NEXT STAGE FESTIVAL 2010 REVIEWS

Taking it to the Next Stage

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
12 Jan'10

To promote this year's edition of the Next Stage Theatre Festival - an offspring of Toronto's annual summer Fringe Festival - organizers have come up with a clever marketing slogan that brags "January is the new July."

And while patrons at the ongoing theatrical extravaganza this past weekend had occasion to mutter a frosty "If only" into the scarves wrapped tightly around their throats and faces, the truth of the matter is, while the organizers never successfully make it feel a whole lot like summer, they do succeed in making it feel a whole lot like Fringe.

Which is a good thing for a festival that takes a total of eight shows developed on the summer Fringe circuit and gives them a chance to kick things up a notch with a winter run.

Herewith, the high points and the low for the current Next Stage Festival, running at the Factory Theatre and the Factory Studio through next weekend.

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Like Father, Like Son? Sorry: Writer/performer Chris Gibbs shows up on stage looking like an unmade bed and immediately launches himself into a verbal freefall that keeps his audience riveted (and often greatly amused) for the next 75 minutes. But his portrayal of a naif who's wandered on stage by accident and doesn't know what to do next is all part of the act, and as he 'stumbles' through subjects as diverse as fatherhood and near-death experiences in New Zealand, it's increasingly easy to understand why this show was a Patron's Pick at the 2009 Fringe.

Just East of Broadway: It seems that everybody who decides to do a musical Fringe show figures out pretty early on that the way to make it work is to keep it small. Sadly, most of them, including writer/composers Nicholas Hune-Brown and Ben King and director Jordan Merkur, fail to realize there is a major difference between small and petty. Bad enough that their whole premise of a broken down Broadway star finding redemption in back water Communist China is silly and cliche ridden, but they further weigh it down by encouraging their otherwise game and sometimes talented cast to take all terribly seriously.

The Red Queen Effect: Director Kelly Straughan and her ensemble seem to have struck gold with an idea for a modern take on Lewis Carroll's classic Alice in Wonderland, wherein the heroine of title makes a voyage not through a looking glass but rather through a glass ceiling. Monica Dottor is an effective Alice, while Melissa-Jane Shaw is memorable (if underused) as the Red Queen, while Ted Hallett, Dylan Scott Smith, Aurora Brown, Nicholas Campbell (yes, that Nicholas Campbell) and a host of others round out the ensemble. While we're not sure just where there is, it is safe to say that while they may not be there yet, they're on their way.

Buried: Death, mourning and family secrets have been woven into an apparently heartfelt but nonetheless lacklustre script by playwright Tessa King, all of which has been turned over to director Andrew Lamb, who apparently has no idea at all where to take it. So he throws up his hands and turns it over to a cast that includes Christine Brubaker, Ian D. Clark, Rosemary Dunsmore and Fiona Highet, in the hope that these impressive artists will make him and the playwright look good.
But because they are actors and not miracle workers, they don't.

STUDIO

Quite Frankly: Under the direction of Jonno Katz, playwright/performer Justin Sage-Passant takes us on a remarkable tour of an utterly unremarkable life, namely that of the
sad-sack Frank of title - a man whose gormless childhood has morphed into a gormless adulthood spent caring for his failing mother and being the butt of jokes in the small British town he calls home. With Sage-Passant playing a host of characters, it is all deeply sad and riotously funny by turn, ranking as a must-see for anyone who appreciates fine acting and storytelling. Quite frankly, this just might be the best of the current Next Stage lot.

The Making of St. Jerome: The tragic death of Jeffrey Reodica, already featured in an earlier Next Stage work, has inspired yet another dramatic exploration,, this one authored by
Marie Beath Badian and directed by Nina Lee Aquino. Working with a committed but uneven cast of five, Aquino uses movement and choral speech to level the playing field, allowing The Making of St. Jerome to emerge not as a vehicle weighted down with polemic and politics, but rather as an abiding, even touching, testament of personal loss.

Gas: In his latest foray onto the stages of this festival, playwright/director Jason Maghanoy sets his sights on American soldiers in Iraq charged with transporting shipments of petrol necessary to keep the country running. It's a job particularlly rife with danger, and in exploring the psychological effects of living with death as a constant companion, Maghanoy and a committed cast prove once again that war is hell. But if they don't find much new to say, they still manage to say it well, thanks to solid performances from the likes of Kevin Walker, Marc Senior and Sabryn Rock.

Icarus Redux: Playwright/performer/director Sean O'Neill has brought together a lot of talent for this, his revisiting of the story of Icarus, the lad who, as legend has it, with his father's connivance managed to fly so close to the sun that his wings self-destructed, plunging him to his death. But in the end, despite all the hard work and the good intentions behind it, his examination of grief, incontinence, puppets and the paternal penis fails to take wing under the weight of all the pretension, proving at least that you don't have to get off the ground to fall flat on your face.