[REVIEW] Annekenstein
Click to viewI'd always been curious to see Annekenstein. It was almost legendary in the 1990s--imagine, a long-running sketch comedy show that made fun of Anne of Green Gables! I do not joke when I say that some of my elders were disapproving of the idea.
Needless to say, I as a teenager never saw the show. I wanted to, but I never felt as if I'd be able to convince the people involved to let me see it. Apart from making fun of Anne, the show did have mature content, whatever that was. When Annekenstein stopped running, I assumed that I would never see the show. When I learned, as described last month in The Guardian, that the show was set to return to the Island stage, I knew that I had to get tickets.
The original “Annekenstein” was co-created by [Rob] MacDonald and David Moses and produced by Off Stage Theatre. The concept was to poke mostly gentle fun at the Island and the industry that “Anne of Green Gables” had become. During its seven-year run, the show developed a cult following before growing into a mainstream success.
Since its run, its reputation has intrigued those who were too young to attend, and it has become a source of fond memories for original “Annekenstein” fans. With that in mind, MacDonald promises that fan favourites such as “The World’s Fastest Anne” and “Win a Waif” will return, among others.
Though he’s new to performing “Annekenstein” sketches, Weale is not unfamiliar with the show.
“My first live comedy experience occurred in a dank and dingy theatre on Fitzroy Street,” says Weale. “The show was ‘Annekenstein’, and it opened up all sorts of possibilities in my mind. I said to myself, ‘People where I live do this?’ ”
“We were perhaps among the first to satirize our Island way of life,” adds MacDonald, “and it really seemed to resonate with the people who saw it. I’m looking forward to a whole new generation coming out to experience the fun and irreverence of ‘Annekenstein’ - the mother of all P.E.I. sketch comedy shows.”
As Sean McQuaid's review for local monthly Buzz notes, this show really was that important to starting off the comedy scene on Prince Edward Island. Annekenstein is foundational.
And so, last Saturday night, together with my entire immediate family, I set off to The Guild on 115 Richmond Street to see Annekenstein. The irony that The Guild is the venue where I saw Anne & Gilbert, a show that still plays there, definitely did not escape me.
Did Annekenstein live up to my expectations? Happily, yes. This incarnation of the show, bringing together material from the original 1991-1997 run of Annekenstein with sketches from MacDonald's later Sketch-22 comedy troupe, is a success. I enjoyed myself; my family enjoyed themselves; everyone in the packed crowd enjoyed themselves. Annekenstein is smart comedy well-acted by the troupe.
This show is dominated by the spectre of Anne. Annekenstein opens with "Anne-aholics Anonymous", a self-help group filled with people who refuse to believe that Anne Shirley does not exist or that Gilbert's love cannot by won. "The World’s Fastest Anne" sees the seven actors compress the musical into three minutes of song and dance. The night ends with “Win a Waif”, where Anne Shirley is forced to compete against fellow orphans Oliver Twist and Huckleberry Finn for a foster family, all in a game show format overseen by smarmy host played unforgettably by Josh Weale. The Island audience gets this.
The Island audience also gets more local humour. Rob MacDonald impersonates the character of Moe Gorman, a lumpish and bitter middle-aged everyman who periodically appears to sing one of his many artfully awkward Songs of Slander & Libel about the ordinary Islanders who anger him. "From Away to Eternity" deals with an Island fixer who is begged by a couple to do something about their son who happened to be born "away", off the Island on a fishing boat within sight of land. (Trading in their child for an actual Islander, each parent agrees, is a possible solution.) "The Topical Humour Sketch" revisits the mid-1990s, explaining the political controversies and cultural idiosyncracies at a time when mad bomber Loki 7 was setting off pipe bombs around the Island. "Stand Up, Canada, Atticus Finch is Passing By" makes glorious fun of the nationalistic CBC panel shows of the 1970s and 1980s. Everyone in the cast gets a chance to shine--Cameron MacDonald and Graham Putnam also deserve praise for their perfectly straight-faced comedy, as do Alicia Arsenault and Olivia King with their acting chops, as does Kelly Caseley for her management of this show on The Guild's elongated stage.
Annekenstein is well-performed and topical sketch comedy that deals forthrightly, but not cruelly, with the issues of the Island. I do hope it will stay active: Island theatre needs it. In the meantime, try to make appearances on its final showings these last Saturdays of the summer of 2016.