The Servant of Two Masters,presented by Fly With Us at Factory Theatre, is a modern take on Carlo Goldoni’s Commedia dell’arte play about about the chaos brought about from an opportunistic servant. The servant, Truffaldino, fools Beatrice – who is disguised as her dead brother Federigo – and Florindo into thinking he is a loyal servant to each of them alone. Things become hectic as he attempts to hide the fact that he in fact has two employers and two payments.
Urge For Going has actors, puppets, musicians, projections and animation. That’s a lot going on in this Fringe show from Quality Slippers Productions, probably too much. Most of these elements are quite good by themselves but they don’t meld seamlessly together. Often they seemed to be there solely to distract me from the weaknesses of the script.
The story is of a fourteen year old girl named Carrie who lives in small town Saskatchewan. It is 2013, just as it is now, and her grandmother gives her a Joni Mitchell cassette tape. She somehow manages to find a way to play a cassette and falls in love with Joni and with 1960’s hippie idealism in general. She plans to run away to Toronto to become a folk singer. Continue reading Urge For Going (Quality Slippers Productions) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review→
A multimedia experience, The Taliban Don’t Like My Knickers is a stylized two-hander inspired by the novel ‘In The Hands of the Taliban’ written by British journalist Yvonne Ridley after she was captured by the Taliban in 2001. With Taliban video footage playing constantly in the background, I was expecting something extremely exciting and uncomfortable to watch.
You Won’t Be Here (Tomorrow) tells the story of two sisters, Julie and Simone, both dealing with huge personal struggle. As they try their best to be there for each other, all the years of pent up anger and resentment towards each other is released before they finally reconcile. I don’t want to give away too many details on this one because I think the whole world should come and see it for themselves.
Set in the early 1950s in Mid-America, two lovers reunite after many years of not seeing each other. Both are haunted by their former romance and meet up to understand where life has taken them since the end of their relationship. Each play offers up a different perspective.
