Summer festival
season in Montreal is finally here! How do I know? Simple. I just experienced
the opening event of the 26th edition of the St. Ambroise Montreal
Fringe Festival: the Fringe-For-All.
It took place last
Monday (May 30) at Café Campus on Prince Arthur Street, as devoted Fringers
packed the club to partake in the ultimate sneak preview. Hosted by Fringe Fest
veterans Al Lafrance and Cat Lemieux (resplendent in her Fringe Buzz bumble bee
costume), the Fringe-For-All, in the space of three hours, jams 81 local Fringe
shows and attractions, who get exactly two minutes to preview their respective
productions to the audience, so that they can spark their interest in getting
them to see their shows throughout the course of the festival, which runs until
June 19.
And two minutes is
all they get. When that time limit is up, the lights go out and it’s time to
leave the stage. So each show preview pulls no stops to make sure that your
interest is indeed sparked. First of all, every table and counter top are
covered with interesting promotional items (such as the ones pictured above), from cards to flyers, to
prescription bottles filled with M&M’s, to pizza boxes delivered by actual
pizza deliverymen, to being pelted with a flurry of condoms that are thrown
from the stage.
I always look
forward to attending the Fringe-For-All, because it not only helps build the
excitement (and yes, the buzz, too) for the upcoming Fringe Fest for me, but
also gives me a big help to decide which shows in their overwhelming line-up
that would be worth my while to catch and write up about in a future column for
the Times. And after this wild and fun bombardment of everything Fringe, here
are some of the shows that did spark my interest: “Camp Wanapoke”, a
no-holds-barred comedy about the goings on at a summer camp that makes
“Meatballs” look like a Walt Disney flick from the 50s (pictured above); the romantic comedy
“Miranda & Dave Begin Again”; “Coffee Erotica”, a multi-disciplinary
showcase of dance, spoken word … and coffee; “The McSorly & Chung Magic
Hour”, a new twist to the conventional magic show; and “Folie’s Follies”, a
trilogy of short plays that deals with the good, bad and absurd of
relationships (which was the one is got pelted with from the rain of
promotional condoms).
Indeed, the
Fringe-For-All was a buzz worthy night to get you geared up for three weeks’
worth of buzz worthy fun at the Montreal Fringe Festival. For more information,
or to purchase tickets, go to www.montrealfringe.ca.
* * *
One show that I
will certainly catch at this year’s Fringe Festival is “Get Lost Jem Rolls” by
Fringe Festival legend Jem Rolls, and is playing at the MAI, located at 3680
Jeanne Mance, on June 10, 11, 12, 15, 17 and 18.
A native of Surrey,
England, Rolls has performed at the legendary Edinburgh Fringe Festival since
1996, and at the Montreal Fringe Fest since 2002. With his uncanny ability to
mix his wealth of obscure knowledge, poetry and storytelling, Rolls gives his
loyal Fringe fan base an entertaining experience that have made his shows a must-see
ever year (his solo show “The Inventor of All Things” was one of the big hits
of last year’s Fringe Festival, and earned him a special Lifetime Spirit of the
Fringe Award as well).
“’Get Lost Jem
Rolls’ is like a twisted travelogue. It chronicles the blundering adventures of
an English traveler who goes to different places that are not touristy in
nature, but with the design to get myself lost,” said Rolls in a recent phone
interview. “For example, I went up the Amazon on a boat with 70 other people,
and with no clue where we were going to end up. My favorite countries to get
myself lost in are India, Indonesia and Brazil, and even the marketplace in
Marrakech, Morocco, which is a splendid place to get lost in.”
Rolls loves to
perform at the Montreal Fringe Festival, and uses it as a launch pad for his
new shows before he takes them to other Fringe Fests across Canada (he’ll
perform “Get Lost” in Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Vancouver
afterwards), and always enjoys introducing his new shows to Montreal audiences
first. “Starting a new Fringe show is like doing the worst school exam of your
life. So if I have to do that exam, I might as well do it in front of a
Montreal audience, because they are always up for it, and those first shows go
down well with them,” he said.
And another thing
that Rolls will happily get himself lost in during his stint at this year’s
Montreal Fringe Festival is his endless pursuit of the what he regards as the best
Chinese food and ice cream in the country. “Ripples on St. Laurent Boulevard is
one of the best ice cream places in the city, especially a scoop each of their
New York cheesecake and coffee ice cream on a single cone,” he said. “In fact,
I have eight of nine stamps on my Ripples card, which means I will be getting
my free ice cream cone from them this year.”
(These articles originally appeared in the June 4, 2016 edition of The Montreal Times)
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