Four Stars

Toothpaste and Cigars is another show co-written by the inescapable and justly celebrated T.J. Dawe. Co-written and featuring Michael Rinaldi, there is a big buzz happening about this one. It turns out the buzz is right this time. This is as intriguing and smart a piece of theatre as you'll find at Attack of the Killer Fringe. The ingenous idea here is that two young people meet, an interest grows to a friendship and flowers into what might be love and then ... well, you''ll have to see the show. Only the two talk in movie titles, read fridge magnets (at least I think they are fridge magnets), speak nonsense sentenses, make unrelated observations that either bounce off each other or appear with seeming randomness out of nowhere. (Actually, I suspect there is little that is random in this well-crafted hour.) They may be talking about nothing but they are saying volumes.

Sometimes they just pose endless, unanswered questions speaking as if they are carrying on a normal conversation. They share hilarious emails. But once you clear the hurdle that these two aren't in parallel universes, you see they just aren't speaking in traditional linear patterns (or at least we can't hear them in linear patterns). You get to know them very well and perceive their relationship developing with warmth and common interests. Go with the body language and the common threads in the disconnected conversations. It's a little like a puzzle that gets simpler to put together as more of the pieces begin to fit. And once you get it figured out, you can hang on for the exhilerating finish.

Well, perhaps not exhilerating. As the dialogue loops and circles and turns back on itself, it leads to a clear, rather wrenching and bittersweet ending.

The two principals are perfectly cast to balance each other. They are so good and so right together that surely the work was designed for them. Rinaldi is dry, witty and laid waaaaaay back. His deadpan delivery makes an ideal foil for Tallulah Winkelman's chipmunk charm as she bounces off the walls, all smiles and sparkle. In fact, what keeps all this from being an actor's exercise is the cleverness of the writing and the stage charisma the two featured players generate.
Toothpaste and Cigars is funny, challenging, and a fresh take on the good old romantic comedy.

Colin MacLean
Edmonton Sun/CBC Edmonton