Fringe Review: How to Pack a Revolution in Your Suitcase charming, poignant
How to Pack a Revolution in Your Suitcase
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Stage 8, Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre, 8426 Gateway Blvd.
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Bremner Fletcher confesses he has an addiction. Before you clutch your pearls, know that the addiction is history.
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Fletcher is a singer who studied opera at Montreal's McGill University and at the Banff Centre.
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His show is a hybrid of song and storytelling that comes to the Fringe all the way from the Weimar Republic, which was the name of the German government between 1919 and 1933, preceding the rise of Hitler.
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Through a collection of historical tidbits and tunes written between 1923 and 1941 by German artists from Bertolt Brecht to Kurt Weill, Bremner describes the Weimar period, characterized by political and social upheaval, but also artistic ambition and democratic idealism.
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Throughout the show, Fletcher draws chilling comparisons between the Weimar Republic and the United States under Donald Trump. He sprinkles in enough haunting parallels and word-for-word quotes between German leadership of the day and the U.S. president to make his quite-depressing point.
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But the strength of Fletcher's show is in his passionate and professional delivery of the music (opening show glitches and errant cell phones notwithstanding) and the stories of German talents forced to flee the country, including filmmaker Samuel (Billy ) Wilder, scientist Albert Einstein and composer Kurt Weill. It's a charming performance, but also a poignant reminder of all that can, and will, be lost.
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