Yesterday evening I saw the opening performance of Yarn by Acky-Made at Majlis Multidisciplinary Arts.  This was, first off, one of the coolest venues I’ve ever been to. It’s one of the the site-specifc venues in the Fringe Festival. Everything is outdoors with cute little cushions on your seats. There were candles and rope lights everywhere with tons of greenery and the smell of citronella was in the air. It was the perfect setting for a summer night at the theatre.

Continue reading Yarn (Acky-Made) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →

Most people hear clichés like “No pain, no gain “and “Work hard and you’ll get ahead” all the time. Most of us take this advice with a grain of salt. Jonah Allison, performing his one-person Fringe show Network 54: Sports R4U, reminds us that in the world of junior hockey in Canada, words like these aren’t adages- they are gospel.

Allison’s show is being performed at a temple where The Toronto Maple Leafs used to play, Maple Leaf Gardens. If there is a more storied venue in Canada, I’ve never heard of it. If there is something more intrinsic to Canadians than hockey, and trying to be good parents, I’m oblivious to it.   So when I first looked at the Fringe schedule and saw the blurb for this play, I  immediately knew that it was “game on”!

Continue reading Network 54: sports r4u-98 and younger gthl-omha-alliance (Column 13 Actors Company) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →

Four Years Later, He’s Still Carrying Emotional Wounds

Baggage 2 – the long awaited sequel to playwright and performer Shaun McCarthy’s 2009 Fringe Patron’s Pick entitled, “Baggage: A Non-musical Romp through One Catholic Gay Man’s Dating History” is a deeply personal yet facetious account of the lessons we all should learn from our past romances.

“Relationships are a lot like airplane rides,” explains McCarthy, “Most of us simply don’t know how they stay afloat.”

Strap in your seatbelts. It’s going to be a hilarious ride.

Continue reading Baggage 2 (SAMBO Productions) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →

I just can’t get behind Surviving Speares. I want to, because Charlatan Remedies has done a good job of putting it together, and it’s more polished than many of the other Fringe Festival plays I’ve seen so far. But I can’t.

I’m always a fan of interactive theatre that borders on improvisation. I like that this play makes use of its surroundings and its changing audience, and it does so quite well. It’s staged in Magpie Taproom, and it’s immersive from the moment you enter the bar. The actors are wandering about in their full Shakespearean dress slinging beers and giggles.

The play is about Shakespeare hanging out in a 21^st century bar with a number of his more famous characters: Hamlet, Juliet, Romeo, Lear. He’s sort of writing this play as it goes along, but he’s a participating character as well. He knows he’s invented half of the English language but he’s worried because he hasn’t written anything new in several centuries.

Continue reading Surviving Speares (Charlatan Remedies) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →