reviewvancouver: Fringe Festival 2024

Naked at My Age

Performance Dates: September 5,6,8,9,10,12,13,14, 2021 at Off The Tracks, Granville Island

Performer Charla Hathaway

Portland native Charla Hathaway is a moderately attractive seventyish woman, who, for sixty minutes relates her lifetime of sexploits to a mostly older female audience crammed into the Espresso Bar & Bistro at 1363 Railspur Alley on Granville Island. Ms. Hathaway certainly seems to be comfortable in her own skin – which she (thankfully) shows very little of to her audience.
Charla Hathaway believes that her skin is the most sexually potent part of her anatomy, but I would suggest that it’s her amazing memory that stimulates her sexual appetite and perhaps even turns on some in her audience. Unless of course, her story is fictional (which I very much doubt), she is able to recount in graphic detail numerous sexual adventures over a period of around fifty-plus years. Hathaway’s presentation relies much on the audience’s engagement. While her storytelling is only mildly titillating, she wows the audience with humour and a pretty decent singing voice and guitar playing.

A Man Walks Into a Bar

Performance Dates: September 6,7,8,10,11,12,13,14,15, 2024 at Ballet BC Rehearsal Studio, 1286 Cartwright St., Granville Island

Performers Sandra Medeiros and Matt Loop

If you think that the title of this play is the first line of a joke you’ve already heard too often, that’s because it is. Despite the title, it isn’t even a comedy, well, not really. It’s more like a study in human reaction and gender politics performed as a trilogy; the same man walks into the same bar on three separate occasions and interacts differently with the same woman who works at the bar. Click HERE for the complete review plus promo images

Everybody Knows

Performance Dates September 5,7,8,9,11,12,14 & 15, 2024 at Ballet BC Rehearsal Studio, 1286 Cartwright St., Granville Island

Performer Rita Sheena

The title of Rita Sheena’s artful, semi-autobiographical theatre/dance piece comes from Leonard Cohen’s cynical masterpiece from his 1988 album “I'm Your Man.” It's indeed appropriate that Ms. Sheena's solo work be staged at the rehearsal space for Ballet BC. Sheena’s choreography dovetails exquisitely to Cohen’s songs that include: “Who by Fire,” "Chelsea Hotel," “You Want it Darker,” “If it be your Will” and of course "Everybody Knows.“ The performer shows beautiful movement around the stage, interpreting Cohen’s music to imaginative dance syntax.

It’s not Cohen’s original recordings we hear in the audience, but that of Johanna and Kiara Söderberg, who form the Swedish duo First Aid Kit – which is fine. Sheena’s performance includes half a dozen brief costume changes which she gets through on stage. It also occasionally involves duplicating the lyrics in spoken word, however, the performer’s voice is incompatible with that of the recording artists. Rita Sheena is obviously a huge fan of Cohen's music and poetry (who isn't). By way of an encore, she recites lyrics from memory of audience member's favourite Cohen songs.