Life as a Pomegranate, which plays at a laundromat as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival, is an experience.

Yes, yes, okay, fine: you’re in a laundromat, with four strangers, all nervously avoiding eye contact while the denizens of the Annex attend to their socks and panties. It’s not what theatre usually feels like.

But more importantly, as Royzee Fudge (Dawna J. Wightman) explains, this is about you. She’s going to get on stage and “open her flap”: reveal something of herself to us. She’s going to tell us secrets, teach us songs, let us poke the big blue bouncing ball that resides somewhere near her heart–and hope that, in doing so, she’ll inspire us to open up ourselves.

This isn’t therapy, nor is it audience participation: you’re perfectly welcome to sit back and passively take it all in. But as a premise for a show, it’s damn ambitious–and damn successful.
Continue reading Life as a Pomegranate (Broadview Laundry Mat Theatre Company) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →

Taking Measure of the Gay Dating   Scene

Jock, bear, daddy, twink – the lexicon used by the gay male population to describe each other’s physical attributes is a rich and varied one. But as playwright and performer Lucas Brooks points out in his play, VGL 5’4’’ TOP, these labels often serve to exclude members of the homosexual population rather than attempt to create any sense of community.

“Bitchiness,” notes Brooks in his play which is currently running at The Tarragon Theatre Solo Room, “is an art that gays have cultivated for generations.”

Continue reading VGL 5’4″ TOP (Lucas Brooks) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →

Supperfesta! by Take Your Mark Productions is a hilarious force to be reckoned with at Toronto Fringe 2013. The cast of Natasha Boomer, Craig Lauzon, James Jabbour, and Jessie Behan up the comedic ante with every passing minute. It felt like Robert Gill Theatre was shaking with laughter.

Supperfesta! is about Betty (Boomer), who decides to throw a dinner party so that she can inspect her younger sister Rose’s (Behan) new beau Tim (Jabbour). With the encouragement of her husband Dean (Lauzon), the dinner party turns into more than a nice get-together. The event brings forth secrets between old and new couples, as well as the jealous nature between sisters. So, the event that begins as dinner slowly transforms into a “supperfesta”.

Continue reading Supperfesta! (Take Your Mark Productions) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →

Empty Box Theatre Company‘s A Young Lady’s Guide To Vivisection is playing at the Toronto Fringe Festival. It is an important story about a chapter in the social, political, medical and feminist history of Canada.

In 1882, Elizabeth Smith, Alice and Bessie are the first three women to be enrolled in Queens University’s medical program and they face a myriad of challenges posed by their classmates, their professor, the institution and they confront societal expectations of what a proper woman should be. Continue reading A Young Lady’s Guide To Vivisection (Empty Box Theatre Company) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →

You can find some great Theatre at the Toronto Fringe Festival this year, and one place you’ll find it is here—at the Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace.  Ampex Entertainment’s production of Apostles’ Creed is Theatre with a capital T. Continue reading Apostles’ Creed (Ampex Entertainment) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →