Three shows to open my Fringe with tonight.
First, Interrogation, a play by Karry Yano and Even Andrew Mackay.
The show attempts to explore questions of national identity, loyalty, and survival. Matrha and Kanao (played by Loretta Yu and Benaldo Yeung) are two twenty-something Japanese-Canadians living in BC in 1936. When Kanao leaves to work at his grandfather's company in Japan, the two stay in touch through a set of letter, the recitation of which makes up almost the entirety of this performance. As WWII comes and passes, Martha and her family are moved to an internment camp and Kanao is drafted into the Japanese army.
This show takes on more than it can chew for 60 minutes of stage time, and the writing is unfocused. The monologues lacked thoughtful shape, and there were often emotions without clear reason.
Specificity was missing in much of the show. By example, the program indicates that Kanao proved his Japanese loyalty by acting as a POW interrogator; this is not clear in the text and action of the performance however. Yu and Yeung do a decent enough job, but at opening still had some points of shakiness with the text, and were not aided by the non-existant direction from Mackay.
It is disappointing that the story of Kano in particular has a lot of dramatic and emotional potential, and the ideas in this production are worth further development. At this stage, however, it still comes across as early draft.
Recommendation: You will not miss anything by missing this show.
Next up was Rukmini's Gold, by Radha S. Menon.
Rukmini's Gold won the 2015 Toronto Fringe new Play Contest, and it is not hard to see why. The script was tight, the scenes well formed, and the plot and theme paired well.
As the play opens, Rukmini, played by Dia Frid, sits waiting for a train in Samsara in 1960, reflecing on her life. She is about to make a journey, the nature of which becomes quickly apparent. Acting as a pivot for the whole show, we see how her life an experience connect directly and indirectly with her predecessors and successors as scenes from 1911 to 2008 play out at train stations in India, Canada, and the U.K.
While not a perfect piece, (the time jumps are double-casting made the relationships between scenes very hard to follow, and some elements of magical realism seemed to have been abandoned in a rewrite but not excised everywhere) there is a lot to like about this show. The dialog is witty and engaging, and the characters are well formed. A personal highlight was a monologue of a woman who had, for various reasons, watched as the lives of her sister and niece fall slowly apart; a powerful moment indeed.
Recommendation: Worth taking the time to check out.
Finally, Fruit Fruit Mouth Mouth, by the Illume Collective
I almost want to call this production, something like "The Goblin Variations." The production bills itself as "An exploration of Rossetti's Goblin Market" but gets seriously derailed leaving me at many moments to ask "what the frack? No really, what the veritable frack?"
Opening with a dramatic recitation of the poem, the performance starts by oddly combining a sort of melodrama parody in the sisters with a strange commedia-ish lazzi performance from the goblin men. Then it gets weird.
The initial recition over, one of the performers then starts asking us "get you thinking question" that felt to me as if they came from a less-than-engaging first year college English lecture.
What if the poem weren't as written? What if it were gender reversed? What if we look at this and read it as explicitly sexual? What if we read it as a coming of age? What if I told you something I head once about how Victorian norms were different from moden? What if? What if? What if? (I head the goblins calling the question now).
These what if questions are useful tools for exmploration when working through the creative process, but they are not in and of themselves enough ot make a performance satisfying.
I commend the performers for committing themselves fully to this production. They have, all of them, skill on display and commitment to their work. The material, however, is a rather awkward mish-mash: arguments in search of a thesis.
Recommendation: As much as I really wanted to like this show, I can't really recommend seeing it.
The show attempts to explore questions of national identity, loyalty, and survival. Matrha and Kanao (played by Loretta Yu and Benaldo Yeung) are two twenty-something Japanese-Canadians living in BC in 1936. When Kanao leaves to work at his grandfather's company in Japan, the two stay in touch through a set of letter, the recitation of which makes up almost the entirety of this performance. As WWII comes and passes, Martha and her family are moved to an internment camp and Kanao is drafted into the Japanese army.
This show takes on more than it can chew for 60 minutes of stage time, and the writing is unfocused. The monologues lacked thoughtful shape, and there were often emotions without clear reason.
Specificity was missing in much of the show. By example, the program indicates that Kanao proved his Japanese loyalty by acting as a POW interrogator; this is not clear in the text and action of the performance however. Yu and Yeung do a decent enough job, but at opening still had some points of shakiness with the text, and were not aided by the non-existant direction from Mackay.
It is disappointing that the story of Kano in particular has a lot of dramatic and emotional potential, and the ideas in this production are worth further development. At this stage, however, it still comes across as early draft.
Recommendation: You will not miss anything by missing this show.
Next up was Rukmini's Gold, by Radha S. Menon.
Rukmini's Gold won the 2015 Toronto Fringe new Play Contest, and it is not hard to see why. The script was tight, the scenes well formed, and the plot and theme paired well.
As the play opens, Rukmini, played by Dia Frid, sits waiting for a train in Samsara in 1960, reflecing on her life. She is about to make a journey, the nature of which becomes quickly apparent. Acting as a pivot for the whole show, we see how her life an experience connect directly and indirectly with her predecessors and successors as scenes from 1911 to 2008 play out at train stations in India, Canada, and the U.K.
While not a perfect piece, (the time jumps are double-casting made the relationships between scenes very hard to follow, and some elements of magical realism seemed to have been abandoned in a rewrite but not excised everywhere) there is a lot to like about this show. The dialog is witty and engaging, and the characters are well formed. A personal highlight was a monologue of a woman who had, for various reasons, watched as the lives of her sister and niece fall slowly apart; a powerful moment indeed.
Recommendation: Worth taking the time to check out.
Finally, Fruit Fruit Mouth Mouth, by the Illume Collective
I almost want to call this production, something like "The Goblin Variations." The production bills itself as "An exploration of Rossetti's Goblin Market" but gets seriously derailed leaving me at many moments to ask "what the frack? No really, what the veritable frack?"
Opening with a dramatic recitation of the poem, the performance starts by oddly combining a sort of melodrama parody in the sisters with a strange commedia-ish lazzi performance from the goblin men. Then it gets weird.
The initial recition over, one of the performers then starts asking us "get you thinking question" that felt to me as if they came from a less-than-engaging first year college English lecture.
What if the poem weren't as written? What if it were gender reversed? What if we look at this and read it as explicitly sexual? What if we read it as a coming of age? What if I told you something I head once about how Victorian norms were different from moden? What if? What if? What if? (I head the goblins calling the question now).
These what if questions are useful tools for exmploration when working through the creative process, but they are not in and of themselves enough ot make a performance satisfying.
I commend the performers for committing themselves fully to this production. They have, all of them, skill on display and commitment to their work. The material, however, is a rather awkward mish-mash: arguments in search of a thesis.
Recommendation: As much as I really wanted to like this show, I can't really recommend seeing it.