Music, Comedy, Mystery

“Everything that’s ever happened, or is happening, was supposed to happen,because it happened. Just sayin’. What are you gonnado?”

Russell is the steroidal liquor store clerk who has never smiled at you.He’s the cousin of a friend from junior high you just shared a case of Kokanee with in a suburban man cave. He’s the guy at the sports bar talking louder than the music at a table of friends for 45 minutes without pause because he has a lotof stories you’ve already heard that he needs to tell you again, obviously, because they get better each time he tells them.

Kris Demeanor, songwriter, actor and former Calgary Poet Laureate, first developed the character of Russell for One Yellow Rabbit’s Calgary I Love You But You’re Killing Me, and now is presenting a full length show in which Russell complains, philosophizes, loves, builds an empire of fitness centres, plots revenge,and sings the songs of his two favourite bands, Chainheart and‘Hermanos Hasta la Muerte’ (Brothers Til Death) in two different locales, twenty years apart in time.

There are obstacles, sure, but Russell survives and flourishes in a world built for him. Russell: Straight Up ping-pongs between song, spoken word, monologue, Hawkins’ Cheezies, mojitos and chicken wings in a tragicomedy for these times and every place. As Russell boasts, he ‘gets along with everybody’,until he doesn’t.

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