Fringe - Day 2

I Hate Bill Pats (Bessie-Jean Productions)

"The day after you decided to kill yourself is a weird day. That day kind of sneaks up on you."

Inevitably, at every Fringe there is one play that I hear people heaping praise onto but that I never manage to get to myself (because of petty human concerns like "time" and "money"). Last year, that play was I Hate Bill Pats. So I was delighted to see that the play was back on the roster this year, although I was a bit confused as to why it would come to the same Fringe two years in a row. As it turns out, this is more of an I Hate Bill Pats redux, combining together elements of the previous show as well as its sequel, I Hate Bill Pats 2: Electric Boogaloo (now that I think about it, the subtitle may actually have been Almost Homeless, but unfortunately I failed to take notes).

I Hate Bill Pats is a play about a man who hates himself (so naturally I found it easy to relate to). He begins with the story of how he was arrested for stealing $35,000 from Moxies when he worked there as a manager. He was arrested during a family dinner, in front of his wife, who had recently become a crown prosecutor. Because if there is one thing Bill Pats can do well, it is keep his life ironic. Bill continues to spin the tale of his arrest, his ensuing trial, and the efforts he took to just barely avoid prison. After that, we follow him across the years as he tries over and over again to put his life back together, plagued by troubling circumstances and bad choices. He takes us through his community service, two brushes with homelessness, a suicide attempt, and finally his discovery of acting.

Needless to say, we haven't all shared in Bill's life experience. We haven't all stolen from our work because we ran afoul of an irate Russian tow-truck driver. And we certainly haven't all bought Life brand sleeping pills to save money on our suicide. But there is a definite universality to his story, because we have all made bad choices; sometimes we narrowly escape the consequences, and sometimes we don't. Bill has had his share of both of those types of bad choices, and in the brave, unflinching way he shares this with us, he holds up a mirror for each of us to risk a glance, if we dare.

Bill Pats personifies that truly modernist archetype of the man vs himself. His life is a struggle on three levels. The first level is external: that raw, survival story where he fights against his circumstances  to eke out food and shelter. The second level is personal: the wrestling match against his own instincts and poor judgement, letting his emotions get the best of him and continually opting for deceit even when it threatens to destroy him. The third level is existential: that overpowering feeling that he has no reason to change, because his bad choices are intrinsic to him and he has precisely the life he deserves. This third level creates the soul of the play, because it challenges each and every member of the audience to consider themselves, and consider whether their life is the one they should really be leading, or just the one they think they should lead according to this nebulous notion of who they think they are.

The idea of personhood comes under question as the mantra of "I hate Bill Pats" cycles over and over. Is this Bill Pats he hates really himself, or is Bill Pats just an icon: a summation of all his bad choices externalised as an object of scorn? What is it that constitutes a person to begin with? These are questions that are left lingering on the air as we leave the auditorium. Because we can only answer one thing, and that is that we don't hate Bill Pats. We don't hate him because he is simply human, and for that hour that he is laid bare onstage he is more human than any of us.

I Hate Bill Pats is a poignant and soulful tale of a man who lost everything multiple times over. But it is also a profoundly hopeful tale of a man who kept pulling himself up, even after he was convinced it was the end. It is the story of a pained life, and though we, as the audience, cannot take that pain away, we can share in it for a little while, collectively acknowledging that there is a bit of hate in all of us, but that we don't need to live by it.

Bizarro Obscure (Peachy Keen Productions)

And now for something completely different. Departing from the very terrestrial subject of self-loathing in Winnipeg, let us move on to the shifting sands of reality many worlds apart. Let us move on to Bizarro Obscure, an inter-dimensional cabaret showcasing the universe's oddities, delighting in the unconventional and off-kilter.

Our characters are Janis and Jujube, musical performers on some unspecified plane of existence. But their concert is cut short when Jujube receives a mysterious letter instructing her that she must become a guardian to a small earthling boy named Daniel. So Janis and Jujube set out on a journey across the fabric of reality to save Daniel. Along the way, their misadventures find them tangling with a pair of magic glasses, a bearded lady, and a Russian DJ.

As I am writing this review, it occurs to me how difficult it is to render into words the actual plot of this play. If you are someone who demands a straightforward narrative, don't go see this play. Or actually, do go see this play, and let it broaden your horizons a little. Bizarro Obscure is a whirlwind tour of all the things the universe lost in the dryer. The loosely drawn narrative of Janis and Jujube's voyage across time and space is intercut with little vignettes of the strange folks they meet on their journey, as well as many beautiful and spine-tingling musical numbers. There is a bit of vaudeville in here, the way it combines all manners of performance (acting, comedy, song, and dance) but it's more like if vaudeville fell through a black hole and continued to evolve in an alien dimension, but still received the occasional TV signal from Earth. Am I making sense? No? Good.

The musical talent drives a large portion of Bizarro. The songs work well as standalone pop-folk-rock numbers, but are done in such a way that gives them a very extra-terrestrial feeling. The music sets the mood of being whisked across the universe on a journey just slightly beyond mortal comprehension. Christy Taronno (Jujube) is a musical powerhouse, rocking vocals and guitar. She's like a folk-rock angel who spent some time as an extra on Beetlejuice and her full, ethereal voice never fails to captivate. Meanwhile, Sydney Hayduk (Janis) dazzles us with her electrifying dance moves.

Hayduk is a firecracker on stage, taking on the roles of Janis, the bearded lady, and the little misfit boy Daniel. She captures a lot of character in her movement. As Janis she is more unnatural and alien (and a little robotic), but then as Daniel "the strongest boy in the world" she is brimming with earthly exuberance. She exudes both the inherent strangenesss of Bizarro as well as the undiluted human energy that burns at its core. Taronno is a bit more reserved in her acting, tackling the icy Russian DJ who shows up quite inexplicably (even by this play's standards). But as Jujube she is filled with hope and compassion, determined to do right by her charge. The two women (who also co-wrote the play) work brilliantly together in all aspects of performance. Their comedic timing bounces off each other and keeps everything moving swiftly across the cosmos, sweeping the audience along.

But for all the weird trappings Bizarro Obscure has, it has a very human theme at its core. It is about finding ourselves, finding the strength to accept ourselves as we are, with all our quirks and failings. The play is a celebration, and once we have swum across the tides of space and time we realise what it is a celebration of: everything out of the ordinary, everything that doesn't quite fit. After travelling so far away from our world, we come to understand ourselves a little better.

Bizarro Obscure is a dazzling blend of comedy, music, and touching drama. From beginning to end it operates within the realm of the abstruse and inexplicable, but deep within the weirdness we see ourselves, and realise that to understand ourselves, we need to look a little off-centre. Because the truth is stranger than fiction, and people are stranger than characters, and we all might as well learn to live with strange: it's not going anywhere.