“You need to be three things in order to be happy” says the Pink Haired Girl. “You need to be stupid, selfish, and in good health.” Ottawa-based company Troupe de la Lune had some good working material when they chose to adapt cartoonist Winston Rowntree’s popular webcomic Subnormality into a 30-minute Fringe play. Rowntree provides them with quirky characters and thoughtful dialogue (his webcomic is known for unusually lengthy speech bubbles), and director Sarah Newton (along Marie Robertson and Sarah McEown, who assisted with the adaptation) creates a space to play onstage.
I’ve seen 13 Fringe shows so far, and 7 (x1) Samurai is the first to have received a standing ovation. An exceptionally well-deserved standing ovation. Cloaked in a martial arts ensemble, his face smeared with white makeup, David Gaines spends only a few moments telling his story before quickly moving into a seamless performance of movement and sound and stunning masks (no clown nose, though, despite what the show poster suggests). He plays dozens of characters, and his actions are crystal clear: from the opening sunrise to the closing sunset – with a grotesque battle sequence in between – Gaines certainly knows how to keep his audience engaged. Indeed, our eyes never wavered from his swift movements and expressive face. Review by Jessica Ruano
