The Howland Company joins forces with Bad Dog Theatre for a Toronto Fringe run of improvised theatre, creating a new show every night inspired by traditional farces with Entrances and Exits, directed by Paolo Santalucia and running on the Factory Theatre Mainstage. Split into two parts, the scene starts in the living room, then flips to the bedroom, where we see the same scene play out but from a different vantage point.
Last night, host and FX operator Connor Low set the stage and collected suggestions from the audience: a type of party and three sounds you don’t want to hear coming from a bedroom. We got New Year’s Eve party; and breaking glass, a blood-curdling scream and a gun shot. Hilarity ensues, with tension-filled marriages, grudge-filled resentment and competition, secret passions, startling revelations and a college wrestling uniform.
Last night’s ensemble featured the hilarious improv stylings of Ghazal Azarbad, Conor Bradbury, Nigel Downer, Dylan Evans and Liz Johnston (the ensemble also includes Ruth Goodwin). With high-energy antics and side-splitting shenanigans, these actors turned on a dime to create this wacky fun slapstick tale of friends and frenemies gathering to ring in the New Year.
Entrances and Exits returns to the Factory Mainstage tonight (July 14) at 9:15 pm and July 15 at noon; these guys are sold out, but you may be able to snag some rush seats if you arrive early.
In the meantime, check out Megan Robinson’s In the Greenroom interview with company member Liz Johnston and production manager Mimi Warshaw about their experience creating this improvised farce for Fringe.
Want to check if the show you want to see is sold out? The Toronto Fringe folks have set up a page for sold-out shows, updated daily.
Check out the 2018 Patron’s Picks, which receive an additional performance on July 15.
Zoey (Elizabeth Adams) and Jake (Dylan Evans) meet in high school when Jake is in desperate need of a math and science tutor to save his GPA and his chance at a football scholarship. About 20 years later, Zoey (Andrea Brown) is in desperate need to start a family, and needs Jake (Andrew Knowlton) to be on board with her ovulation schedule after several miscarriages.
Effectively and organically staged, the lives of younger and older versions of this couple inhabit the space in different times and spaces, with scenes overlapping as time shifts from past into present and back again. And there’s some really lovely use of upstage projection, showing us the night sky on their first date and Jake’s beloved Jets football game.
There’s a comfortable, almost relaxing rhythm to this relationship, even during moments of tension – largely due to the great chemistry of the pairings. Adams and Evans have a lovely, awkward and youthful sense of playfulness, with Adams as the smart, sharp-witted and mature younger Zoey, and Evans as the impetuous, cocky and sweet Jake. As their grown-up versions, Brown’s gives Zoey a gentle air of gravitas; still the smart, responsible one, she still can’t help but smile at Jake’s puckish antics. Knowlton’s Jake is still a lovable, infuriating boy; he loves Zoey to death, but can’t help but feel a failure when he compares his job as a gym teacher to her successful corporate career in science.
In the end, both Zoey and Jake must come to terms with lost dreams, both personal and shared. These high school sweethearts still have each other. The only question now is: Where do they go from here?
Zoey and Jake, now and then, in the lovely, playful and moving nostalgic journey False Start.
False Start continues at St. Vladimir Theatre, with two more performances: Fri, July 8 at 11 p.m. and Sat, July 9 at 7 p.m. For ticket info and advance tickets/passes, check out the Fringe website.
Dylan Evans (Picasso) & Will King (Einstein) in Picasso at the Lapin Agile – photo by Erika Downie
Picasso and Einstein walk into a bar.
This is the set-up for Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Seven Siblings Theatre’s current production, directed by Seven Siblings co-founder Erika Downie, which opened at Kensington Market bar venue Round last night.
It was my first time at Round, a vintage-inspired cabaret-styled bar space and a perfect immersive venue for this production. The Lapin Agile barkeep Freddie (Dylan Mawson) set the scene as the audience entered and settled, opening the bar on the playing space and jovially interacting with the audience, at least one of whom mistook him for the venue bartender (you can purchase beverages before the show starts).
Set in a bar in 1904, we find the two titans of innovation in their mid-20s and both on the brink of greatness. Einstein (company co-founder and previous production director Will King) is slogging away on his book on the theory of relativity, and Picasso (Dylan Evans) is in his blue period, struggling for instantaneous alignment between his ideas and the act of drawing them. At the top of the play, barkeep Freddie (Mawson), his sweetheart and co-worker Germaine (company co-founder Madryn McCabe) and regular Gaston (Jamie Johnson) are already pondering life, art, women and love when Einstein bursts in; and it’s not long after Picasso’s arrival that the scientist and the artist get into a heated argument that turns into a duel of science versus art.
Add to that mix an assortment of opinionated patrons and friends – a lover, friend and admirer (all played by Erin Burley), an art collector (Erik Helle), an inventor (Andrew Gaunce) and a surprise visitor (Maxwell LeBeuf) – and you have some hilarious, thought-provoking discussion and debate, as well as some predictions about the burgeoning 20th century. There is a restless, anxious and hopeful atmosphere in the bar as these characters adjust to the new century. Sparks of brilliance and absurdity abound – and it’s all big, goofy surreal fun.
Equally big fun is the sharp and engaging ensemble. Portraying the two young men on the edge of great things, King and Evans bring passion, drive and intelligence. King’s Einstein is bubbling with energy and ideas, shifting between stillness and silence and bursts of movement and thought; and Evans’ Picasso is smooth, sexy and charming – an infuriating player, but a talented and sensitive artist you can’t help but feel drawn to. And the upshot of their argument is that both men discover that they have more common ground than they thought – and that art and science are no so different after all.
Mawson’s Freddie is a great combination of affable and irreverent, and clueless with an occasional brilliant observation. Beneath the beautiful barmaid exterior, McCabe’s Germaine is insightful, astute and self-aware; her passions are her own to direct – and she has the most accurate predictions about the new century. As Gaston, Johnson brings a touch of wistful nostalgia to an otherwise grumpy older man. Saying aloud what Germaine already knows, Burley’s Suzanne (one of Picasso’s forgotten lovers) is a bright young woman who ultimately falls for Picasso with her mind, in spite of physical attraction and in spite of herself. Helle’s Sagot is flamboyant and shrewd, with an eye for important art and a mind for marketing – which affords engagement in his own artistry as a photographer. Gaunce’s self-important inventor Schmendiman is hilariously buffoonish, with a Daliesque quality to his verbal outbursts; and LeBeuf’s Visitor is a smooth, cool crooner with an interesting take on the world and its response to greatness.
The play crackles with ideas and conversation, with moments of breaking the fourth wall – even acknowledging that it’s a play – it’s a big ideas party and everyone’s invited.
Picasso and Einstein walk into a bar, and art, science, women and philosophy ensue in Seven Siblings Theatre’s wacky, surreal and immersive production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile.
Picasso at the Lapin Agile continues at Round until Feb 28; please note the 7:30 p.m. curtain time (it’s not cool when the stage manager has to hold the house for audience showing up when the show’s supposed to be starting). You can get advance tix online – strongly recommended.
You can keep up with Seven Siblings on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. In the meantime, check out the show’s trailer:
