Oh darlings, you simply MUST see Tippi Seagram!
The internationally renowned actress — and cougar — has deigned to visit the Fringe on one of her comedy charity missions.
Played by Colette Kendall, Seagram is a sassy firecracker of a woman — a mix of Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous and Babe Bennett from This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Seagram is glamorous, full of herself and gleefully politically incorrect — willing to make jokes about clubbing seals, Canadian separatists, sex over 40, children and her own audience members.
There’s never a dull moment during Seagram’s Happy Hour. It’s snappy, intoxicating, and like a good cocktail, she’ll leave you wanting more.
Sandra Sperounes
Is it just me or is the overall quality of Fringe plays much higher this year? I only saw one complete dud-(show name with-held), a very predictable and deathly boring zombie play-but the other 15 were worth 3 stars or more, including two absolute knock-outs, Tippi Seagram’s Happy Hour and The Cody Rivers Show: Flammable People……..
There is no hiding from Tippi Seagram. Early on in her happy hour she warns, “This is interactive darlings. I can see you.” For Tippi, a no-boundaries aging starlet, young men are ripe for picking, young women are in need of guidance and older gents are apt to get their sagging genitals tangled in a messy disaster. Funnywoman Colette Kendall has the audience shaking with laughter for a full 60 minutes as she riffs on everything from the PLO to “those ugly asexual” politicos, Shelia Copps and Margaret Thatcher. You might feel slightly guilty laughing at her jokes, but Tippi proves sometimes sacred cows make the best hamburgers. AN
I apologize! I have been very remiss in keeping this blog up to date on a daily basis..unlike last year… where you were all subjected to a daily onslaught of observations, musings and reflections on the very minutiae that makes up life on the road for a fringe artist!….be warned I have spared you all this year and would therefore like to be put back on your Christmas card mailing list again!……ok, but this I have got to get to blogging because it is so awesomely cool….so last Wed July 25 I’m doing my matinee performance at the Winnipeg Fringe and there is a fair size crowd ready for me to make with the ha ha…so out I come and I realize that there is a woman who looks very, very familiar sitting in my audience…so my brain does that dichotomy thing…if you are a performer you will instantly understand this…if not, well it’s like this…when you step on stage your brain splits into 2 parts…one part is responsible for getting all the words and actions out for the play, it’s the workhorse…the other part…that lazy bastard half a brain..sits around, probably in brain underwear eating cheesies, making random comments about what’s going on and critiquing what kind of a job the other half is doing…when it’s negative and all judgy I like to call it my mother’s voice!…so on this day it’s sees this woman sitting alone in the audience..and it says..’hey, hey.. isn’t that Margot Kidder? Take a look…No not that much of a look you idiot!…casual like, no eye contact, noooo eye contact…so what do ya think?..is it her?’ it asks…other brain responds between lines…’ummm, I don’t know!…little busy here..do you think you could maybe focus?’…so after 40 min of ‘uncle buck’ brain prodding ‘ask her, ask her’..the show finally ends and I say…’are you who I think you are?”…and… yes! is the answer…OMG! what an honour to have this wonderful actor/activist/humanitarian/woman in my audience!…and to boot she said…out loud…’I loved it’…get outta here!…Ok, she’s just being polite to me in front of the crowd…BUT WAIT…GET THIS!!!..Ms. Kidder comes backstage after the show to HUG me!!…IF I’M LYING I’M DYING!…and tell me she loved the show! Yes! she said LOVED!….AND…. IS THERE SOME WAY SHE CAN GET IN CONTACT WITH ME?…..WHAAAAATTTT!…Oh no sorry, I have a strict unlisted number policy!….YES!!! OMG, Just let me follow you around where ever you go then you needn’t tire your hands dialing my number…not since slutty coeds, has a woman given her telephone number so quickly and freely!!! Winnipeg I was already in love with you, and now, that you have given me one more hilight…even more so now!.. And Thank you Ms. Kidder, it was an absolute pleasure performing for you!
She’s ba-a-ack! Old school Hollywood diva Tippie Seagram — a brash, boozy blend of Norma Desmond and the gang from AbFab — follows up her beloved Confessions of a Casting Couch Cougar show with another razor-sharp pastiche of Hollywood witticism and middle-aged observation. Seagram skips between improv session and pitch-perfect parody, firing off juicy bon mots about CanCon, the gay panic of the Bush administration, and that cougar designation (”Ten more years and I’ll be a sabre-toothed tiger!” she admits). With Canuck comic Colette Kendall wearing Tippie’s fur coat and wig like a second skin, Tippie’s also not above taking a shot at herself, detailing her failed first marriage, her bouts with weight gain, and her — ahem — pruning regimen. There’s a lot of mixing it up with audience members, so if you’re scared of that kinda thing, don’t make eye contact. And even though Kendall flubbed a few lines during a recent show — “Blame the menopause, darlings!” was her spot-on recovery — the Tippie experience isn’t one you’re likely to forget anytime soon.
Aging Hollywood starlet Tippi Seagram (Colette Kendall) is crude, brash and politically incorrect - and she’s fabulous, dahling. In a spitfire one woman show/stand-up comedy act, Tippi skewers everything from the aging process to politics to bikini waxes, making for a show that manages to be as clever as it is vulgar. Expertly playing to the audience - you probably should be afraid of Tippi Seagram if you’re not into some light teasing - she works hard for her laughs, and it was the well-handled improv that made this show a standout. At the late night performance I caught, a young guy in the back fell prey to the irreverent cougar and ended up adding a whole new level of humour to the show. Though some of the jokes were groan-worthy, you have to admire a comedian who can say “Fuck you, I thought that one was cute.” - JZ
CBC Review:
Well, dahling, Tippi Seagram is back with another smashing solo show. You remember Tippi, don’t you? She debuted at last year’s Fringe in Tippi Seagram’s Happy Hour. Critics and audiences ate that one up, and this show is just as saucy and just as hilarious. And you’ll be happy to hear that it’s part two of a promised trilogy from funnywoman Colette Kendall. I can’t imagine anyone more fun to share a cocktail with. If Tippi Seagram were a martini, she’d be two parts Dorothy Parker, one part Katherine Hepburn with a twist of Rabelais. This Hollywood starlet and self-proclaimed cougar prowls the theatre in her black dress, fur coat, and leopard-print heels with her drink in one fist and libidinous one-liners in the other. She leaves no Hollywood stone unburned in her 45-minute set. She skewers everyone with equal relish, from Anna Nicole Smith (“She finally caught up with her career”) to Ben Mulroney (“he puts in the ‘dull’ in Canadian Idol”). Of course she doesn’t spare the audience her sharp tongue. But don’t worry dahling, it’s all in good fun. Aunt Prudence might not appreciate her bawdy humor. Tippi tells it like it is whether she’s mocking politics, our aging bodies or our sex lives. A few times the energy flags, and she doesn’t offer much in the way of a story. But Tippi Seagram is one of the most entertaining characters you’ll encounter at the Fringe. Go see it, dahling!
Okay, so last year I was really good and wrote everyday..but unfortunately, it’s been kinda uneventful so far….the weather here has been so cold and rainy …and I packed so poorly (who packs tube tops and gauchos?) that the beer tent has been out of question for the last week..and well, I’m still trying to play catch up and get press kits out to Winnipeg, get printing ready for London and sit patiently with bated breath for all important venue announcements from Edmonton…for some reason I just feel like I’m waking up from a very long sleep that started about the time I left Vancouver last year…I’ve also realized that it’s almost one year ago that I bought my current jeans and they are pretty threadbare…you see I had just hit Winnipeg and by the second day or so put my foot through the knee of my pants..I immediately went out and bought a new pair so my new billet wouldn’t think I was white trash…I am of course white trash, those that know me know I saved them so I could make shorty shorts out of them! ewwwww!…but I can put on airs too you know…so I’m thinking I should continue to hold out with these ones and make it a yearly Winnipeg tradition…I’m pretty much considering Ottawa to be a workshop because up until June 16 this show had never seen the light of day…so every night it changes…sometimes I think, it needs more funny, then it’s, I gotta make them cry, other nights more angst…so if you like watching people on the edge of the abyss…catch the show now before it hits
Winnipeg confident in what it will be….but on the plus side I have been able to take in some great shows….starting with in no particular order….Teaching as you like it, Opposite of Affinity,Bye Bye Bombay, Jem Rolls up, Miss April Day’s school for Burgeoning young strippers, Jesus in Montana, Burden of Poof and Lounge-zilla….all of which I would recommend…on a weird sighting, the area that I’m staying in has a huge deer population and every night when I roll in about 2am there are always a lot out along the side of the road…apparently they like to eat gravel…why do these stupid animals do this and why do the roads department continue to feed them….anyway, weird sighting…I come upon 2 young deer standing about 15 feet away from me with a house cat, Mr Whiskers, standing about 3 feet away from them…it was like I had accidentally stumbled upon a meeting of minds…so I roll up quietly in the car, Mr Whiskers immediately beelines behind my car away from the scene with his little bell a ringing…the deer stay still…5 min later something spooks them and they start to scurry off and out of no where comes Mr Whiskers flying after them, jingling up a storm, so very menacing in his minuteness, that pussy was on fire…it’s a very weird and secretive world this cat world
Dear Scoundrel who stole this private video from the Tippi Seagram collection:
It has come to my attention that you have made an unauthorized use of my copyrighted work labelled [Not to be seen sex video-turns out really bad for me and I look fat in it] (the “Work”) in the preparation of a work derived therefrom. I have reserved all rights in the Work, first published in [omg I’d never publish this], [and have registered copyright therein]. Your work entitled [Tippi Seagram’s Unauthorized Sex Video] is essentially identical to the Work and clearly used the Work as its basis. [so give it back and take it off youtube!]
As you neither asked for nor received permission to use the Work as the basis for [Tippi Seagram’s Unauthorized Sex Video] nor to make or distribute copies, including electronic copies, of same, I believe you have willfully infringed my rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as, oh let me see, maybe one million dollars?…I don’t know, it’s just bad! really bad! as set forth in Section 504(c)(2) therein.
I demand that you immediately cease the use and distribution of all infringing works derived from the Work, and all copies, including electronic copies, of same, that you deliver to me, if applicable, all unused, undistributed copies of same, or destroy such copies immediately and that you desist from this or any other infringement of my rights in the future…that is unless you steal one of the videos where I look really smoking hot in it… If I have not received an affirmative response from you by [the end of my current Canadian Festival Fringe Circuit]
Toronto-
Factory Theatre Mainspace July 6-14
…..buy your tickets now, www.fringetoronto.com
Winnipeg- The Playhouse- July 18-28
London- Spriet Family Theatre- Aug 1-6
Edmonton- Tippi Seagram’s Happy Hour-TBA- Aug 16-26
indicating that you have fully complied with these requirements, I shall take further action against you….bitch.
Very truly yours,
Tippi Seagram
Credits and Thanks to
Tippi Seagram- Herself
Italian Lover-Costa Alexander
Heart Attack Lover-John Harte
Hungry Lover-Devlin Bishop
Little Person Lover- Paul Settle
Writer- Colette Kendall
Director-Stephen Strangways
Editor- Kathy Garneau
Copywrite 2007 Colette Kendall All rights reserved
Well this blog is typical of how I feel right now….about 4 days behind….the past 3 days have been a whirlwind of driving, writing, re-writing, slashing, editing, throwing the pages on the floor and stomping them, sleep deprivation and mental breakdowns…..ahhh!!! I love fringing!!!!…ok so I left Hamilton on Friday morning at 6am for my 2pm tech call with 3 hours sleep…lasted to Kingston where I caught 30 in a church parking lot…sat through numerous construction sites on the 17 then finally hit Ottawa with enough time to drop suitcases at my mother’s and then head for the venue..now I was going on memory as to where locations were and in particular where parking was…so I turned down the street that had just 2 years ago housed a parking lot…I was then promptly provided a police escort as it was the Ottawa transit depot….so with a stiff fine imminent, late now for my tech and no registration with me, well I did the only thing I could do….CRIED LIKE A BIG OLE BABY…BIG WEEPY, SNOTTY TEARS!!!!!! and then was allowed to go about my business because I was obviously a perimenopausal psychopath…..believe me, Day 1 did not get any better..so lets skip to Day 2….first performance…yep…let’s skip to day 3….second performance..ok, much better!…there is light at the end of the tunnel, I just have to let Tippi take over for me again and everything will be fine…how creepily unbalanced does that sound?…so Day 4 is a day off, first day of internet access and I’m playing catch up then hitting some shows tonight….what has been wonderful is connecting again with all the great people and fabulous performers that I have met over the past 2 years of fringing namely: Jeremy Dias (he has a wonderful foundation at www.jersvision.com so check it out) and his family, Courtney Cunningham(Burden of Poof), Tania Levy(opposite of Affinity), Jem Rolls,(Jem Rolls up) Keir Cutler(Executing Shakespeare), TJ Dawe(Maxim and Cosmo), Jayson McDonald( Giant Invisible Robot) and so many more that I will mention over the next few posts….and all the new friends I’ve met…Dennis and Fiely from Loungezilla…love these guys!..Gemma Wilcox(the Honeymoon period is officially over)…and old toronto friends like June Morrow(Miss april days school for burgeoning young strippers) and Dave MacKay (www.torontoclown.com)…and not to forget the fabulous people of Ottawa who I am just finding out are wonderful supporters of the incomparable Ms. Seagram and who missed her last year!….so thank you very much for the kind words they have really meant alot to this old broad
Follow Canadian Comedy Award nominee, Tippiseagram as she and her mundane alter ego Colette make their cross Canada Fringe tour. For more information, or to book either Colette or Tippi for your fundraiser, private or corporate function be sure to check out www.colettekendall.com www.tippiseagram.com
