GODDARD AS MY WITNESS
For the 2010 edition of the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe, Hour asked a few us to contribute to their Fringe Fanaticism blog. Jeremy Hechtman agreed to do a year-by-year account of his experience with the festival. This inspired me to do the same, albeit with a twist: I'd look at the evolution of the Montreal Fringe by reviewing a single show from each year. So here, collected for the first time in one place, is how I've seen it...
1993: DIARY OF A MADMAN
1993 was my first Montreal Fringe. I had finished my first year at Concordia Theatre and was volunteering my ass off in order to see free shows. Volunteering gives you a very different perspective when it comes to choosing Fringe shows: something may look great in the program, but then you meet the performer and decide they're a dick unworthy of your Fringe Bucks. And then there was Rush Pearson. Rush was doing a one-man adaptation of the Gogol story and had come up from Chicago with his partner and his dog; they were the darlings of the volunteer crowd. His pre-Fringe promotion campaign became legendary: he faxed the media constantly before coming to Montreal, with a series of increasingly incoherent messages. And the show rocked. Fringe solo shows often seem like they were created that way out of financial necessity rather than for artistic reasons, but this needed to be done solo to truly convey the madness of the narrator. Rush had crafted a very solid adaptation of the text and was an engaging and warm performer. Diary of a Madman was funny, sad, sharp, and touching. 4 Bucks out of 4.
