2014 Edmonton Fringe Review: No Tweed Too Tight; Another Grant Canyon Mystery

What if TJ Hooker had been allowed to dress in the styles of the 70s rather than the police colours of the 80s? If you have this pictured in your head, you're partway there to understanding No Tweed Too Tight; Another Grant Canyon Mystery. Ryan Gladstone wrote and starred in this one-man show, and he really brings you on a tour-de-force around (and indeed, both and above and below) the globe.

One thing that I always thought helped to separate a strong from a weak Fringe show is the Foley: especially these days, professional level audio recording has never been more accessible, and while theatre has used human instruments (eww) to create sound for ages, it really helps us think of this as a major studio motion picture even with the simple addition of the good old "thwack" sound. One of the best executed parts of the play is the precision timing between the sound engineer in the back and the actor on stage...especially when we're going to hear various face punches and other sounds keyed to what the actor was doing on-stage where even a half second margin of error would have taken away some of the wild 70s magic. This play also opens up both with fully recorded music as if this really was a Grant Canyon motion picture (that the character has become recurring, it appears, certainly helps stretch the ol' development dollar): both the opening and closing theme were good enough that I expected the sale of CDs or 32MB flash drives with the tunes. Grant Canyon himself appears in occasional strobe-light-ish flashes to set the mood...and as the play opens, we get to meet our hero.

You know that "The Champ" gag where the character always mis-hears and overreacts? Canyon's gag is that his memory is toast...he forgets things even as he's being told them, which gets used to great comedic effect throughout the play. Well his swiss-cheese memory is stopping the FBI to solve a case, so Ziggy and Al...oh, wait, wrong franchise with swiss-cheese memory...the voice of an FBI agent interrogates and beats around our hero while he remains tied to a chair. This is a great opening scene and really sets the tone for the rest of the play except...the FBI agent himself. As the only other voice we ever hear, he's awfully flat and doesn't deliver his lines with any personality or gusto, and certainly not in the verbal style of the era (which Gladstone's Canyon is doing). It makes the opening scene's pacing a lot less energetic than it needs to be...once he's stopped talking we can go without for most of the rest of the scenes.

At the FBI agent's behest, Canyon starts flashing back to the start of the case...a beautiful woman in a nightclub scared to death of her jealous and powerful boyfriend, a possible insurance fraud in Florida, a bartender with a glass jaw, and a private detective (well, insurance fraud investigator) in a deep plot way over his head. With Canyon's dual skills of surviving any and all fatal or near-fatal injuries just by blacking out and waking up again later, and forgetting key things he encounters, the audience gets taken on a fun and wild ride: from the depths of a Soviet submarine to 12,000km in orbit, from Columbia to Des Moines, we follow Canyon as he not so much solves the case but somehow is in positions throughout the play to uncover the bad guys and engage in hilariously over the top fights (in one scene he snaps a Russian soldier's neck: we understand that he's in enemy territory and needs to be ruthless. later he's in the hospital and breaks the neck of the doctor there to help him). Objectively he's no inspirational hero for us ("he's the anti-hero's uncle" exclaims the lyrics in the opening song) but we root for him anyways because hey, it's a one-act play and this guy has a direct line to our funny bone. That every once and a while he really brings out his inner Shatner doesn't hurt: hamming up scenes like this pretty much demands you don't go fully Shatner but you never leave him too far away.

The script is near-perfect, offering great comedic foils: as Canyon knows he's about to black out and switch scenes, he mutters "I sure hope whereever I wake up is comfortable". In the next scene he starts out tied up to a rack and deadpans "I was the most uncomfortable I'd ever been in my life". I don't think Gladstone ever uttered the word "mouth" and why would he when he could get more laughs using the word "face". The audience couldn't get enough of Canyon's confrontational style and colourful metaphors (though I'm sure a few in the audience had to keep from exclaiming "too soon!" when he brought up this event), and the way he just propelled through almost every scene with pure force of well. Gladstone also deserves credit for his excellent work on the other characters and being able to track in his head where everybody is supposed to be: earlier in the show I was thinking it would have played out better with one or two other actors to play the other parts; by the end I wasn't so sure, especially when it was clear about 9 other actors would have been needed. Better in the end just for Gladstone to keep pointing out where they would have been.

This is easily one of the most entertaining romps at the Fringe this year, and if there is a complaint to be made it's probably that the show winds down too soon...even another 10-15 minutes with the character would have been more than worth it. I guess the easiest scenes to expand though would involve the flat-voiced FBI agent, maybe I should just play the hand I'm given and not try giving up a 10 of spades in the hope that its replacement will be better.

I should also note that this play finally does something I've noticed lacking in the fringe over the past five years or so: plays that are tied to the theme. I understand that not everybody holds off on their play until the theme is revealed, and that traveling shows will do city after city and quite often start a continent away, so it's not going to be universal nor necessarily should it be. But few shows try to capture the timeframe or the attitude embodied in the Edmonton Fringe official theme anymore, I'm pretty sure they used to. Kudos to this play for tying into the theme and also not being that questionable Godzilla vs. Zeppelin thing.

Final word: This is a great show. Full stop, ultimately no conditions or anything. Great show, go see it, fully entertaining.

(for more reviews of the 2014 Edmonton Fringe, click here)