Publication title: Edmonton Journal
Pages: C2
Section: Entertainment
Publication date: Aug 23, 1998
ProQuest document ID: 252604323
Copyright: Copyright Southam Publications Inc. Aug 23, 1998
Author: Nicholls, Liz
With Ecstasy, an enterprising bunch of young, hip, smart actors have taken the buzzed, E-fuelled world of parties, dancing and raves to its natural home: an alternative club. It's only the second time ever that the 17-year-old Fringe has ventured out of Strathcona into post-apocalyptic downtown Edmonton. And the results are hugely entertaining, pulsing with coloured lights, pounding with music, populated with big, funny, vividly addled characters who are moving FAST in the quest for the mysterious something that will make it all worth wild.
Keith Wyatt, the young actor who stars as Lloyd, has adapted The Undefeated, one of three stories in Ecstasy, a novel by Irvine Welsh, the Scottish ex-junkie of Trainspotting fame. Director Sandra M. Nicholls figures out how to set the thing in motion at the Rev. And, like ecstasy (the state of religious, sexual and/or pharmacological bliss), once the action starts, it never stops.
It starts on the dance floor. The DJ (Cory Payne), a god of sorts, presides from on high and exhorts everyone to keep moving: "It's your duty to show you're still alive." There will be times in the two hours that follow when our hero Lloyd, who narrates the fleeting scenes as well as appearing in them, has his doubts.
When you look at Lloyd from the outside, he's an excitable guy who's arrived at a state of volatile toxicity where sex and dancing and drugs of every description bring him to life for the weekend, with just enough time in-between to get unoiled for the next frenzied bout. "You just like to have your cake and eat it," says one character. "It's the only way, man," says Lloyd feelingly. From the inside, though, as Lloyd explains in his funny, almost literary, annotations and asides, he's a romantic on a quest for what would be called, in other more prosaic politically correct shows, meaning and meaningful relationships in his life rather than a temporary balance between uppers and downers. In a touchingly old-fashioned way, he calls his goal "true love." Nothing else will do.
The appealing Wyatt is a veritable electric jolt of a guy, a tarnished urchin who manages somehow through acid, bad sex, and every other setback to retain his vulnerability and hope. It's a comical, rueful performance. And around it swirl a whole bunch of other eccentric, driven characters, in an eight-actor cast in multiple roles who dance and stagger their way through the Rev. There's Ally (Garrett Ross), a grave, very funny sexual philosopher who categories girls into strict categories, like straight pegs, skaters, party chicks, hiya lassies (after their characteristic greetings across the dance floor). There's Hugh (the always excellent Troy O'Donnell), who has drugged himself into a state of religious lunacy at an outdoor resurrection rave, and fulminates against alcohol with full steam. There's the Victim (Shannon Quinn), a dreary moper who invites the juiciest abuse from everyone around her. There are old codgers, repairmen, "straight-peg" brothers, clergymen, sluttish good time girls, perpetual victims, brisk barmen.
In a scene with Trainspotting credentials, as psychedelic colours swirl and sounds get distorted, Lloyd on acid attempts to cut up tiny strawberries with a terrifying butcher knife. And in the end, Lloyd does find himself a girl, Heather (Quinn), stuck in a bleak marriage to a management nudnik. Will he be able to live all week long, instead of Friday to Sunday? You find yourself intrigued by the characters, pumped by the comic energy of the piece. This, my friends, is the spirit of the Fringe.
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