Jake Tkaczyk and Trevor Schmidt in Flora and Fawna Face Their Fears, Guys in Disguise. Photo supplied.
Flora and Fawna Face Their Fears (Stage 11, Varscona Theatre)
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
In Flora and Fawna Face Their Fears, the latest from the Guys in Disguise team of Trevor Schmidt and Darrin Hagen, the two earnest 10-year-old founders of the NaturElles are on “a secret team-building slumber party.” Flora (Jake Tkaczyk) concedes that it might not be quite 100% secret since she “accidentally” put it on Facebook, even though one of her two moms says FB is “a tool of little white men with orange hair.”
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As it quickly transpires, team-building is a tricky business — maybe especially for all-inclusive non-binary pre-teen collectives devoted to being a home for outsiders, supporting cultural diversity, equality, tolerance for all, helpfulness, and other things. After “an intensive interview process,” as Fawna (Trevor Schmidt) puts it — “do you have a bike? are you now or have you ever been in the Girl Guides?” — the NaturElles have acquired a new secretary. And Fern Gumley (Jason Hardwick) is turning out to be a problematic recruit, and a test of the NaturElles all-inclusive policy.
She’s from “a faraway land,” the United States; she’s moved to Alberta because her dad said it was “the closest to a red state he could find.” And she’s got an unlikeably pushy, repressive streak. Fawna is incredulous. “How can a country with two Disneylands ever produce a mean girl?”
We first met Flora and Fawna a decade ago in one of their recruitment seminars. Their gravitas is delicious comedy, and the sneaky fun of their adventures is that redneckism is up for mockery, at the same time that the catchphrases of political correctness will make you smile, coming from the mouths of earnest literal-minded 10-year-olds. Fawna is played with gentle passive-aggressive melancholy by Schmidt. Flora, huskier and more confident, is a repository for the progressive language of her two moms. She instantly refers to PTSD, trigger warnings and aversion therapy. When they “face their fears,” Fawna admits to dogs and the dark; Flora’s fear is climate change. Will the little Canadian girls be a match for a bully?
Anyhow, this time out, the target, America, is much more obvious, of course, and more overtly aggressive and present. In short, a worthy and lord knows topical, target. But, to me, the show coarsens its tone a bit, and loses some of its sly and delicate delicate humour because of that. The comic resolution, as in all the NaturElles outings a manifesto of friendship, while welcome seems to be a bit extra-shameless under the circumstances. But, hey, maybe that’s the point. And it’s still fun, a veritable Fringe tradition, to be in the “magic fairy ring.”
