Welcome to the FUN HOUSE: Atomic Vaudeville’s Halloween Spectacle

Step right up, ladies, gentleman, for Atomic Vaudeville’s annual Spooktacular! FUN HOUSE you say? Welcome to a history of tradition, and come what may if you dare enter….

Atomic Vaudeville’s Halloween spectacular FUN HOUSE
Tickets can be bought in advance here. Limited tickets at the door.

The theatre company Atomic Vaudeville has been a Victoria, BC, institution since 2004. For those in the know, it is also a place where emerging local talent can find mentorship and opportunities to hone their skills. Some performers have graduated from the Canadian College of Performing Arts; others, I honestly don’t know. But when the team gathers to create its annual Halloween show, I take notice!

This year’s FUN HOUSE sounded like one I had to check out. Although I don’t get to see Atomic Vaudeville every year, I’ve followed with interest ever since 2016. It’s not only because certain luminaries honed their craft here and moved on to establish careers of their own but also they have other events throughout the years.

There’s Mike Delamont (God Is a Scottish Drag Queen), Wes Borg, the comic musician who co-founded Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie before joining the Atomic Vaudeville team, Ingrid Hansen, the puppeteer known for her work on the Fraggle Rock revival, and Trevor Hinton, an actor who appeared in Bones of Crows. The latter is amazing because I’ve seen him perform in numerous genre shows over the years.

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[Victoria, BC] Marx Mayhem Reigns in Blue Bridge’s Animal Crackers

By James Robert Shaw (The Wind up Geek) & Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

AnimalCrackersPosterAnimal Crackers
Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre
August 2-14, 2016

J: It was a night at the opera for Ed and I. Okay, not really, but it was a night at the theatre to watch the last musical the Marx Brothers (Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo) ever performed. After Animal Crackers the brothers turned their attention to Hollywood and the movies, the rest as they say is history. It is somehow fitting Animal Crackers is being performed at the Roxy, a former movie house in Quadra Village.

This musical written for the Marxes by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind with music and lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, was originally performed on Broadway in 1928. The play finds high society’s Mrs. Rittenhouse (Samantha Currie) hosting a party for famous returning African explorer, Captain Jeffrey Spaulding (R.J. Peters). But what is meant to be a proper social gathering soon turns into one filled with high jinks, chase scenes, and deception when a valuable painting of “After the Hunt” by Beaugard goes missing.

Henry Wishcamper pared-down Kauffman’s work so it could be performed easily off-Broadway and with a much smaller cast, but amazingly this show has a 4-piece orchestra. I hadn’t been to a show at the Roxy in a long, long time. It was good to return even if there was no longer a projection screen at the back of the building.

Continue reading “[Victoria, BC] Marx Mayhem Reigns in Blue Bridge’s Animal Crackers”

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