The show centers on Rayyan, a young woman who is taken from her home one night by a good-cop/bad-cop team of interrogators. Rayyan is questioned, psychologically tested and threatened, because she is believed to be part of the Plums and possibly affiliated with certain violent, terrorist-equivalent activities.
In The First Canadian President of the United States (playing at St. Vlad’s), Kimberly White-White, the titular first Canadian President of the newly-merged United States of North America, shares her wisdom and life story with the 2084 graduating class of Preston Manning College. It’s all fine and well until her teleprompter goes haywire–and that’s when things get interesting.
Transit Diaries (playing at the Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace) urges us to reconsider the role that the TTC plays in our lives. Yes, yes, okay: the bus takes us from place to place. But does it move us in other ways as well? What secrets do bus drivers know? What relationships blossom–and collapse–while in transit? And what do we miss when we sit silently, staring out the window, waiting for our stop to arrive?
The Toronto Fringe Festival is often light on Toronto-centric shows, so it’s nice to see something so strongly rooted in our local culture and traditions. And it’s a good show at that.
In The Strapping Young Lads (playing at the Annex Theatre as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival), two best friends are awakened by a beautiful tropical sunrise and react with total horror. They’d been promised the world would end the previous night, and have spent the last six months living as if it would. Now they’re broke, alone in the world, and being pursued through the jungle by cockfighting Columbian gangsters. Will they survive?
