For those of you not in the know, that is, those of you not raised in Alberta, it is proudly a rat free province…

… well, almost.

Fingers and Shrimp are the last two rats left in Alberta. Fingers is grizzled, street-wise, and knows how to survive, while Shrimp is adorably naive and needs help to learn how to be a rat.

Enter, our crash course at Rat Academy.

And on some level, it’s as simple as that: Fingers, along with all of us audience members learn the key skills how to be rats. But this show is so much more than that – it’s a high energy 60 minutes of hilarious clowning, and a little bit of drama and pathos.

Clowning is one of those genres that I truly think many people dismiss out of hand (like puppetry, improv, and magic), which is so unfortunate because there are so many great performers in this city and across this country who are doing incredibly cool, unique, and groundbreaking shows in these fields. I have to hand it to the duo of Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Katie Yoner: this was an incredibly clever bit of clowning that is so wonderfully grounded in the classics of the form.

If you think you don’t like clowning, I honestly believe this show could go a long way to changing your mind.

A big part of this show was crowd work, which for many potential theatre goers, is another big turnoff. And truthfully, on some level I get it: interacting with performers can make people feel incredibly vulnerable. It did, in this case, make for a hilarious, irreplaceable aspect of the show. Fingers and Shrimp were not going to let us be passive observers of their show – the lights often came on, and they often came around to ask us questions or demand we help them out. The two were masters of building rapport with the audience, very funny and totally off the cuff. And Fingers was just the right amount of mean.

While comedy is subjective, this show definitely has broad appeal and whatever genre of comedy it is, the audience on Thursday was having a great time all around and I can’t imagine it being any different whatever city you may be in.

At the core of this show is a delightful, sweet, loving little bit of connection between two rats. Two rats who we get to know and love in their own right. That little bit of care and sweetness goes a long way towards why this show works. Comedy and clowning is funny, but this one sticks with you because there is so much heart and personality with these little characters.

It sounds like these rats are planning on travelling to as many cities as they can, so you may have a chance to catch them in a city near you!

If you’re reading this at the time of publishing, you can catch Rat Academy through Pi theatre in Vancouver next week!

Otherwise, you can keep up to date with Fingers and Shrimp on their Instagram here.