Fringe Reviews: Friday, July 7/06

Reviews of Sweet Jane & Free, Has A Weapon, and The Catering Queen

Jul 7, 2006

As with the Fringe, there are shows playing that are hit and miss. On this day, it was one hit, and one definite miss.

Sweet Jane & Free, Has A Weapon

Sweet Jane & Free, Has A Weapon is a piece centered around two stories told in monologue form - one performed by Alex Fallis, the other by Colleen Williams. Both short plays are written by novelist Gregor Robinson, who seems to be making his playwrighting debut with the work, and most of the problems lay with him.

Sweet Jane is the story of a man who is remembering Jane, who has passed away, and he is haunted by her memory, and the thought that she was murdered.

Free, Has A Weapon centres around Willa, who is an elderly woman who only speaks freely and openly to her dog, Toto, and when something happens to Toto, she goes off the deep end, and loses the sanity she has enjoyed for so long.

The texts are filled with novelistic exposition, to the point where you get the feeling you are seeing a staged reading of a novel - every nuance, every detail is told to our absolute dismay. The denseness of the language used made the piece drag on, and because of the amount of exposition, the characters are never really developed to their full potential.

Alex Fallis is wonderful as the "man" in Sweet Jane, and as the director of Free, Has A Weapon does what he can with the text provided, though it never reaches the climax it deserves.

Colleen Williams is rather boring as Willa, and we as an audience are simply not interested in her idle ramblings about her life. Williams over-dramatic conclusion to the play leaves us rolling our eyes.

Overall, a fairly uneventful hour of theatre, full of possibilites, but it never lives up to it's potential.

The Catering Queen

Alison Lawrence has been hailed as the "Susan Lucci" of the Fringe Festival. Having applied 13 times previously, this is her first foray into the Fringe as a playwright, and it's about time.

She has created a wonderful story about "cater waiters" and the lives they lead (and aspire to lead) with ease, wit, and charm.

Featuring an extremely talented and funny cast, including Hume Baugh, Dmitry Chepovetsky, Sharon Heldt, David Macniven, and Mary Francis Moore, who are all terrific and hilariously funny.

The audience sprang to their feet during the bows, and rightly so - this is what the Fringe Festival is all about; a show filled with everything - humour, romance, drama and a whole lot of food and wine (the audience didn't partake).

Run, don't walk, to grab a ticket to what could possibly be the hottest ticket this summer's Fringe.

The copyright of the article Fringe Reviews: Friday, July 7/06 in Modern World Theatre is owned by Mike Mackenzie. Permission to republish Fringe Reviews: Friday, July 7/06 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.