Martin Dockery’s solo show, Bursting Into Flames, is an exhilarating exposition on life after death, presented through the eyes of a character who is lucky enough to have landed a spot on the right side of the equation. Dockery’s character is sweet-as-sugar and oh-so thrilled to be able to tell us a little bit about his new life in heaven. From perfecting the art of hosting parties, to attending his friends’ recitals, and indulging in endless amounts of time to get to know his friends, his days are pretty full. And if you think heaven couldn’t get any better, you’d better think again.

This show is pure, comedic gold delivered at a break-neck pace. Dockery is mesmerizing in this show, delivering anecdotes straight from his life in heaven with an over-the-top, saccharin, pure, undiluted joy that, if we didn’t know better, could only mask a sinister truth. But there’s no time for that in heaven: Let’s have desert instead!

Dockery is a crackling firework throughout this performance, and a master at theatrical slight-of-hand. This play is expertly devised, deftly delivered, and wonderfully complex.

Rm 311 U of Ottawa theatre department..

Strange VIsitations’ production, Hannah & George, is typical Fringe fare. George is a “loser” type looking for love and Hannah is his invisible, magic fairy who adores him. Although he barely gives her time time of day, she helps him any chance she has. Kevin Reid, Madeleine Hall, and Hannah Laviolette all deliver solid performances. It’s a show with hardly any words, so the onus is on their facial expressions and body language to pick up the slack and they succeeds. The set is also very cute and functional. Yet, despite the solid performances, the show still fails to impress because the storyline and the characters don’t seem well thought out.

To put it simply, George is a jerk. He continually ignores Hannah and is quite cruel to her. Hannah, on the other hand, will do anything to get just a smidgen of his love, even changing her fundamental self by removing her magic wings. By the end, it’s easy to feel for Hannah. The audience finds itself hoping that she rejects George and finds someone worthy of her, someone who actually loves her.

Likewise, there were several superfluous elements that bogged the production down. In a show of 60 minutes, it doesn’t make sense why there is an intermission and, while a kind gesture, bribing the audience with candy doesn’t really add anything. Likewise, Rebecca Laviolette’s character, the stage manager, doesn’t have a purpose, other than to show just how incompetent George is, which is needless; he does that quite well himself.

Overall, a cute idea with poor execution.

 

Hannah & George plays at Studio Léonard Beaulne

Sam Mullins tells personal, sometimes painful, and often funny stories ripped from his own life. For all his self-deprecating comments about being a bad actor, he promises, with a bit of work, to become a great storyteller. His show, The Untitled Sam Mullins Project, is framed around four truths he is told to write down in a comedy workshop. They are that “embarrassing things always happen to me,” “I will never find love,” “life is fleeting,” “I’m in a perpetual state of panic.”

The stories he weaves around these truths have the raw content to be poignant and  Mullens’ stage presence is nothing short of captivating. He moves about and fills up the space, both with his movements and his personality. His diction is exceptional, but sometimes the pacing is a bit stilted. Likewise, some of the stories still need further shaping. Some, like the one dealing with love, have potential, but lack direction in their current state. Mullins notices patterns in his life when it comes to love, but doesn’t do much with them, making the story feel unfinished. Others, like the one dealing with the fleeting nature of life, go on a bit long.  …

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AN EVENING OF SIN

Ottawa’s burlesque scene is alive and well at the Ottawa Fringe. An Evening of Sin, Ottawa’s monthly burlesque show, are exploring a number of themes throughout their run at the festival—from Glitz & Glam, to Gorelesque, Nerdlesque and more—and they are not for the faint of heart.

Though the company have been known to present a Vaudeville-style variety show led by the dashing Retro Joad, here you can expect burlesque, burlesque and more burlesque. The show is all about tease, and features performers who are committed to naughty behaviour in the nation’s capital. Expect feather boas, pin-up hairdo’s, glitter, and of course, sequined pasties.

Though flirtation reigns supreme, the performers also dabble with silliness and a touch of satire. The performance itself does not actually offer very much variety (either stylistically or intersectionally—as you might expect from a modern burlesque performance), which is somewhat disappointing. Still, if you are looking for a late-night show that is unabashed, fringy, and fun there is a good chance this is the performance for you.

Academic Hall.

written and interpreted by Martin Dockery / Ribbit RePublic

Two friends have stepped away from a yearly Holiday party for just a moment – or have they? After discovering a small box, with only a switch and a warning label, the plot doesn’t just thicken; it warps, and doubles back on itself so that the audience cannot be certain that the progression of time on stage is linear.

This play reveals its central theme early on. It’s about memory and of our tenuous grasp of reality. And though this has been introduced to us early on, Dockery still hooks his audience and takes them on a journey that they did not see coming. Dockery is adept at using the illusory reality of the stage to toy with his audience, and Inescapable does just that. In Inescapable, repetition is used as a tool that unveils an alternate reality between these two characters, one that they can’t fully grasp.

There are a few elements in the plot itself that work against the stage-world that Dockery has imagined, which ultimately tarnish the illusion. What’s more, the staging here works against the actors. However, there are also so many things right about this show. Jon Paterson and Martin Dockery have an electric rapport on stage. The dialogue is dizzying, the characters are funny, and the plot is the thing of a hallucinogenic vision.

Press photo courtesy Ottawa Fringe.  Gemma Wilcox as The Queen!

Magical Mystery Detour, written and performed by Gemma Wilcox from the UK. Directed by Elizabeth Baron . Wilcox creates a whole fantasy world as she acts out every creature living or otherwise in an adventure that finally has her crossing London and then the countryside, (British no doubt) on her own special form of  Tour (or Detour). Accompanied with background clips from Prince, the Beatles, Madonna, Jimmy Hendrix, Adele, and a lot more, she becomes her truck that comments on life on the road, the Queen who pops up waving at her subjects, her lover (or husband?), a perverse tree, an owl,  her own dog Sola, a fly that buzzes around in the kitchen, a sort of jelly and a yeast spread that was no doubt something English I didn’t catch,  and a whole crowd of unexpected characters and living things that suddenly have their own voices, physical traits, and strange spoken content.  It goes on at a dizzy pace for 60 minutes and Wilcox sustains it all very well. Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to grasp exactly where she is or what she is doing because I found the transitions absent or the vocabulary was British slang I didn’t know but don’t worry about the logic of this one, Jemma Wilcox is a super performer and will hold your attention like a form of wild poetry and you won’t feel the time go by. 

The Magical Mystery Detour plays in the Arts Court Theatre

BURSTING INTO FLAMES written and performed by Martin Dockery. photo­ Bill Kennedy

 

A monologue by Martin Dockery, the cosmic story teller whose art sends us spinning into superior worlds through his complex and modulated vocal performance, his physical energy, his corporeal creativity, and his narrative art. The story begins in the land of the dead. He takes us on a personal journey, showing what it’s like to live as a “dead” person in Heaven. He even takes us into a terrifying trip to Hell, the antithesis of the other place. IT is soon clear that the Infinite nature of heavenly time, guides his story telling technique so that is spins up and beyond, repeating ad infinitum what has been experienced, adding a special twist each time, sending the story hurtling in another direction. A sense of infinite time (not chronological time nor circular time nor even linear time!!) meets a fleshy narrative to produce a brilliant performance that is, in spite of appearances, highly structured, totally captivating, and the most original mono style of the fringe. I can guarantee that already. Run to see this one before the poor actor exhausts himself and collapses. It is clearly, a performance that literally devours the performer!!

Room 311, third floor of the U of Ottawa Theatre department.

Photo: Andrew Alexander

Madge is young, idealistic, and beams with enthusiasm as she arrives to her first day of work for the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. She is an Analyst, and is ready to take the department by storm. She is driven by the perennial motto of the public service: “Fearlessly advise, loyally implement.” However, the world that she arrives into is not as she imagined.

The Public Servant, created by Theatre Columbus, is smart, relevant, and expertly imagined. Director and co-writer Jennifer Brewin has welded together two seemingly disparate ideas: The public service and entertainment. And it works. The play juxtaposes the mundanities of the life of the public service with physical comedy in a performance that is funny, ironic, and relevant.

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