My mother’s mother was a warm font of unconditional love and matzoh ball soup, so I’m grateful I didn’t grow up with a grandmother like Kenny Streule’s Grandma Beaver, a sadistic Swiss-German who overstuffed his rural Canadian childhood with playground humiliations, lunchroom larcenies, and other casual cruelties.
Then again, maybe that’s why I’m an underachiever, while Struele transformed the small-scale traumas she inflicted into a career as an international touring artist, who enlists audiences to reenact his schoolyard torments through sock-puppetry, interpretive chicken dancing, and orgasmic descriptions of European chocolates.
Malunderstood may not be a story of earthshaking stakes, but writer/performer Struele is authentically charming in an amiably awkward way as he exorcises his elementary-school traumas. His reminisces themselves, which climax with his acceptance to theater school in Montreal, are only low-key engaging, but his monologue is greatly enlivened by director Amy Blackmore’s energetic staging, which incorporates physical comedy and a cappella lullabies.
Struele’s inevitable realization that Beaver’s brusque affections inspired his eventual self-esteem does pack an emotional punch — especially his observation how someone you spent your life avoiding can become the one you want most to call.
However, I agree with his fourth-wall-breaking admission that he hasn’t quite nailed the ending. I was left wanting to know more about Grandma Beaver’s current condition, what informed her past actions, and how their relationship eventually reconciled. At only 45 fast-paced minutes, this is the rare Fringe show that I think could use another five minutes to fully explore its story.
Fringe ArtSpace
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This article appears in Jan 10-16, 2024.