Stephen Elliott-Buckley
Lost my Fringe cherry, September 1989 .............)(...... https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/posterman/theatrespace-presents-5th-annual-vancouver-fringe-festival
We have been steeped in a quarter century of dread dystopian art that is both validating but largely risking despair.
This show could have been Laugh-In, if in a 1960s cold war.
Instead it constantly points to connection and humanity and the richest of who we are.
Epic: the narrative flow, the cast, the voice, the puppets and the amazing set concept.
Waffle slapstick is hard to pull off, but Shazam!, it landed so well. Especially after swirling storylines of failure create the dread and desperation.
An amazing story from one of my favourite parts of Like Water For Chocolate. Excellent opener.
First year university, first English course, first novel, Italo Calvino If On A Winter's Night A Traveller: altered linear narrative is a joy and liberating and subversive. This show allowed such breadth: audience, guest, tech, concepts to introduce in an improv anarchy, 4 bodice genres on a literary charcuterie, with a vapour of Fabio stuck in the lights. Shazam!
It's one thing to curate the gathering of concepts, but to then spin a quarter of a night into a different sub-genre is a high-wire act. To do it, live in front of people, is without a net.