Goose and Consequences: Jack Becomes the Giant in The Beanstalk Market Crash, a guest Fringe Review from Fawnda Mithrush

The Beanstalk Market Crash (Stage 13, SERVUS Credit Union Théatre at La Cité Francophone)

By Fawnda Mithrush, for .ca

It begins with violence, remember? As the long-worn tale of Jack and his proverbial beanstalk famously ends  — with Jack kidnapping the goose and her golden egg, then chopping down the stalk to slay the sky-bound Giant — Jack handily gets away with his loot, and that’s where the seeds are planted for Mind of a Snail Puppet Co.’s brilliantly executed production of The Beanstalk Market Crash.

One hundred years after Jack’s initial plunder, his grandson Jack VonBeansprott III (Chloe Ziner) enjoys the lavish wealth built from generations of exploiting the still-captive goose and her sparkling progeny. He pitches to investors from a dining table that doubles as a miniature film set, which helps illustrate the environmental vastness of the BeanCorp legacy through real-time screen and camcorder choreography.

Fringe audiences may remember this award-winning duo from their 2018 holdover hit, Caws & Effect, which also employed strikingly simple yet emotive shadow puppetry and overhead projectors to tell another bird-y story. We won’t attempt to re-paint the ingenious scenery of flights and falls from the sky here; suffice to say that the images are as DIY and charming as they are impactful.

The result is stark, funny, and devastating all at once; as the Goose (Jessica Gabriel) evolves from a softly garbling cardboard figure into a real live person pleading with Jack for her freedom, Jack becomes so large that you could almost reach out and pick the plaque between his teeth.

The technical feats of the production are irresistibly clever; you get caught up marveling in their craft while being reminded that this old fairytale was criminally flawed from the start—Jack sprouted the stalk itself from stolen beans, after all.

It’s one of the most rewarding hours you could spend in a Fringe venue. If there are any tickets left, you’d best snag them up tout de suite.