… The theatre was
dark and close… The seats up in the balcony were comfortable… We dozed off, middle-aged
victims of a late night last night. A full house standing ovation at the finale
woke us up.
Whether or not any of the four shows Ann and I
caught or any of the other 199 we missed will endure is moot; the Fringe was
here. It leaves tonight. Traffic patterns in Old Strathcona will return to
normal. The festival is the unofficial sayonara to summer; Labour Day is just
around the corner and Edmontonians will start dressing properly again. What
lingers is the festering recrimination of the gut bombs, the artery-clogging
and heart-stopping consumption of fair food: green onion cakes, samosas,
donairs, jumbo hot dogs and lamb sausage in pita. Hot sauce on everything! Here’s
hoping Fringe delicacies don’t hurt me twice; I’ve no wish to collapse shovelling
snow next winter.