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Stage 21, Holy Trinity Anglican Church (10037 84 Ave.)
Here we go, buds — some good, clean, dropping-f-bombs-in-a-church fun!
Honestly about the best venue match to any Fringe play I’ve ever seen, the gothic cathedral arches of Holy Trinity provide a fittingly lofty backdrop to this smartly written medieval-castle farce — you almost expect a lute-playing horse to wander through the pews.
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Jon Paterson affectionately plays Claude, a kind-hearted village dweller sent to offer his best friend Drew — an ox — to the king, and suddenly ends up working as the royal fool.
“Have you heard the one how the blacksmith got their spots?” court-clown-attired Claude asks. “They got the pox. They’re dead now.”
This sort of straightforward brutality joyfully inundates a twisting narrative of court-and-wedding intrigue, and Claude quickly gets in over his imperiled head à la Ned Stark, trying to do the right thing in a nest of monsters Paterson seamlessly switches between, including a French princess, a scheming Senator Palpatine-like advisor and, with repeated moos, Drew the ox.
Writer-director Ryan Gladstone did a great job here making Claude believably simple yet truly loveable, misusing words, misjudging situations and ultimately trying to do very good things for pretty bad people.
We the audience play dungeon mates to Claude as he delightfully regales, the bells pealing down to our execution with actual tension, and the action-packed finale is a sweaty chef’s kiss — mwah!
Paterson effortlessly rolled with accidentally falling off the stage, then later knocking one of his own bells off, a bonus of silly chaos in this already Python-esque production that makes you wonder how we ever crawled out of the Dark Ages … or, actually, if.
Find more reviews of the 2023 Edmonton International Fringe Festival in the Arts section at EdmontonJournal.com.
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