Romance With Robert | Lovesick Vanessa Lever dreams of marrying a mayoral also-ran in Letters to Noce, one of the plays at this year’s Nextfest.
DETAILS
It’s a pleasure (and a relief, quite frankly) for SEE to report that this is one of the strongest years ever for new Nextfest plays. Here’s our reviews of the shows — well, most of them. Sorry, Lapse: your first performance doesn’t happen until after we go to press. And sorry, Fish at the Bottom of the Sea: A Multi-Disciplinary Collaboration in the Spirit of Magic Realism: your incredibly long title totally scared
us away. Nextfest continues until June 21; the complete schedule of plays and other events can be found at nextfest.ca.
@LIFE
This affectionate comedy about the world of computer gaming follows the lives, both real and virtual, of three hardcore gaming geeks (played by Michael Davidson, Brennan Campbell, and Dan Dobranski, who also wrote the script). The show is paced almost as fast as a videogame itself, with one short, funny scene following another: we meet a guy so determined to be the first to buy a new game that he unknowingly won’t even allow the employees into the store to sell it to him; and we visit a party where NES shows off his new grandson Wii to Sony and Microsoft at a party.
The play assumes a certain level of gaming knowledge on the part of the audience (or that everyone knows someone with a gaming fixation), and indeed most of the laughs come not from the storyline but the smart jokes about videogame logic. The highlight is probably the monologue “Things I’ve Learned From Videogames,” which includes such maxims as “Italian plumbers get all the ladies” and “Playing a guitar is as easy as pressing five buttons.” —Michelle Garcia
***
BULL SKIT!
Against the Wall Theatre definitely deserves credit for ambition: for the last six months, this young comedy troupe has been staging monthly variety shows in their hometown of Red Deer, each one an all-new potpourri of improv, music, and sketches. They obviously have an eye on the future, and their Nextfest show (a collection of their best material) is even preceded by a flashy video that seems designed as the opening credits for the TV show they hope one day to star in.
It might be a little while before the networks come calling; Bull Skit! is still a little ragged around the edges, both in terms of writing and performing. But it’s a promising sign that their skits aren’t empty pop-culture parodies; they feel more like miniature plays in the tradition of the old Carol Burnett Show, with the focus on character instead of punchlines. I’d encourage them to ditch the improv and hook up with a director who can help them improve their staging and fine-tune their performances, and they could turn into a fresh presence on the Alberta comedy scene. —Paul Matwychuk
**
EL DORADO
John King thinks his schizophrenic father is dead and is called to Vancouver to make final arrangements. What he finds instead of a body is a cryptic note and a really freakin’ cool car — a red 1972 Cadillac El Dorado convertible. The inevitable questions send him on a cross-country adventure, searching for his father, his sanity and his own proverbial city of gold. Writer/performer Joel Crichton’s script is snappy and strikes a nice balance between humour and melancholy; as an actor, he performs his own words well, playing multiple characters with ease and proving himself a charming and charismatic performer. Although the ending is predictable and somewhat trite, El Dorado, like John King’s life, is about the journey, not the destination. —Marliss Weber
***1/2
FALSE START
Joel Bazin’s False Start has good intentions and some funny moments, but unfortunately, that isn’t enough to keep it from coming off as overthought and confusing. Within the first five minutes, you learn it takes place in “the mind”; you also meet the hero, a talking tree guarding a dream in the form of a seed. The play continues in a hazy, magical state with characters visiting from abstract magical lands and acting out their stories on stage.
The play turns a corner, however, when the seed is “born” and comes alive as a clown named Boom Boom, who then begins exploring his surroundings. Suddenly the audience is part of the play, helping to teach the loveable clown to bite into an apple and avoiding him as he learns to brandish a foam sword. It’s all a little too abstract for its own good, but it did manage to get some genuine laughter from the crowd and Bazin’s message about the importance of nurturing dreams comes through loud and clear. —Michelle Garcia
**1/2
LADYVISION
Picture a post-apocalyptic cross between those old SNL sketches starring Gilda Radner as a hyperactive girl playing make-believe games in her bedroom, and that Simpsons episode where Krusty the Clown takes over a remote TV transmitter and uses an old battery and a dead scorpion to improvise “The Stingy and Battery Show,” and you’ll have some idea of Jill Pollock’s terrific one-woman show Ladyvision.
Apparently the only survivor of some nameless catastrophe, Pollock’s heroine amuses herself by starring in her own TV show, “filmed” by two cardboard cameras operated by stuffed animals. Pollock dances, displays her handmade picture frames, plays the ukulele, and reviews books with titles like Modems Made Easy and Microwaving Meats, all with an improvisational comic energy that is as inspired as it is unstoppable. What a talent! (You’ve heard of actors who could read from the phone book and make it funny? Pollock reads from a book of carpet samples and gets laughs.) And then she delivers an ending that turns the rest of the play on its head and reveals the desperation underneath the hilarity. —Paul Matwychuk
****1/2
LETTERS TO NOCE
From the moment Vanessa Warbucks spies Robert Noce at the headquarters for his unsuccessful 2004 mayoral campaign, she falls madly in love with him — and when she gets a secretarial job just seven floors down from his law office, her passion only intensifies. Sadly for Vanessa, Mr. Noce does not have a thing for obsessed Battlestar Galactica fans who follow him home and spy through the windows — and since Vanessa narrates her story in flashback from a cell in the Edmonton Remand Centre, we know this affair will probably not end with them eloping to his villa in Tuscany.
Writer/performer Vanessa Lever’s one-woman show gets off to a promising start, but since she never provides any explanation whatsoever for what it is about Robert Noce that causes this apolitical young slacker to fall so hard for him, the play never moves beyond its one-joke premise. It’s a play that could have been much funnier if it had gone even darker. Still, Noce himself was at the performance I attended, and he seemed totally charmed by it — maybe the real-life Vanessa still has a chance with him! —Paul Matwychuk
***
ONE HUNDRED DAYS OF SUNLIGHT
It takes 100 days of sunlight to grow a healthy crop of corn. How much sun (i.e., love, nurturing, attention, guidance) does a child need to grow into a healthy, functioning adult? Annette Christie poses this question in One Hundred Days of Sunlight, a sensitive, thoughtful, character-driven examination of three sisters’ relationships in the aftermath of a school tragedy. Christie tackles gay issues and sisterly conflict amidst the high drama of a hate crime. The cast — Siona Gareau-Brennan, Mandy Stewart, and Faye Stollery — performs well in this challenging piece, and despite a tendency toward pathos, the emotional choices are clear and well defined and the relationships are finely drawn. A strong Nextfest piece. —Marliss Weber
***1/2
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