Ryan Pepper’s first night Fringe: Drunk, Josephine, House Rules
Reviewed by Ryan Pepper
Drunk : Text gives audiences a musical theatre love letter to Broadway
It’s not surprising that Drunk Text from Miltonbone Productions started as creator Mathieu Charlebois’ graduation recital at Carleton University. The play comes across as a young person’s love letter to Broadway, complete with all the tropes that Broadway fanatics love. Over the course of the hour-long production, there are songs about following your dreams to New York City, a song about an ex-girlfriend plotting her revenge on her almost-fiance, love songs, and songs about seizing the moment. This earnest musical fully embraces the Broadway cheesiness of musicals like Dear Evan Hansen, a world full of people bursting into feelgood show tunes.
With minimal setting and a small cast of four actors, three of them singers, and a three-person band of drums, bass, and piano, the musical relied heavily on the strong vocal performances of leads Charlebois, Emily Asmar, and Sarah Cousineau, and light-hearted songs, including four originals by Charlebois.
The story itself was also pared down, a touching tale of a Carleton grad who quits his government job and runs away to New York to make it big. Over ten songs, the runaway Dylan comes to New York, is reunited with his ex-fiance, who he left to pursue his musical theatre dreams, and gets his big break. It’s probably the most Broadway storyline ever, and the musical gets so cheesy at times that even the cast recognize it as parody, but the production is imbibed with such a feeling of genuine affection for musical theatre. It’s not a highly original piece of musical theatre, and the plot and songs are conventional, but it falls proudly into the subdivision of musical theatre about musical theatre made by and for musical theatre lovers.
Josephine captures the inspiring story of a Black entertainment pioneer
When the real Josephine Baker returned to American in 1937 after almost two decades of fame in France, her New York City debut was met with jeers, boos, and incredibly racist, disparaging reviews. For the stunning Josephine, a burlesque cabaret dream play, the reaction was nothing but exuberant, with a standing ovation ending one of the first play of Fringe Fest.
True to the title, Josephine is a powerful mix of burlesque, cabaret, autobiography, and play that is well worth the watch. Evocatively retelling the life story of the incredible Josephine Baker (1906–1975), this play covers her life from her childhood in the brutally racist Missouri to her fame as an exotic dancer—literally, as her breakthrough role was as a banana-skirt-clad jungle woman—in France, to her later role in the American Civil Rights movement. The play recreates the 1920s and Baker’s early shows so vividly that the cabaret dream play honestly could have ended there, amid a swirl of incredible dancing and boisterous jazz. But the story never misses a beat, as the play unravels her life through snapshots featuring dance, music, and drama.
For the real-life Baker, the burlesque fame of the 20s, so flawlessly recreated on stage, turned into an adventurous life that found her spying for the French Resistance, personally meeting Herman Goring, and becoming a civil rights activist in the 1950s and speaker at the March on Washington in 1963. Tymisha Harris doesn’t just play Baker through all of this, but lives her. The sheer amount of time spent studying Baker shows, as the woman, from her incredible talent to her emotion and idiosyncrasies, is brought to life on the stage.
But most powerfully, perhaps, the play is an exploration of Black experience and identity from the 1910s, when Harris, almost casually, talks about lynching, to the 20s when she is cast as a savage jungle woman, to a disgusting 1937 New York Times review that labelled her a “negro wench,” and through the 1950s and 60s, when, as an international superstar, she still enters her hotel through the backdoor. As much an exploration of one incredible woman, it is also an exploration of the Black experience in the first half of the twentieth century.
House Rules: New family-friendly work-in-progress hopes to explore a dog’s life
A solo show about a family dog named Waffles having a hard time adjusting to a new puppy, this play is still being workshopped, but even the barebones production at ODD Box hints at a charming family play that will entertain children while giving them a few valuable life lessons.
The script for the play was solid, and Nick Wade’s portrayal of a dog was spot-on, from the way dogs sit to the way they whine at the door or they patrol the house and bark the minute their owner walks through the door. Although not delivered in costume, with a dog costume on, it would be a very convincing performance, and sure to delight children.
The play also sought to impart lessons about family sticking together, and being there for each other in hard times or times of loss. The family lost their older dog, Duke, before the play begins, and Waffles makes sure to be there for his human family as he deals with Duke’s loss himself. He teaches the new puppy that when a loved one leaves, the family comes closer together, a good message for kids.
For a play only a few weeks old, many of the details were already worked out. However, the script felt fast, and scene changes were often and sudden, leading to a bit of a disjointed feel in the show. That being said, it’s still in its early stages, and the cast and crew are eager for audience suggestions to improve what is sure to become a delightful piece of children’s theatre.