Jezec Sanders in Where Foxes Lie, Ready Go Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2025. Photo supplied
Where Foxes Lie (Stage 32, Lorne Cardinal Theatre at the Roxy)
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
“Years ago, in a small town….” The man we meet in this unnerving, impressively intricate horror show by and starring Jezec Sanders is standing amidst heaps of crumpled pages. A volume dismembered? Draft after draft discarded?
To help support .ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.
Koen is a storyteller. In Where Foxes Lie (co-produced by Ready Go Theatre and Nextfest), he spins stories, macabre, ghostly, strangely inclusive, about a small prairie town much like the one he lives in, and a hockey star much like him — i.e. a party-hearty, beer-drinking, team-player, guys-will-be-guys dude, living up to the town’s masculine expectations. Affable enough, he seems keen to get our approval and when he senses it slipping away, he gets more truculent.
He doesn’t instigate the bullying of the preacher’s son, “the only kid in town who didn’t drink.” But he’s OK with the local practice of picking on Albert — “relax, it was funny” — since he has “made himself a target” by being different, “a freak.” And the play, in a very skilful way that sneaks up on you, chronicles what happens to a vicious little rumour as it spreads, unstoppable like a virus, through the community, mutating all the while. “Belief, as Koen tells us, “is a lot more powerful than truth.”
Gradually, expertly calibrated in Sanders’ script and performance directed by Erik Richards, the act of creating stories becomes the storyteller’s own story, enveloping and consuming him as it’s told. It’s a prairie gothic horror show, a portrait of small-town life, a ghost story told by a ghost — for the eerie duo of one actor and one gooseneck lamp.
The shivery soundscape by director Richards — strange industrial buzzes, unidentifiable animal sounds, scratching, thunder, the sound of human breath. I don’t want to tell you more, since suspense is built into the show’s architecture, and its enigmatic title. But here’s the thing: you might not find a more cleverly built and executed solo show at the Fringe.
