Glam Gam productions

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If there’s one play that truly embodies the spirit of diversity and creativity of the Montreal Fringe Festival, Glam Gam Productions‘ Greasy: A Lesbian Love Story is it. If you’re open minded and want to laugh yourself silly, this play is a sure bet.

Greasy is not for everyone.

If you’re a prude who takes offense to nudity and simulated sex acts, don’t come to this play. If you’re homophobic, do not come to this play. If the idea of people being open and free about their sexuality makes you angry, do not come to this play. If you’re the type to have a social media tantrum about a few Catholic school jokes, stay away.

Inspired by the musical play Grease, Greasy is a racier, raunchier, funnier, gayer spoof with all the right jokes in all the right places.

The play starts with Winter, a cute blonde lesbian played by Magenta Haze, whom nine months earlier had rolled around in the snow with Dani, played by the amazing Phoenix Wood. Like in the original play, the sweet naïve Winter finds herself at the same all-girl Catholic high school with her old flame, who shrugs her off to impress her clique of butch dykes.

Many of the character names in the play are riffs on the names in the original. Rizzo becomes Jizzo, Danny Zuko becomes Dani Fuko, Kennickie becomes Kink-Nikki, and the Pink Ladies become the Pink Tacos.

This play is a treat because no topic is off limits. Queer identity, drag culture, gender roles, polyamory, and even mental illness, academic stress, and school debt are all addressed in the piece. What particularly sets Greasy apart from the original, however, is how thoroughly the other characters are developed.

The original Grease revolved around the romance between Danny Zuko and Sandy, giving it an almost nauseatingly sentimental note while leaving the other characters’ storylines superficial. In Greasy all the characters are given a voice and a story to tell, whether it’s Frenchie’s struggles to get into med school, Jizzo’s conflicted sexuality and her romance with Kink-Nikki, or Rummy and Slutzy – played by the hilarious Booze Crotch and her puppet Slutzy – and their struggles with mental illness and love for Tarty.

Even gay male identity is addressed through the play’s two drag queens, Cha Cha and Ta Ta, played by the beautiful Lez Izmohr and Spoopy Patootie, respectively. We also get this through Prince LaFontaine, played by Micheal J. McCarthy, whose outfits consisting of the tackiest suits I’ve ever seen, trumped even the most beautiful drag costumes in the play.

The show has the added benefit of promoting body positivity via its numerous burlesque performances. Few in the play fit the Hollywood ideal of an anorexically thin body and big boobs, but all who took their clothes off for the audience made it sexy through artful shimmies and shakes and the sensuous removal of their outer costumes revealing glittery pasties and thongs.

Even if you’re not a fan of musicals, you may want to give this play a shot. All the singers and band members are talented and never miss a beat even when the venue’s sound system screws up.

This play shocked me in many ways, but awed me in more. If you want to laugh and cheer and dance in your seat, check out Greasy. It’s worth it.

* Greasy: A Lesbian Love Story runs until June 16 as part of the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival. Tickets available through MontrealFringe.ca

* Featured image via GlamGam.com

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Montreal Fringe is one of those events that truly has something for every theatre go-er. You like burlesque? They have shows for that. You love drag queens and drag kings? There are shows for that too. You want drama? Comedy? Something different? Fringe has got you covered. If you’re willing to look, you’re bound to find many diamonds in the rough.

The Montreal Fringe Festival prides itself on creativity, diversity, and accessibility so even the shows that producers consider unsellable get a shot at stardom by having a chance to take the festival stage. One of the best ways to sample local talent is to take in the Fringe for All event that happens the first night of every festival.

For up to two minutes, all the local performers get a shot at enticing attendees to come to their plays. It’s a slog, but for your stamina you see a lot of gems hidden among snippets that confirm people’s worst prejudices about independent theatre – that it’s pretentious, artsy, and consisting of symbolism lost on even the university educated.

I’m not going to bore you with those. Having witnessed bits of shows that look REALLY good, I’m going tell you MY picks for Montreal Fringe 2018:

Apocalipsync : Humanity Is a Drag

I should admit right off that bat that I LOVE drag, so the show intrigued me before I saw their bit. When they took the stage I was not disappointed. Their lip sync and choreography was immaculate as was the glam the genre requires.

The premise of the show is that – “CONSERVATIVES REJOICE!” – the left ended the world and the “Social Justice Road Warriors” played by drag queens Uma Gahd, Dot Dot Dot, and Anaconda are searching for humanity’s salvation. If you’re a fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race, you NEED to see this show.

Greasy: A Lesbian Love Story

True to the title, the show is riff on the classic musical play Grease but with a much naughtier touch. There isn’t just dancing, there’s riveting burlesque performances proving that you don’t need to be a busty toothpick to be sexy.

Also, this is the latest offering from Glam Gam Productions who produced Peter Pansexual, which set Montreal Fringe box office records last year and a group we at FTB have been following for a while.

Mid Knight

Mid Knight is a modern fairy tale about what would happen to Little (Prince) Charming if his parents got divorced. The snippet I saw featured a piñata with the word “childhood” on it getting smashed to bits by the show’s prince with a blunt sword. The audience got any candy that came out. It’s an interesting approach to the classic fairy tale that’s timely given the renewed public interest in medieval themes due to shows like Game of Thrones and Once Upon a Time.

CLIO: Puppets, Not Patriarchy

If you’re a heterosexual male who doesn’t believe in making sure your sex partners are satisfied in bed, this isn’t the show for you. It’s a puppet show about Clio, a clitoris on a journey of self discovery to find out what she is capable of, thus becoming “cliterate”.

The snippet I saw was funny and sweet so while I don’t typically go for shows about one body part, this looks intriguing, if only to marvel at how the puppeteer keeps a straight face through the performance.

What the Hell Happened to My Patio Furniture?!

I’m not normally a fan of one-man shows, but Joshua Budman’s two-minute performance in which he wonders how his patio chairs disappeared from his sixteenth-floor balcony to the song Dust in the Wind had me laughing so hard it looks like a sure thing.

#ashtag

This is an interactive show in which audience members are invited to participate using their cell-phones. It’s a format I’ve never seen before in theatre and it featured a male and female actor with perfectly synchronised dialogue. It’s worth checking out if you like high tech audience participation

Mme Brulé

Mme Brulé starring Evelyne Laniel is a French language play that embodies the frustrations of formerly idealist teachers everywhere. The snippet I saw was hilarious and heartwarming, making me want to laugh and cheer. If you have any teachers in your life, bring them to this show.

Drunk Live Reading: Bridesmaids

If you were a fan of the film, you need to check this out. Featuring Montreal’s own Cat Lemieux who co-hosted the Fringe for All with Kenny Streule and Dayane Nbaritukure, all proceeds of the event go to the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. Not only is that an amazing cause, but Lemieux’s snippet channeled Melissa McCarthy and the late Chris Farley in way that was hilarious and riveting, making this show a sure bet.

Les Aventures d’Humphrey Beauregret

Philippe Gobeille’s one-man puppet show surprised me. His puppet “Humphrey Beauregret” is a 1940s style P.I. reminiscent of Humphrey Bogart’s classic roles. Not only does the character tell stories, he sings songs such as Unbreak My Heart and All By Myself channeling the trope’s loneliness and taking it to amusing extremes. It was riveting and funny and a good sample of what’s to come in his show.

Montreal Fringe is on from May 28th to June 17th. As festival spokesperson and Fringe veteran Véronique Raymond declared in her opening speech: “It’s the only time when Francophone and Anglophone artists share the same stage.”

Check it out. It’s worth it.

The full schedule is at MontrealFringe.ca and look for our reviews over the next few weeks

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This week, we’re stretching the classic definition of show at least a couple of times, but for good reason as you will see. So here are this week’s picks for Montreal arts shows:

Keep the Beat Launch

This one is more of a campaign rollout than a show, though there will be readings by actors Jacqueline Laurent-Auger and Denis-Martin Chabot. The main reason we’re including it is because Maison Plein Coeur, an organization that helps people living with HIV/AIDS, is fighting to stay open after losing its federal funding.

As today is World AIDS Day, it is an appropriate time as any for them to launch their Keep the Beat campaign. You can find out more at tonight’s event.

The Keep the Beat Launch is Friday, December 1st from 7-9pm at Maison Plein Coeur, 1611 Dorion. The event is free, but please RSVP via EventBrite

Bareoke

While this one is definitely a show, it’s the audience that bring the entertainment. It’s a strip karaoke show brought to you by local raunchy theatrical burlesque troupe Glam Gam Productions and they’ve been doing it the first Saturday of every month for a few years now.

So what exactly does strip karaoke involve? Well, people sign up and go on stage to sing just like in regular karaoke but are free to remove as much or as little clothing as they want. Glam Gam always provides a safe space. More details can be found on the Facebook event page.

Bareoke is Saturday, December 2nd, from 10pm-3am at Café Cléopatra, 1230 boul St-Laurent (2nd floor). $5 at the door

Cryote

This one definitely is a show, an art show. You’ve probably seen some of Cryote’s commissioned street art around town and now you have a chance to see what he can do in the more traditional milieu of painting, and if you want, take some of it home with you.

His style is surrealist and generally features animals and pastel colours.

Cryote’s art show vernissage is Friday, December 1st, from 6pm to midnight and will also be viewable Saturday, December 2nd and Sunday, December 3rd from 11am to 8pm at 87 Mont-Royal Ouest. BYOB and art will be for sale

Is there an event that should be featured in Shows This Week? Maybe something FTB should cover, too? Let us know at arts@forgetthebox.net. We can’t be everywhere and can’t write about everything, but we do our best!

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With their aim to promote a healthy body image for people of every gender, weight and sexual orientation, Glam Gam shows are always worth checking out. In Turning Tricks, this Montreal Burlesque troupe has taken it up a notch in their most ambitious and successful production to date.

In the show the “Gold Dust Women” are led by mistress Goldie Showers (aka the always amusing and fearless Julie Paquet). Throughout the evening this raunchy team of magical misfits will shock and titillate you in some pretty impressive ways that include glitter, throwing knives, chicken suits, gimps and sparkler pasties. Beyond the staple silliness of their shows, Glam Gam added some important messages as well. It was hard not to notice their comment on slut shaming and a woman’s right to choose. Every character in the show either asked or gave their consent for all that fun naughty stuff. Remember folks: consent is sexy!

While it was nice to see them add a message, this time around Glam Gam wisely cut back on story. Turning Tricks is the strongest of Glam Gam’s past three Fringe outings largely for focusing on the vaudevillian talents of the troupe. That being said, congrats have to be given to miss Phoenix Wood. This Glam Gam beauty usually shows up just in time to dance and strip, but in Turning Tricks she demonstrated she’s a talented actress as well. I would happily see her act again- whether or not she was taking her clothes off.

I was sad not to see more of Michael J. McCarthy in the show, as he’s always entertaining to watch onstage. There’s a reason he and Paquet dominated the “Best of Montreal” List this year in Cult Montreal; the two have a natural chemistry in whatever project they work on. Instead this time around McCarthy’s talent were found off-stage, where he did a great job co-directing the show with Hannah Morrow.

Beautiful naked guys and gals, big splashy dance numbers, Turning Tricks is a must-see Fringe 2014 show for many reasons. Perhaps most importantly because it’s the only Fringe show I’ve ever seen that uses it’s exposure in the festival to raise money for a good cause; during the show money was raised for STELLA, a sex-workers advocacy group. You still have plenty of time to catch all the fun; Turning Tricks plays until Saturday at the Montreal Fringe festival.