Mirror’ed

Yes!.

Posterized

The award for most thorough postering job goes to Tuning Venus and Dancing in My Unbirthday Suit.

On a related note, when you see someone putting a lot of effort into publicity, they usually put a lot of effort into their show. That’s something to consider when you’re making a choice about what to see.

Some news

We got a little mention in the Hour’s Fringe Preview. Here’s a quick tip: use Google Alerts to find out when the newspapers mention you.

As reported by Marc in the comments, Awkward Centaur has more fringe buzz. Clearly, someone is having a little fun with us; sounds like someone doing their best imitation of Sean! Very funny stuff. Thanks, stranger!

And finally, the beer tent is up. I chatted with Michael Black a bit. His website is always a good resource.

See you tomorrow at the Beer Tent at 6pm on Thursday for some wild postering frenzy. I’d give you postering tips, but I need the competitive advantage!

Gazette Fringe News

Last year, the Fringe’s website added News which aggregated news articles about the Fringe from local press and blogs. It is a smashingly great feature. This year, they’ve been a bit slow on the uptake (maybe they’re a lil busy?), so here are some Gazette stories about the Fringe to tide you over:

Suggestions for Dance and Music
Suggestions for Theatre
An article about the Fringe and the show Figure Skating is for Little Girls

This week’s Mirror has a little preview on page 20.

No mentions yet for the most punctual troupe in show biz.

Average Fringe Show Price 2009

I compiled some stats on what it will cost you to see a Fringe show this year. Some shows give discounts for students/seniors/other not reflected in this chart. Keep in mind there is a $2 service fee on top of the price below.

Among the 89 shows:

$9: 60% of shows
$8: 28%
$7: 7%
$6: 3% <—- Awkward Centaur
$5: 2%

Only 5 shows this year are charging $6 or less.

Fringe program errors

There are errors in the Fringe program for the following shows at Club Lambi (venue A):

• Terminal
• TransCanada ‘69
• Tuning Venus

The times are CORRECT in the middle of the program and on the website, but INCORRECT in their individual program descriptions.

Please spread the word!

Net Buzz has started

One nice feature of the Montreal Fringe website is Net Buzz–capsule reviews sent in by Fringe goers.

Lo and behold, someone nice has written about us already. Thank you, kind stranger!

Fringe-for-all 2009 in Review

Your 2 minutes at the Fringe-for-all is the worst 2 minutes of the Fringe–it’s the biggest chattiest audience, the worst cavernous venue, and the most critic-filled. (The worst critic is me, hee hee) So it’s great to see when some people knock their chance out of the park.

2 standouts for me were As Duas: two women in their underwear (natch) tossing each other around rather artfully, athletically, and uh, let’s face it, erotically; and Terminal: a guy in a suit dancing to a pleasant Lou Reed song while slitting his wrists.

There were also many many terrible terrible acts which I will not name. My 2-minute bit was probably first or second quintile just by virtue of the fact that I used a microphone. (High praise, I know.) Seriously, people, you can’t out-yell the chatty McChattersons at the Cafe Campus. Anything talky does not work.

Thanks to the Fringe staff for seeking out people in the audience to call me because the show was running 30 minutes fast due to last-second drop-outs. I had to hightail my heinie over there and was almost immediately thrown onstage.

So here was my bit for Awkward Centaur. Since it’s hard to convey the essence of our improvised play about a centaur in 2 minutes, I wrote and performed a song about centaurs. It was filmed from the balcony with all the Chatcats and Talkybots. To my relief, sometimes the laughter from the lower deck rises above the chatter. Oh, the last note gets cut off cause the battery ran out of juice:

EDITED TO ADD: Ah, the Fringe has a much better version:

Advice for future fringers:

• Use dance, music, physicality or video for the Fringe-for-all
• If you’re talking, always use a microphone. Walk around with hand-held mics if you insist on doing a scene. Do not speak without amplification. You can’t yell louder than 300 people chatting about how they can’t hear you above the chatter.
• Try to avoid complicated props, sound or video cues if possible
• Don’t pretend like you’re going to get naked, and then not. That’s lame.

The Annies, Year Three

If the Frankies represent official industry recognition, then the Annies are all about indie cred. As always, there are no actual prizes other than the satisfaction that some random blog thinks you’re cool. The committee was vinnyfrancois, b.j.swank and Smackles, the tie-breaking monkey.

The Beekeepers

Best Poster:The Beekeepers
There were some pretty great posters this year with an honourable mention to The Sputniks but the eye-poppingest posters came from The Beekeepers. With two different looks, each highlighting one of the two stars, the posters depict a troubled, desperate couple with more than a hint of madness. They stood out from the crowd by drawing the eye into a dark, dark place.

Best Title: Degrassi! The Musical
Succinct and effective. Take strong nostalgia and add “The Musical”. Give it a “!” for good measure. Let sit and watch every single person to pass their gaze over the name stop, process, and then let it be digested at the back of their head. Good or bad, you simply can’t ignore the name.

Best Website: montrealfringe.ca
Finally! They got it right this year and I couldn’t be happier. With up to date news, video from the 13th Hour, Video Buzz, Net Buzz appended to show pages, company vids added to show pages, and on and on. I don’t think they can top it. I’ll be happy if they simply maintain this level of service. Kudos!

Cody Rivers

Best Opening: The Cody Rivers Show: Stick to Glue
The Fringe had some very low-key openings this year; nothing really started with a bang. Our favourite opening, in fact, started with a whimper. The Cody Rivers boys emerged in slow-motion, talking in such tiny voices that you could barely make out what they were saying. It was a bit disorienting but it laid some important groundwork–when they returned to those characters later in the show, it was suddenly hilarious. Given that most of their show had a frantic pace, this change-up found the strike zone. Which lead directly to…

Best Energy: The Cody Rivers Show: Stick to Glue
They operate a delicate, geared pocket watch at double-speed. Their delivery is uber-hyper, hush-quiet/thunderclap-loud and impeccable. They reach into an audience and blow out their nerves one by one. It’s the most kinetic show I think I’ve ever seen without ever, not for an instant, losing control.

Best Sketch: Cops Find A Body [Blastback Babyzap]
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It’s Uncalled For hitting uppercuts and hooks with line after line. It’s an impossible streak of sublime build, perfect folly and crushing hilarity. You’re getting comedically beaten to within an inch of your life and loving it. Mistaken identities, secret motives and brilliant forensics come together in Blastback Babyzap’s awesome opening sketch.

Best Costume: Wheels [Degrassi! The Musical]
This was Wheels before the fights with his grandparents and the drunk driving. This was Wheels at his innocent, short short-wearing best. The actress threw on a goofy smile for good measure, and presto, we had a winner.

Best Moment: Charades [The Cody Rivers Show: Stick to Glue]
The code-breakers scene is bewildering at first. It’s a mess that is mesmerising because the actors are delivering these nonsense lines at West Wing speed, it’s a trick that amuses until your brain starts parsing these jumbled sentences. Then the scene becomes an encrypted sketch that is funny in its own right once you find the decoder ring. The next scene is a game of charades and as soon as you find the connection between what you’re seeing and what you just saw, you understand that these guys have thought the whole show through. It was one moment among many that revealed this was not an ordinary sketch show.

Best Song: Ich Nicht Ein Roboter (I am a Lion) [Die Roten Punkte (Super Musikant)]
From the synth chorus, to the three notes you need to make a song, Die Roten Punkte take an already great song, set the volume to max and rip out the knob. They jump and roar and claw at you with their pure rock power. They are not robots, dammit, they are lions!

The Sputniks

Best One Person Show: The Sputniks
There were many fine one-person shows this year. Some were funny flights of fancy, others were ingenious bits of storytelling and yet others were character-driven slices of life. The Sputniks was all of that. And it broke our hearts.

Best Closing: The Sputniks
Elison Zasko deftly laid and set the trap. We all became better people for falling into it. Checkmate.

Best Show: The Cody Rivers Show: Stick to Glue
Do we need to rave about this show any further? In just about any other year, Blastback Babyzap would have been a shoo-in but Stick to Glue went to twelve. We didn’t even know there was a twelve.

MVPs: The Volunteers
Once again, the Fringe would be a melted pile of ice cream without the sugar cone of the volunteers. Thank you!

Past Annies: Year Two, Year One

Argument with a Dolphin comic strip

Check out the June 21, 2008 entry in Michael Black’s 2008 fringe diary for a very cute story told in pictures about a Dolphin looking to see a show at the Fringe.

Who did this? Thank you!

Review: Dishpig

Greg Landucci delivers multiple great performances in Dishpig, a one-man show about a terrible dish-washing job.

I hope outlandish and emotionally-charged things happen to this guy, because I look forward to seeing more of his shows. If he can do this with a banal topic like a bad job, imagine what he could do with the search for his birth parents across the Steppes?

This show gets a: Recommended

Review: Three Old Bags

Three Old Bags was a delightful surprise. After noticing that it was 90 minutes long, and reading Pat Donelly’s description that it was not yet a fully functioning script and 15 minutes too long, I almost skipped it. Three Old Bags turned out to be one my favourites among the 10-or-so shows that I saw this year.

The Three Old Bags each had wonderfully rich and funny characters. The script was delicious and the acting fantastic. Too bad these ladies are hiding out in Lac Brome.

And the audience! I can’t think of another show that was enhanced by audience members talking to each other during the show: “What did she just say?” “She said Depens.” “What’s that?” “It’s a diaper, Harry!”

The show opened with some clowning that didn’t quite work, but once the story began, those 90 minutes flew by.

This gets a: Highly Recommended