5 STARS - CBC
How do you convey a simple story of utter devastation? Not with grand gestures and swelling music. Not with long-winded speeches and over the top soap operatic pathos.
If you are a true master you do it simply, subtly, and drive it deep into your audience's soul with a quiet, understated, calm and measured delivery. Not with a bazooka but with a slowly seeping noxious but undetectable gas: you don't realize until it's too late just how much of the tragedy you have taken in.
Rodrigo Beilfuss is Alex. A man stupidly content in the mundane aspects of marriage and fatherhood. He is affable, relaxed, and almost appears as a character no one-man show should ever be wrapped around. At first you listen to him patiently as you would a shy guest at a dinner party opening up for the first time. Slowly he pulls you in. He is intensely likeable.
And then it happens. The moment that leaves him forever with a hole in his belly. You don't know it is happening and then it does.Silence in the theatre. No coughs. No shifting limbs. Just a pervasive feeling of sorrow.
Sea Wall is a masterclass in the art of tragedy, acting and storytelling. It's not the most uplifting show at the Fringe but it kicks you in the gut and leaves you in awe of how it did it all on tiptoe. - Katie Nicholson
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4 STARS - Winnipeg Free Press
Simon Stephen’s 30-minute gem Sea Wall refers to an underwater cliff that drops hundreds of feet.
It seems like an odd title for a monologue in which the amiable Alex chats lovingly about his two favourite people, his young daughter and his beautiful wife. He remembers a holiday to his father-in-law’s home in southern France, where something terrible happens and he plunges over that wall into a dark and terrifying place.
Winnipeg actor Rodrigo Beifuss draws us deftly into Alex’s happy life, seducing us with off-the-cuff naturalness. His effectiveness turns out to be a cruel trick as the tragedy’s impact falls harder on the audience. Beilfuss successively delivers Stephen’s unsettling message that the wall is ever near.
Alex says he wants to apologize for the cruellest thing he ever said but is unable to repeat it again out loud. You will ponder what that was long after Sea Wall concludes. - Kevin Prokosh
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Dining With Donald
One of the things that The Fringe Festival reminds us of every year is how much acting talent Winnipeg possesses. Some of this talent only appears at The Fringe, but much of it is available all year round. Theatre by the River is one such company.* This company has been producing challenging and entertaining theatre works for the last decade, and their 2015 Fringe show Sea Wall is no exception.
Sea Wall draws us into the life of Alex. In the beginning it is a life almost anyone would want to be part of. Yet Alex’s life is not as it appears. What ensues is an intense, look into the life of a man whose world is changing in ways that he is not prepared for. Along the way if also forces the audience to ask questions of themselves and the things that shape the way they live.
A large part of what makes Sea Wall so compelling is the performance of Rodrigo Beilfuss as Alex. Told as a monologue the story requires the use of the audience’s imagination for scene setting. Beilfuss does a great job of painting word pictures that allow you to imagine yourself being in the story’s various locales.
From the beginning Beilfuss projects a warmth and likability that draws the audience into his story. He does this so thoroughly and completely that, as the story turns darker, you realize you couldn’t abandon it even if you wanted to. On top of this he creates empathy that guarantees you won’t want to.
The play is only 30 minutes in length. This is a good thing. Given the intensity of the subject matter and the depth of Beifuss’s performance a longer play might be too overwhelming.
Sea Wall is must-see Fringe. - Donald McKenzie
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TICKETS, PLEASE VISIT THEATRE BY THE RIVER!