Reviews

Review from Gilbert Bouchard (SEE MAGAZINE 2005):

...Grumblegory

Meanwhile, over at the Cosmopolitan Music Society, the crew behind Grumblestock’s (written by Kevin Jesuino, Jon Stewart and Trish Lorenz) have significant theatre experience under their belts–including having written/performed individual one-person shows–and are marking a different kind of debut.

This ambitious four-person show (starring the aforementioned trio supplemented by Vincent Forcier) marks their emergence as full-fledged playwrights with their second presentation of an allegorical drama about four sentient "mad marionettes" escaping a traveling show and having a surreal series of adventures in a "sinful" city called Bowble. Grumblestock’s was a hit at this year’s NextFest.

Lorenz says Jesuino came up with the rough idea last year when the two of them were doing a Fringe show together. "We talked and tossed ideas back and forth and Kevin said he also wanted to bring Jon Stewart into the mix and within a day we were going, ‘Let’s do a show’."

Despite the show’s charmed beginnings and the relative ease with which the script came together, the finished show almost stalled.

"We started working on this last fall and had a first draft by December and then applied for the Fringe and for NextFest, after which it sat on the backburner."

When time for NextFest rolled around, the crew was no longer sure they could actually do that particular gig.

"At the time Kevin was in Europe and Jon was in theatre school in Vancouver. There were lots of things working against us, and I ended up being one of those people who says "come on guys we have to do this"," she says, underlining the developmental importance of that show, and the vital input of the show’s NextFest director Aaron MacKenzie.