DRAMA QUEEN – Four and A Half Suns

By COLIN MACLEAN - The Edmonton Sun - August 21, 2006

What a joy it is to welcome Alex Dallas back to the Fringe.

The long-time artist brings us a new show called Drama Queen. She tells us that she began performing the Fringe circuit in 1989. (Remember her troupe Sensible Shoes?) Her act, she says, was met by reviewers with disdain. “Smut,’’ thundered one. “Man hating diatribe,’’ roared another. The Edmonton Sun gave her zero Suns.

It’s hard to believe all that now. Maybe she was before her time. Well, let me tell you, NOW is her time.

Dallas enters and sits in a chair. And talks. But what talk. For an hour she rummages around the attic of her memory spinning yarns and tales from a career that began when she played a flower in kindergarten.

“Every one of them is true,’’ she tells us.

There is no particular order to these memories that come spilling out her. She seems to be one of those people who never experience anything dull. With her easy natural delivery, she has the amazing ability to generate an intensely theatrical experience and yet make you believe it is happening just between you and her – and for the first time.

She uses a technique. She suddenly makes an outrageous statement or non-sequitur in the middle of something else. “I received news of my death by e-mail,’’ she tells us for no particular reason – except the story that follows is hilarious.

So we learn of the time she got a phone call to play Puck (and several other characters) in a four-member troupe performing A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. On a trampoline. The next day. On a tour of the castles of England.

“I am the fattest person in Los Angeles,’’ observes the svelte Dallas. “They are the skinniest people I have ever seen. They practically wear signs that say ‘actress/model.’ ’’

“People don’t walk anymore,’’ she posits. “In Orlando, if you are seen walking, people stop for you because they feel your car must have broken down.’’

She tells of her parents – “as long as they stay alive, you feel immortal’’ – and her own teenage daughter. Her LSD experience as a 15-year-old. The British school system. Getting lost in a department store. Her thyroid operation. Christmases past.

Delivered by most anyone else, all this might come off as egocentric and banal but in the hands of this earthy, vulnerable, approachable, hilarious woman they take on the sheen of life lived as an adventure.

And definitely NOT as a man-hating diatribe.

– Based on performance at the Saskatoon Fringe

Exposing a life well-lived

Alex Dallas is so engaging, she can interest audiences in her last biopsyAlan Kellogg, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Friday, August 18, 2006
DRAMA QUEEN
Rating 4 1/2
- - -
Just when you reckon that enduring yet another solo reminiscence will send you drooling over the High Level Bridge in agony, a pro like Alex Dallas comes along to remind us how it's done.
Nicely turned out in a little black cocktail number with the requisite chockies and champers nearby, the Sensible Footwear/English Suitcase Company veteran settles in to tell her story. We're hooked from the first moment, and it never flags. Here's a woman who can have us interested in her last biopsy.
From beginnings as a flower in a Middlesex school play to a memorable Vancouver meeting with an admiring Ian McCallum, Dallas recalls a life in the theatre.
Needless to say -- but she says it so well -- it's had its ups and downs, literally so in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream staged on a trampoline.
Along the way, family, friends, day jobs and a user-friendly mortality leitmotif are sewn together in a masterful job of invisible tailoring.
Dallas can and does turn on a dime, moving from pathos to randy to hilarious with a single raised eyebrow, an ever-so-slight change in pitch.
The hour flies by and not only are we sorry to see it end so soon, we're also wishing we had brought along a bouquet of stage-door posies.
Well deserved for a live lived well so far, and possibly even better told. Dallas makes you believe in the possibilities of the Fringe all over again -- no mean feat for both player and payer.
© The Edmonton Journal 2006

Gagging For A Shag

Venue 14 – The King’s Head

Gagging For A Shag is Alex Dallas’ one-person autobiographical show that is a funny look at her relationships and her never-ending search for love. Unfortunately for her (but fortunately for the audience) all of her relationships seem to end on a downer.

The script has some great lines including “I married beneath me. All women do.” and “Vibrators can’t take out the garbage.” There are also a lot of great stories including her male/female dictionary and how she acts at weddings. Surprisingly, there’s also a couple of serious moments that makes the audience stop and think including when she talks about what happens to her grandmother and when she talks to her mom about divorce. Also, her bewildered expressions and half-smiles are a nice little touch that act like a little garnish to her great material.

- Justin Olynyk - 101.5 UMFM

Gutsy and smart Alex Dallas's one-woman show is sweet and sour, happy and sad.

Solo shows highlight theatrical experience

Reviewed by Jo Ledingham - Vancouver Courier - February 2005

At 46, Alex Dallas is as funny and raunchy as ever. Remember Nymphomania? And who can forget this Fringe diva in Greek, delivering a diatribe against men that peeled the wallpaper off The Cultch? Now she's telling us there are three things in life without which she cannot do: Chocolate. Champagne. And the cunning thing some people do with their tongues. In no particular order.

Being a drama queen comes easily to Dallas: she started in kindergarten when she played a flower but what she really wanted was to play a bunny. Little Alex's offstage histrionics doubtless outdid the school pageant over that disagreement. When her brown curls start to bob and her foot-stamping starts, it's time to head for the hills.

Dallas traces her theatrical career, its highlights (playing four roles in Midsummer Night's Dream on a trampoline with one day's notice-never having played any Shakespeare before) and its lowlights (playing four roles in Midsummer Night's Dream, etc.).

But woven in are the drowning of her father, the death of her best friend and Dallas's own recent illness. Her extraordinary talent is the intermingling of sweet and sour, happy and sad. How often do you laugh at a story and seriously ponder it at the same time? Take her father's death, for example: how can we feel grief for the daughter but give a rueful chuckle at the bad luck of dying on the first day of his holiday? But we do both.

Dallas, attractive, gutsy and intelligent, talks a mile-a-minute; she's dynamic, a ticking time bomb, and the material is now mature. The image of her on holiday with her mother and 75 other elderly women-none of whom can work their electronic hotel keys but are dancing ("testy and tipsy") to "I Will Survive" in the ballroom-is priceless. Good thing Dallas suppressed the drama queen impulse to holler, "No. You won't survive. We're all going to die. Perhaps next week, some of you." But we get the picture. Her own survival she credits to the three Cs.

Reviews from The Winnipeg Fringe Festival 2003

Drama Queen - Venue 14 - The King's Head

This is a laugh out loud performance by Alex Dallas (Goddess, Nymphomaniac). From the start, with yet another great opening line, to finish with a full house enthusiastic cheer, her performance explores everything from being a drama queen with a day job, to geriatric hide-and-seek with many detours including Aussie bollocks, losing her Shakespearean virginity on a trampoline to a new slogan for Ontario license plates, while continually bringing the story back to her father and mortality. Alex Dallas has developed a well deserved reputation for impeccable timing and delivery and outstanding performances that can switch from comedy to pathos to perceptive insight in the space of one phrase and a tilt of her head. This show is selling out and will continue to do so. Make your best effort to go see it, you won’t be disappointed.
- Joe Carney -umfm

DRAMA QUEEN - Sensible Footwear/Goddess Productions

Alex Dallas is pure charisma -- you can't take your eyes off her. She is the kind of friend everyone wishes they had -- bright, and full of sparkling wit, even on the darkest of days.
Dallas (who currently hails from Toronto but has thankfully held on to her marvellous British accent) presents a 60-minute one-woman show that manages to be moving, triumphant, tragic, and hilariously funny all at once.
From octogenarians dancing to disco to the war with Iraq, nothing is taboo for this Queen of Drama, who can change the mood of her story simply by tilting her head.
-- Holli Moncrieff - 5 stars - Winnipeg Free Press

Drama Queen - by Alex Dallas

Chocolate, champagne and something you do with your tongue, ... and not in any particular order. That's how the impish Alex Dallas opens and closes her one woman show Drama Queen. Has she matured, learned, settled down, found her center... since last year's show Nymphomania?
(Can any sane person expect to see and evaluate all of this year's fringe shows.) No. She is as full of tales to tell as ever. And as she says, " I am not imaginative enough to make this stuff up. Yes, all of it is true."
All is grist for her mill, and that includes everything from the death of her father, to her varied theatre career. From life threatening throat surgery, to the delights to be had with her waiter on a holiday. Let's just say it was a religious experience of a sort.
There's no hope of a road map when Dallas is "driving". She will backtrack in time and place. She was born a little anarchist, I think. And she has the ability to look back on her experience and see the absurd, the humour, the value of friendship.
If her material has changed somewhat, it's the not surprising things that come to us all. The sudden death of friends, as well as an unusual e-mail announcing her own death.
I particularly liked her recounting of having to replace an injured Shakespearean actress with a day's notice. She ended up playing four or five roles, on book, (with the script in her hand), on a trampoline.
Now I sat in the front row and I could see her feeding off the audience's response. Waiting for the laughter to almost subside. Then offering a punchline to top what you thought was the punchline. The secret of comedy?... Oh, and the story that got the loudest, longest laugh?
Timing...Her description of going without rumpy pumpy and the value of a bunny vibrator, being used, she assured us all across Canada by middle-aged women such as Sheila Copps and Adrian Clarkson.
As you can see, we allow our clowns to say things on stage that we wouldn't allow elsewhere. Just as the jester was allowed to point out the foibles of his lord and master without fear.
If last year's show had more of the universal from the particular than this show, it still drew full delight from a full house. Alex Dallas is still in fine form living the vida "loco" at the ripe age of 45.
Ron Robinson - 4 stars - CBC Radio

Drama Queen - Sensible Footwear / Goddess Productions

Alex Dallas doesn't need my help putting bums in chairs. She's been doing it for more than a decade. (Closer to two, but who's counting?) Although she could probably perform this material in her sleep, she doesn't do anything even remotely close. She's an extremely animate, consummate professional.
Using the first person singular, Dallas speaks through an extraverted ("showing off comes naturally to me"), bohemian stage persona whose life is an extended Fringe production. Whether her material is autobiographical or fictional (or a creative blending of the two, often labelled "embellishment" when we engage in it offstage), Dallas offers a vicarious alter ego to those of us who've made a few too many sensible decisions. Without the risk of chaos, hangovers, pregnancies, narrow escapes, etc. Middle-aged wannabes can quaff a pint and imagine, "I could have had a more adventurous life if only I didn't have to write my LSAT/finish my CGA/pay my mortgage/look after my kids/feed my cats/ (your own particular excuse here) .
A drama queen's necessities of life include chocolate, champagne and cunnilingus, in no particular order. The first two of these Dallas shares with a couple of gay pals from Yorkshire. The latter is complements of a Tunisian waiter in Brussels, presumably one of the few consolation prizes of a Christmas vacation with Dallas's recently widowed mother and her geriatric cohort.
Although she's still plenty raunchy (she can't be expected to report back on the world tour of her previous Fringe production, Nymphomania, without a reasonable debauchery quotient), Dallas is entering a phase of life where routinely intruding concerns are less innately amusing. The death of her father (who careless drowned on the first rather than the last day of his Mediterranean vacation) and two contemporaries are the most obvious examples. The quotidian tasks associated with meeting her daughter's material and emotional needs are also omnipresent. But they don't stop her from many of the quirky pursuits that are her trademark, such as accepting a five-character, multi-performance engagement in the trampoline version of A Midsummer Night's Dream on a single day's notice.
To the extent that her material is at least partly autobiographical, Dallas has unprotected social intercourse with 100 audience members every night, as she makes herself vulnerable through her honesty and candour. For long-term Alex Dallas fans, I'd describe this year's production as more of the same. For those who've never checked her out, please be assured that more of the customary Alex Dallas is a good thing. - CBC Winnipeg

Reviews from The Winnipeg Fringe Festival 2002

Sunday July 21, 2002 - Nymphomania

The only props in this bare-bones production are a half-dozen pair or panties on a wooden rack. But that’s about all Alex Dallas needs to power this one-woman confessional romp through her past.

A self-proclaimed nymphomaniac (“I don’t believe a girl has lived until she’s had sex in a hearse”), Dallas tells all, from her first orgasm to a litany of bad dates to the greatest love of her life – her nine-year-old daughter Ruby, With wit and style, this Fringe veteran ends up showing us that a true nymphomaniac suffers from an “excessive” passion for life, not just sex. And that’s a good thing.

Every nymphomaniac in town should see this.
- Margo Goodhand 4 stars

Winnipeg - July 18, 2002 - Nymphomania

For Alex Dallas, nothing is too personal or too private to be off limits. Her age, sexual history, sexual appetite, loss of virginity and marriages are all up for public consumption in her latest one-woman show.

Fringe regulars will be familiar with Dallas' warm, inclusive sense of humor that is best delivered in the monologue style featured in both Nymphomania and her previous hit, Goddess.

From the moment she made her way to the stage, Dallas had the sold out crowd at the King's Head wrapped around her finger. Often moving from a sidesplitting tale to a serious, life changing moment in an instant, the emotions of the crowd fluctuated with the lift of her eyebrow.

A talented, precise performer, Dallas manages to strike a balance between comedy and drama as she recounts the discovery of her own sexuality through to her relationship with her nine-year-old daughter, Ruby. A hilarious resume of sexual activities acts as a timeline of her "illness" as the audience jumps on the hormonal roller coaster of a woman happy to declare herself a nymphomaniac.
- Anna Lazowski - 5 stars

Reviews from The Saskatoon Fringe Festival 2002

Tuesday, August 06, 2002

Nymphomania is naughty -- but nice. A lot like its creator, Alex Dallas. The British-born performer and fringe veteran bares all (at least figuratively) in this one-woman show.

Dallas seems to leave nothing out as she reveals her earliest sexual experiences, her dead-beat former boyfriends (What do you call a musician without a girlfriend? Homeless) and the gory miracle of motherhood.

Here is one of those rare performers who can make anything seem interesting. Imagine how good she is, then, in top form, totally in control of her own well-written, vivid script. And what material she has to work with. Making a baby in Canada with an American clown? Only on the fringe.

Prudes may faint at the language and content -- but then they'd miss a show that takes a wonderfully honest look at a charming woman's lust for life.
-Cam Fuller - 4 Stars

Reviews from The Edmonton Fringe Festival 2002

Bawdy, funny and gripping - By COLIN MACLEAN, EDMONTON SUN FREELANCE

By now, Alex Dallas is woven into the fabric of the Fringe. She first started coming here in 1989 as a member of the comic female English trio Sensible Footwear.

When they broke up, she hit the Fringe circuit with Goddess, the first of her hilarious and often penetrating one-woman shows. In fact, it goes even deeper than that, she tells us in her new show, Nymphomania - her child was conceived at the Winnipeg Fringe, she discovered her pregnancy at the Saskatoon Fringe and daughter, Ruby, now 9, was born in Vancouver.

In Nymphomania, she maintains she has, as the dictionary defines it "an excessive desire for sex.''

Well, it turns out, if we are to believe this show ("It's all true,'' at one point she earnestly assures us), that although Dallas has healthy sexual appetites, she's hardly a nympho - try as hard as she can to persuade us.

Bawdy she is. Earthy, certainly. Plain-spoken. Graphic in her detail of erotic escapades.

She certainly doesn't spare herself. We meet the succession of Neanderthal losers, rock musicians ("What do you call a rock musician without a girlfriend? Homeless'') and Fringe performers with whom she dallied over the years.

"I have done considerable research on the subject of sex,'' she tells us.
Dallas's years of experience in front of audiences show. Her masterful pacing has us laughing one minute at a rapid-fire list of exotic (and often uncomfortable-sounding) places where she has had sex (the back of a hearse?) and then she adroitly switches emotional gears and grips us with a poignant description of the near-miscarriage of her first child.

"It's not much fun being a woman in this world - a world of women driven and put down,'' she comments. But there's always the sisterhood, "It's like being in the Mafia. (When you have female friends) "no one is gong to mess with you.''

She has an effective technique of starting off a series of comments by making an outrageous statement. "I show men my breasts for money,'' she announces. Turns out that as an actor, one of her gigs is to use her body to test young doctors' abilities in breast examination for their final exams.

Dallas gets a few knocks in at men but generally we come off fairly well. This is no anti-male screed but a genuinely funny, unblushing and often affecting tale of a feisty woman who lives her life fully, sometimes wins and sometimes loses, but takes no prisoners along the way.
- 4 Stars

Dallas Does Dallas - Edmonton Journal - Sunday, August 18, 2002

Alex Dallas is back with her irreverent style of humour, and she hasn't lost a beat.

Her new one-woman, one-hour show begins with a routine on a chance meeting she had at age 19 with Jack Nicholson. It is the first of the names of the rich and famous she drops, most of which lead to funny, sometimes profane riffs.

With Jack, for example, she was offered the first toke on a huge spliff, which she took. And then humiliated herself with a coughing jag that seemed destined to leave a lung on the floor.

There is candour in the Toronto-based Dallas, late of the comedy troupe Sensible Footwear and the star of past Fringe fave Goddess, sometimes to an almost uncomfortable degree.

We learn, for instance, of her first masturbatory experiences, the loss of her virginity at age 15, the circumstances that led to her first orgasm with a man at age 19, the other relationships she had with men. A confessional moment, and a quick calculation, would lead one to believe that Dallas, lusty, buxom and passionate, had sexual encounters of one kind or another with at least 84 men.

There are poignant moments in her show as well, that serve as a counterpoint to the bawdy. A story of the death of a friend who fell from a 10th-floor balcony adds a sombre note, as does a sensitive, touching anecdote about the secret language of grown-up women who speak in whispers, spelling out many of the words so the children won't understand. It's fun and smart and unflichingly honest.

-Marc Horton 4 stars
© Copyright 2002 Edmonton Journal

Nymphomania - August 19-25, 2002

Man or woman, as friend or lover, you want to know Alex Dallas. She’s been around – a lot of Fringes, a lot of jobs, and a lot of men. Relishing in a textbook definition of nymphomaniacs as women suffering from excessive sexual desire, ("Boy, do I suffer") she regales us with coming-of-age stories, sexual adventures, family dramas, and the plus side of perimenopause. The litany of unsuitable lovers will have you rolling on the floor, but in the end you’ll leave hoping to suffer from a nymphomaniac’s lust for life.
-Skye Perry 4 stars