Let me confess and be honest: I did not expect to like this show. I picked it up late in the process in the interest of being a good sport, but I was dreading the moment in arrived. “Oh, look,” I thought. “Another white guy looking to make money off First Nations spirituality. I bet there’ll be a talking stick.” I have never been so happy to be wrong. Solo: A Boy’s Journey playing as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival is surprisingly good.
It starts a little slow, with some new-agey fourth-wall-breaking I could have lived without. Never mind. Tell yourself knock-knock jokes for the first five minutes if you have to, but do not get soured early on this show. Things are just about pick up nicely.
When I walked into the George Ignatieff Theatre to see Fear Factor: Canine Edition, I hated the world. I had a white flag halfway up the mast, ready to surrender. Bad weather, bad health, and the usual loss of three hours to move one kilometer. My vision was narrowing. This was the end!
Fortunately for me my next Fringe show was a monologue by John Grady. I can’t for the life of me remember why I booked this show. That’s irrelevant now, because I’m going to remember it for a very long time, probably forever.
Drive. Park. Piss. That’s what life boils down to according to performer/playwright Nick Dipchand in his one-man show entitled The Nature of a Bullet.
This Fringe show, currently playing at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace, is a chronicle of one man’s attempt to deal with unexpected misfortunes that seem to all come crashing down at once.
And like a bullet’s inertia – once in motion, the terrible things life throws at us are often impossible to stop.
Producing a musical is hard. It’s about an order of magnitude more complex than mounting a straight-play. Doing a musical well on a shoe-string Fringe budget is an incredible challenge, one that Watch the Elbow has taken up to present SQUAT: A Super Secret Back-Alley Musical as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival. I have to say, I’m really impressed by the results.
