THE BEAUTIFULLY BIZARRE FRINGE FEST
The circus is back in town. No, not that Cirque with the mechanical trapeze flyers and high-wire artistes. Perhaps more like the defunct Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey with the carnies and clowns.
We’re talking about the 20th Montreal Fringe, a loopy spectacle second to none in this city. No lions or tigers, but it does include a stripping juggler, a subatomic rock opera on quantum physics, a multi-tentacled human octopus and, of course, the “50-ft. woman,” Amy Blackmore, in her eighth year as the executive and artistic director of the Montreal Fringe.
Blackmore, an ex-dancer, is just a shade over five feet tall, but does plenty of stretching these days. That’s because this Fringe, which wraps Sunday, features 800 performances in English and French with contributions from over 500 artists from around the planet. More than 60,000 patrons are expected to partake in the merriment.
The Fringe’s Beer Tent is, as always, the fest’s nerve centre. In addition to serving as a concert venue and supplying suds and cider for the parched, the tent is covered with hand-written reviews of the shows, penned by the public and perhaps a few performers.
The tent, only partially topped, also provides an opportunity for the public to rub shoulders/ tentacles with the performers — some of whom look like they sleep there. Like that fellow with the ghostly pallour in the black mourning suit who looks as if he just slipped out from a coffin. That’s Michael Burgos, star of the appropriately titled, The Eulogy, billed as a “comic gem” by the Washington Post.
“I’m going to a funeral, but not my own. It’s for Thomas, a horrible roommate and poacher of endangered animals,” explains the Virginia native, a graduate of a Parisian clown school. “Funny, but my best audiences tend to be morticians and others in the death industry.”
Meet Portland, Ore.’s gift to strip-juggling, DK Reinemer, winner of 2017’s Spirit of the Montreal Fringe award for Help! I’m American. Reinemer is not lacking for spirit this year, either. His show, Becoming Magic Mike, is “an action adventure comedy that is under-dressed and overthe-top.”
“I believe I’m the only strip juggler around — it’s a niche market,” Reinemer explains. “And
I go pretty far.” He’s not talking juggling bowling pins, either.
“It was either that or coming back with Help, I’m Still American.”
Comic Marcus Ryan, sitting next to Reinemer, suddenly has a brainwave. He thinks Help, I’m an Aussie might have been a better title for his solo show, Hablas Inglés? The play deals with Ryan’s 17-month backpacking odyssey through South America. He claims he was the first person to do standup in six Latin American countries. Alas, not only was he unable to communicate with most locals, his life was also in danger.
“I was robbed twice, held up at knife point, arrested and had high fevers in the Amazon jungle. I blame my crap agent,” Ryan laments. “Oh, that was me.
“I guess the show is more tragedy — they didn’t want comedy in half the places I played. But I did get out alive, and isn’t that where comedy comes from?”
Comedy doesn’t necessarily come from a bowel condition, but don’t tell Torontonian Dan Rosen, writer/star of Game of Crohn’s: “At first my condition was traumatic, but, in retrospect, it’s objectively funny with Game of Thrones references … I do
hope this run continues.”
Comedy could certainly spring from a subatomic rock opera on quantum physics, Flute Loops. Vancouverite Devon More is the piece’s creator/performer. “It’s actually quite a literal title because I work with a loop station to record all the instruments I play on top of one another … I went down this rabbit-hole of quantum theory and there are so many rich philosophical jumpingoff points there, like the elasticity of time. Seems logical to me.”
Yeah. And here comes human octopus, Winnipeg-born Sydney Hayduc, presenting her solo show, Jellyfish Are Immortal. “Think of it as a Ted Talk with dance and poetry … it’s about empathy but also very silly … and I do have many tentacles.” Eight. Which may explain why she feels “so connected” to Montreal.
But there is no Fringe performer more connected to Montreal than Brit wit Jem Rolls, who has done our Fringe and just about every other Fringe more than all others and is thus tagged “Godfather of the Fringe.” His latest extravaganza is I, Idiot. “Adequate poetry, poor clowning, lousy singing, rotten dancing … funny, though,” he notes. “They say everyone’s got a novel in them, and it’s called I, Idiot.”
As should be evident, Blackmore has the answer for what makes Montreal’s Fringe stand out: “Organized chaos from artists from all over the world, and some not from this world.”