Three Plays in the Montréal Fringe Festival, 2009

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Dracula in a Time of Climate Change
 Written and Directed by Matt Jones
Produced by the Blacklist Committee for Unsafe Theatre

 Lysistrata
 Written by Aristophanes
Adapted by Peter McGarry
Produced by Eyewitness Theatre Company

 Based on True Feelings
 Written and Directed by Jesse Heffring
Produced by RAM Theatre

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Generally, fringe theatre isn't to my taste because much of it is self-righteous, simplistic, and vulgar. But such freedom is the guiding principle of fringe theatre, and the stage is better for its existence. After all, who doesn't prefer experimentation to stagnation? At any rate, several plays in this year's Festival St-Ambroise Fringe de Montréal piqued my interest enough that I decided to see three of them. Each one confronted a contemporary issue in a unique way.



Dracula in a Time of Climate Change
A review of the performance on June 17, 2009

With ice caps melting, the environment deteriorating, and human blood becoming ever more poisonous, Dracula is ironically facing his own mortality and the possible extinction of his race. But when a vegetarian Montrealer comes along and Dracula tastes her blood, its purity gets his attention. On the working hypothesis that the vegetables account for her blood's quality, he sets out for the land from which she came, in search of the blood that must be the most nearly pure of all, the blood of a vegan.

When Dracula falls for an environmental activist, however, the story begins to stray. If the author chooses to tighten up the script and remove the superfluous elements, this play could be more entertaining and might catalyze discussions more readily. Even in this witty farce that lampoons the vampire genre and takes shots at environmentalism, there's an undercurrent of some existentialist anxiety.

The acting skill was uneven across the cast, with several of the actors being bland or awkward. But Scott Kettles, who played Dracula, and Susanna Jones, who played Renfield, were exceptional. Jones, in fact, was so familiar with her character, all the way from Stoker's novel through Hollywood's many adaptations, that the result was a very funny caricature of Dracula's lackey. It would have been close to flawless had she not spoken so fast that a quarter of her words were unintelligible.



Lysistrata
A review of the performance on June 17, 2009

If scholars of Aristophanes are right that the Greeks performed this comedy with unabashed faithfulness to its rudeness and obscenity, then Eyewitness Theatre Company honored the tradition. There were four players in this adaptation, all women, and they portrayed all seven roles, male and female.

Weary of the seemingly endless Peloponnesian War, Lysistrata organizes a sex strike among the women of various city-states in Greece, which is to continue until the men sign a peace treaty. Although this premise is clever and rich with possible elaborations, Lysistrata is a play with just one joke, a recurring joke that quickly becomes juvenile and tiresome. After all, how many references to frustrated tumescence can a theatregoer tolerate in the space of five minutes? But the play does redeem itself eventually as it compares the obscenity of explicit sexual enunciations on stage to the obscenity of war. And this is the angle from which Eyewitness approached the play.

To their credit, they made the point clear. To their discredit, they made the point clear by inserting recitations of personal war chronicles taken from modern times, which, though certainly poignant, constituted a trite and unimaginative way of using the stage to say something meaningful that everyone already knows, whether or not they acknowledge it. Right though the women were that it raises doubts about one's ethics even to ask the question of which obscenity is worse, very few people enjoy an unsolicited morality lecture. Moreover, by stressing this perspective, they marginalized Aristophanes' proposition that the various city-states of Greece all have a common culture that's worth preserving, a proposition, I daresay, that transcends both time and geography, but that falls, nevertheless, on the selectively deaf ears of decision-makers.

The titular character is a compassionate and intelligent woman whom Dee Watson portrayed with warmth and wit -- and with the occasional bawdy. Because she didn't imbue caricature into her role, unlike the other actresses, Watson gave Lysistrata the composure and weight necessary for leadership. Her fellows, on the contrary, exaggerated their characters, played to stereotypes, engaged in mockery, and presented the men as buffoons -- all probably in line with Aristophanes' intentions, though no one can be sure.



Based on True Feelings
A review of the performance on June 16, 2009

The young people in the cast of this production deserve commendation for taking on such tough overlapping social issues as they did. The thrust of this play is the difference between being unconventional and being mentally ill, especially during the adolescent years, and the reaction, or over-reaction, of mainstream psychiatry. The dramatic movement in this story is the search for the reason that Kaitlyn, who's a young patient in a mental hospital, has tried to kill herself. The investigation, however, is carried out not by the authorities, legal or medical, but by a few of Kaitlyn's fellow patients, all coordinated by the young obsessive-compulsive Matthew.

This play, which is based on a true story, took a firm stand. But whether one considers that stand right or wrong, the adults were presented as callous or patronizing or unsympathetically practical. In that respect, the story was simplistic to the point of being propaganda. Nevertheless, one must allow for the possibility that the central character, Kaitlyn, really did see her world in this light, that the most influential adults in her life forced her to bifurcate every question she had to face.

There was some good acting in this production, but there were also some regrettably unsuccessful efforts. Nevertheless, all the young people on stage took the story to heart and clearly wanted to convey it to the audience. Jeanne Lemba played Lola, one of the patients helping Matthew in his mission. Whereas at first she seemed over-rehearsed and mechanical, her character slowly congealed into someone mercurial and easily distracted, quite consistent with her acting theretofore. Lemba created an interesting disconnection between Lola's mind and what was happening around her, with the ability to re-focus her attention suddenly, making for some funny moments.

Lola's thuggish boyfriend Spike, portrayed by Venal Munroe, served as the committee's go-between with the outside world. Munroe brought out Spike's basic decency behind his confrontational manner, showing us some believable stupidity, empathy, and gullibility, even though his delivery was sometimes quite stiff.

In the role of Matthew, Jean-Luc Rey created a constant undercurrent of anxiety, with both voice and body. In that regard, his characterization was congruous with Matthew's disorder. Unfortunately, one still had the feeling that Rey always knew his next line and was eager to speak it.