In case you haven’t heard, the The Vancouver Fringe Festival kicked off another year on September 5th. There’s a great line of experimental local theatre happening around town. Our contributing writer, Tiva Quinn, went to check our My Name is Sumiko on now at What Lab, 1814 Pandora Street. Here’s what she had to say about this production:
“I came away from My Name is Sumiko feeling that I almost liked it more than I should have. Long story short, this is a promising performer whose best work is yet to come, but see her now anyway, that’s just the sort of thing the Fringe is for.
June Fukumura starts out doing a riff on Marie Kondo, with her clown character, Sumiko, calls her “role model.” Joking about whether or not things spark joy is kind of played out, and each of her bits within the riff gets repeated to the point where it’s not funny anymore. And yet, Fukumura brings so much charm, energy and over the top silliness to her performance as Sumiko that it kind of works. The memory of laughing when she tried to decide if a dildo sparks joy the first time kind of carries you through with good enough humour when she does it the 7th time.
All in all, Fukumura riffs on 3 topics, and the finale, a mashup of Indiana Jones, Titanic, Austin Powers and online dating woes was by far the best.
The promo material that talks about “dicing up stereotypes” might make you think this is going to be a woke, intellectual sort of clowning, but it’s mostly just silly and there’s nothing wrong with that. Turn off your brain, go and enjoy.”
For tickets to this, or any other Fringe show, visit Vancouver Fringe Festival.
By Contributing Writer Tiva Quinn
ILiveInEastVan.com 
Leave a Reply