The Fringe provides a place for emerging artists to show their work, so good for young actors Samantha Kerr and Hikari Terasawa for writing their own script and performing it at the Fringe. To be blunt, Bitches with Baggage wasn’t rich enough to sustain my interest, but it does have strengths. In Bitches, Kerr and Terasawa play high-school friends who haven’t seen each other in six years. Both are struggling actors — with the emphasis on struggle. Having flown into Vancouver for the funeral of their high-school drama teacher, Mr. Old Man, they bump into one another — literally — at the baggage carousel, where they remain marooned because of a mechanical screw-up. In the best feature of the show, the friends break out of their (relatively) naturalistic dialogue to perform musical numbers: Kerr sings, “I love what I do, but I’m just below average,” for instance. And there are a couple of well observed jokes. Terasawa says of Mr. Old Man, “He let me open up so much I never had to go to therapy.” There is some substance in the script: as a person of colour who speaks English with an accent, Terasawa’s character feels the system is rigged against her. Less realistically, Kerr’s character is living a lie: she’s told her parents that she has a degree in another field — and she’s faked a diploma with photoshop. It’s worth noting that these levels of reality don’t match, and Bitches might have been stronger if its creators had committed more fully to one direction or the other. The disjuncture I’m talking about also manifests in the performances: Kerr’s work is showier, Terasawa’s more persuasively contained. But the central problem for me is that there’s not a lot of development. Even in its presentation of racism, Bitches feels more illustrative than substantially exploratory. Both performers bring youthful charm to their work. I hope my comments — if Kerr and Terasawa see them — are helpful.
At the Vancouver Fringe Festival. Remaining performances at Arts Umbrella: September 8, 9:15 pm; September 9, 8:45 pm; September 12, 6:50 pm; September 14, 4:30 pm; September 15, 2:15 pm. Tickets
(Photo by Valeria Santos)
Truly outstanding show. While the review published on this is thoughtful, it does not do the show justice! Amazing performance; 10/10 would love to see it again!