Final Girl, Straight Edge Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2025. Photo supplied.
Final Girl: A New Musical (Stage 13, Servus Credit Union Theatre at La Cité francophone)
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
You may already have noticed that the Straight Edge (as in razor) Theatre has an appetite for the macabre, especially macabre that rhymes and makes you laugh. Witness ConJoined and Krampus.
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The Straight Edge team of Seth Gilfillan and Stephan Allred have brought a new “horror comedy musical” — with a live three-piece band! — to the Fringe. And it has fun revelling in a genre, the repertoire of 90s teen slasher classics like Scream, whilst spoofing it.
Named for the last teen standing after one of those murderous slasher rampages, Final Girl sends five teenage friends — four girls and, like, not-too-gender-specific Dani — on their annual weekend getaway in a spooky holiday mansion with a basement and, you know, a faulty fuse box, and crappy wi-fi. (“nothing’s uploading!” wails the online influencer of the group). That there is a masked serial killer on the premises is really not a spoiler. Is it the notorious “pop rock ripper”?
The cast directed by Allred is led by Bella King as Emma, the smartest one (“she’s pre-med!”). King nails a gem of a musical theatre ballad, about what she learned and didn’t learn (“how to live or stay alive”) in high school. Emma’s best friend is the ultra-jaded Dani, played hilariously by Josh Travnik, who throws himself into model positions and can’t quite get up the energy to object to being called a twink, except that “it’s so last year.” As his friends get offed, Dani gets the musical’s single funniest song, a show-stopping lament — “am I not hot enough to be murdered?.” And Travnik knocks it out of the park.
The riotous opening number, in which we’re introduced to the characters, is an intricate compendium of teen complaints — not about old people but each other. “I hate teenagers!” The cast includes Alyson Horne, Jamie Reese, and Liz Janzen, who turn in cartoon-sized performances that might read better toned down just a smidge. But that’s partly a sound glitch. The songs, and their multi-syllabic lyrics are smart, their insights into the teen mind and group dynamic are wicked, and you’d appreciate them more if you could make them out better. It’s a shame they tend to get lost, or distorted, in over-amplified sound.
Fixable, of course, these technical problems. This is a clever little musical with a future.
