I will remember For the Record as one of the best parts of the Toronto Fringe Festival 2016 .
How do I know this even though the Festival has just begun? Because it was a one-of-a-kind experience that I will be thinking about for a long time.
Continue reading for the record (the night kitchen) 2016 Toronto Fringe Review
In Tonight’s Cancelled, two friends and comedy rockstars have stitched together a Second City-style revue. The totally-accidental gimmick is that, by drawing from their own lives and experiences, they’ve produced something that takes off in an unusual direction.
As with the Second City itself, Fringe Festival sketch troupes tend to skew young. Like, under-25 young. I say this with affection, but both of the people behind Tonight’s Cancelled are a little over that age limit, in the awkward place where they’re neither Young Edgy Emergent Comedians nor totally comfortable and at ease as adults. That zone becomes their sandbox, and the stories which emerge become sketches you genuinely won’t see anywhere else. Continue reading Tonight’s Cancelled (CoWorkers) 2016 Toronto Fringe Review
Time for Birthday Cake at the Toronto Fringe Festival 2016! From Alma Matters Productions, Birthday Cake is an unusual and touching story by courageous actor Sarah Marchand. Come see it at Theatre Passe Muraille as long as you’re not on your first date with someone or with your straight-laced parents. This play will make you uncomfortable.
Birthday Cake is sad, hilarious, heart-wrenching, deviant and memorable. An actual birthday cake gets eaten, but there are things that get done to that cake that go beyond standard usage. I won’t spoil it, but I’ll say that it went from awkward to out of this world, and that the stage required heavy-duty cleanup after the show.
Continue reading Birthday Cake (Alma Matters) 2016 Toronto Fringe Review
Shakespeare famously ripped off Romeo and Juliet from another poet, who borrowed it from a Frenchman, who jacked it from an Italian — and we’ve been merrily hacking away at it ever since. Which raises an obvious question: if we can slice and dice the script, why not the characters?
The Romeo and Juliet Chainsaw Massacre gleefully does precisely that during this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival, running madly through the text while a chainsaw-wielding maniac butchers most of Verona. It’s a showcase for some of Fringe’s top comedians, an above-average Shakespeare adaptation in its own right, and (OBLIGATORY PUN INCOMING) a bloody good time.
Spoken word poet Aaron Simm of Victoria, B.C. (via Winnipeg) presents his new solo show at the Toronto Fringe Festival: Places to Wait which features a series of poetic monologues around the theme of waiting.
Continue reading Places to Wait (Aaron Simm) 2016 Toronto Fringe Review