Back to Edmonton’s chaotic accidental riviera: Beach to the Future is the finale of the trilogy. A Fringe review.

There’s a kind of lunatic dumb-smart dumbass-smartass genius at work in Grindstone’s new Accidental Beach sequel, the final instalment of a trilogy of musicals inspired by the possibly toxic sludge of E-town’s ever-shifting river beach.

Bonkers and high-spirited, in a way that “manic” doesn’t even begin to describe, the Accidental Beach musicals are all about local. And as this team has discovered with the first two instalments in the  trilogy we do love local, in all its absurdities, potholes, miscellaneous corruptions, crackpot authorities, an LRT that goes nowhere anyone wants to go, its victory-averse hockey team, etc. Nobody gets a bigger kick (or more double-entendres) out of civic low-esteem than this ridiculously agile, multi-tasking bunch of musical comedy-soaked artists. And they’re nothing if not breezy about being scathing.

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After the inaugural instalment in 2024,  a verbatim account of something made up on the spot from audience cues as part of Grindstone’s weekly improvised musical The 11 O-clock Number, and last year’s GUMS: An Accidental Prequel, written down in advance, Beaches … has returned the characters to us, including public-spirited Sandy the lifeguard (who can’t swim, as I recall), her dimbulb boyfriend (Dallas Friesen) who cruises the Saskatchewan River murk in his SeaDoo. And the Mayor (Malachi Wilkins), a doctor/drug dealer with an office on the Walterdale Bridge.

This  sequel, directed by Donna Leny-Hansen and written collectively by a four-member cast, gleefully rips off the crucial narrative arc of that movie you’re thinking of. Via Sandy’s lifeguard chair that the multi-talented Doc Rogers-Place (Wilkins with his dander up is an amazingly electrified sight), now ex-mayor, doctor, inventor with a PhD in astro-physics, has transformed into a time machine. There’s a clever catchy song (the accomplished score is by Abbott and Erik Mortimer) with an ode to “the lifeguard time machine that takes you any-when you want to go.”    

Sandy (Vandenberghe) in the future is she’s a single mom, working shifts at the Water Factory that turns Saskatchewan River poison into … well, something. Like most of the younger generation in River City her son Harry (Ethan Snowden) is a mutant lizard with a tail. He wants his late dad Razor (Friesen), back to a time before that fatal SeaDoo explosion…. Why do I find myself explaining the plot? Too much River water?

Anyhow, the nostalgia for a city where stuff worked and the Oilers win the Cup, takes them back, back to the time when Accidental Beach was On-Purpose Beach. The opening song and dance number is classic musical theatre, “we’re going back to the beach.”

Very funny make-shift props, a non-stop tickletrunk of flammable wigs, Speedos, and a folk-rock/ full-rock/ jazzy,pop musical, with love ballads, and, voilà, everything, is before you. With a cast of dexterous comic actors who commit fully, and then some. Crazy, frantic, and fun.