Not Quite Sherlock at the Halifax Fringe
VENUE:
DANSpace, 1800 Argyle St, Halifax
SHOWTIMES:
Thursday Aug 28 – 5:30
Saturday Aug 30 – 10:30
Sunday Aug 31 – 1:00
Monday Sep 1 – 12:30
Wednesday Sep 3 – 5:45
Saturday Sep 6 – 1:00
“This show is a delight from beginning to end… deliciously funny, one of the most cleverly written and performed shows I’ve ever seen at the Fringe.”
stage-door.com
“Gibbs’s performance is near flawless. His martini-dry wit is characteristically sharp, and his comic timing is beautiful.”
CBC
“Clueless, guileless and absolutely priceless…Sherlockians will be in heaven. Everyone else will be here, laughing hard.”
Edmonton Journal
“full of twists, turns, and gadzooks moments.”
Now Magazine, Toronto
“a highly skilled, confident comic actor whose writing is unrelentingly clever and whimsical”
Victoria Times Colonist
“Chris Gibbs is such an effortlessly natural, off-the-cuff comedian that it’s easy to overlook what a superb playwright he is. Arguably the year’s most perfect script”
Vue Weekly, Edmonton
“Gibbs’ meticulously written script is peppered with droll understatement and amplified with perfectly-timed physical punch lines.”
Winnipeg Free Press
London, the final years of the nineteenth century. Barnaby Gibbs, a man made entirely of shortcomings, had never succeeded in doing anything useful with his life. That all changed when he became the stalwart companion of the brilliant detective Antoine Feval, sharing in his adventures, and helping him solve the most difficult of mysteries.
But in all their investigations together, there is one mystery that has never been solved; why would a brilliant man like Feval choose to work with a bumbling fool like Gibbs?
In Not Quite Sherlock, Chris Gibbs uses every bit of his 35 years of comedy experience to tell the heart-warming and hilarious story of a man who thinks he must be the luckiest fellow on earth, but who might just have depths so hidden, only a brilliant detective could find them.
A little bit of history of the show
Not Quite Sherlock (under its original title, ‘Antoine Feval’) was first performed in 2005 at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, where it won Best of Fest. Since then the show has been performed all over Canada (and a little bit beyond). It sold out its entire Toronto Fringe run in 2006, won the Just For Laughs Best Comedy Award in the 2009 Montreal Fringe, and then played at Just For Laughs that year. Other highlights include the Revolutions Festival in Albuquerque, NM, the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary, The World Buskers Festival in New Zealand, and the Victoria Playhouse, Victoria by the Sea, PEI.
There are currently two more shows in the series; ‘Not Quite Sherlock: The Tunnel of Terror’ and ‘A Mystery At Murder Manor’.
Chris is also working on a novel based on the story.
A little bit about Chris Gibbs
British comedian Chris Gibbs has been described as “comic genius” by the Globe and Mail, and “One of the funniest guys around” by the National Post. The Toronto Star has called his shows “darkly gleeful” and “comic stand-up gold”; and the CBC has described his delivery as “a combination of dry wit and barely controlled madness that threatens to go off the rails at any time”.
He has been performing since 1990, starting out as a street-acrobat in London’s Covent Garden. He first came to Halifax as one-half of the physical comedy duo Hoopal, performing at the Halifax Busker’s Festival in 2000. In 2002 he moved to Canada permanently and returned to Halifax to perform at what was then called the Atlantic Fringe with his first one-man show, ‘Gibberish’.
Since then he has created and continues to perform five more one-man shows; has won two Canadian Comedy Awards; Best Improv Troupe with ‘The Carnegie Hall Show’ and Best Comedic Play with ‘Plan “Live” From Outer Space’. He’s played at Just For Laughs in Montreal; appeared in two CBC Winnipeg Comedy Festival Galas; starred in the indie Canadian feature film, ‘Run Robot Run’ and is a published author. He’s even worked with Steven Spielberg, playing “Gizzardgulper”, one of the evil giants in the Disney feature ‘The BFG’.