Fringe Review: 13 Ways

The review is in. Elissa Barnard from the Halifax Chronicle Herald attended "13 Ways of Looking at a Madman" early on in the Fringe run and had this to say:

Brewing family’s dark secret hits Fringe stage

The Keith brewing family’s dark 19th century secret is the yeast for an unusual, innovative and non-linear sequence of scenes that Halifax’s DaPoPo Theatre originally created for the Emerson Gallery Berlin as part of the Summer Festival of Canadian Arts in late July.

13 Ways of Looking at a Madman, at DANSpace to Sept. 10, is inspired by the story of infamous mass-murderer Alexander ""Sandy"" Keith Jr., nephew of brewer and statesman Alexander Keith. A master clockwork bomber, he was suspected in an 1858 arson that blew up a Halifax gunpowder magazine, was involved with Confederate blockade runners using Halifax as a base during the U.S. Civil War and is notorious for killing 81 people, mostly emigrants to North America, in an explosion aboard a steamship in Bremen, Germany, in 1875.
His story is told thoroughly in DaPoPo’s source material, American historian Ann Larabee’s 2005 book The Dynamite Fiend.

DaPoPo resists chronological narrative and casts a wider net on terrorism and war for a 90-minute show in which audience members choose the order of the scenes, each commissioned by DaPoPo from different authors, by pinning numbers to a clothesline.

Stark and startling with strong performances and repeated motifs of ticking, danger and travel in the suitcases that are stage props, 13 Ways of Looking at a Madman includes a variety of performance styles in sections like Kim Parkhill’s chilling list of 10 ways to become a terrorist, Steven Bourque’s crazed Head-Stump speech with storyboard cards, real historical scenes and a modern-day scenario of terrorist victims awaiting rescue.

There is a charming honesty and directness to the performance style with actors Eric Benson, Amy Reitsma, Parkhill, Bourque and director Garry Williams explaining why several scenes which went to Germany cannot be performed here. As Williams said in the missing Scene 13, which was replaced by a Q and A, hometown audiences dislike the non-linear aspect but German audiences loved it.

DaPoPo professionally offers the tantalizing material so you can make the decision to either read the book, which is for sale at the show, or to reflect more poetically on the broader themes.

Elissa Barnard, arts reporter

For the original article in the online version of the paper, try this link:
Herald Review Sept 3/06