One of the reasons I picked God Is a Scottish Drag Queen as one of my Fringe shows to see – besides its name – was that the press materials said that it was created by the performer, Mike Delamont, in collaboration with Jacob Richmond from Ride The Cyclone, and I had heard such rave reviews about Ride The Cyclone. By the time I actually went to see the show this afternoon I had forgotten that entirely, and my expectations were based on the title alone, so I was a little bit surprised when it started and I began to realize that Mike Delamont didn’t seem to be actually Scottish, or actually a drag queen.
I’m glad that I saw Newborn Theatre’s production of Teach Me. I hesitate to say that I enjoyed it, the subject matter is difficult and I doubt that audience enjoyment is what Rachel Gantz had in mind when she wrote it or what Victoria Urquhart had in mind when she directed it.
The play is set in the detention room of an all girls high school. Stacey (played by Jessica Brown) and Lauren (played by Mara Zigler) start talking about Mr. P (played by Robert Rainville) the math teacher, the only male teacher in the school.
Children’s theatre is such a tough needle to thread – amuse people of wildly varying tastes and intellectual abilities, sing, dance, don’t scare anyone so much they pee their pants. Every foray into a theatre with a kid is a bit of a crapshoot anyway, since their fears and likes and level of patience is so variable, and the line for Honest Aesop’s Fables was basically full of parents thinking “Please o please, gods of Fringe, let this go well!”
It takes a lot of commitment in putting together a one-person show where an actor plays multiple characters, sings and dances. This is the commitment Donna Greenberg took in her Toronto Fringe show Burnt …and toasted! but unfortunately there were many pieces missing and it didn’t quite work for me.
The musical show started with Greenberg doing a song and dance number which was a nice way to open the show. But she lost me once she started her dialogue that began with ‘Once upon a time…’. Greenberg takes us back into her past by walking back and forth across the stage trying to take on the different characters.
