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Fed up with holiday shopping? So is Peter Aterman, whose dark solo Fringe comedy Slaves Of Starbucks skewered consumer and corporate greed so savagely, even Ralph Nader would have cracked a smile. Aterman remounts the show next year in Manhattan, but this week he’s performing Donut Shop Vampires. The show’s bizarre characters range from a deranged, sadistic football coach to the title character, a supermodel-obsessed donut shop manager who’s also a bloodsucker. Let’s hope there aren’t any strawberry jelly donuts. Bruce Hunter directs, from tonight (Thursday, December 7) to December 16 at the Tim Sims Playhouse (56 Blue Jays Way). 343-0011. How’s this for a guarantee? Bluemouth Inc., just months in T.O., is offering a full refund * “plus a domestic beer just for your trouble” * if you don’t think their play American Standard is the finest multidisciplinary performance this year. The five-member troupe, around for years in Montreal, looks at the American dream and the pursuit of happiness in a mix of film, music, theatre and dance. We’ll see how good they are, or that’ll be one Labatt’s Classic, please. On tap tonight and tomorrow (December 7 and 8) at Barcode (549 College). 588-5827.Ross Manson is as hot as his company’s namesake, Volcano. Director Manson’s pushing the dance/theatre connection in Mortality, workshopped today (Thursday, December 7), 2 and 8 pm, at the Great Hall Rehearsal Studio (1087 Queen West). 535-1932. It includes pieces by Carol Shields, Tomson Highway, Paul Quarrington and André Alexis * and assigns dancers to interpret their material. Kate Alton choreographs Peggy Baker, Michael Greyeyes, Miko Sobreira, Heidi Strauss and Danielle Baskerville, with music by John Gzowski and design by Julie Fox and Jan Komarek.
Manson also hosts the 49th edition of the monthly interdisciplinary Short Stuff. The evening features a poetry reading by Michael Redhill, cabaret songs by Jennifer Moore, Ker Wells’s paean to Mayor Mel’s moose and R.H. Thomson reading from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Sunday (December 10) at Bar Italia (584 College). 703-4646.
