Fringe Festival

A collection of everything to do with the Toronto Fringe Festival, including reviews, features, press releases etc.

Toronto Fringe 2008 Recommendations (the short version)

I have been seeing so many shows that I haven’t had time to spend on my site.  It’s both wonderful and sad at the same time.  But tomorrow (Thursday) I have arranged it so that I’m not going to my first show until late afternoon, so I’ll be spending the majority of the day at Jet Fuel sipping lattes and pulling together content for this baby.  I figured in the meantime though I’d reprint some of the reviews I’ve done for blogTO for the shows I highly recommend, since we’re running out of time for the festival.  Please note, this is only a selection out of what *I* have seen.  So I am no doubt missing some great shows in this list.

Keep reading for reviews re-posted from blogTO of:

– A Girl Named Ralph

– Exploding Breakfast

– JEM ROLLS: how i stopped worrying and learnt to love the mall

– One-Woman Show

– Stand up Monkey Poet

– Teaching the Fringe

Continue reading Toronto Fringe 2008 Recommendations (the short version)

Sherlock Holmes & the First English Gentleman by Doug Warwick (Toronto Fringe 2008 Review)

Review by Sam Mooney

sherlock My 82 year old mother and 15 year old niece are fringing with me for three days. My mother loves big musicals but she’s open to seeing other theatre. She sees this as an experience. My niece doesn’t have a lot of theatre-going experience. As a bonus, Megan was with us.

The play was long by Fringe standards, 85 minutes. It could have ended at least 5 minutes earlier. None of us really understood why the last scene was included.

Peter Treadwell, who played Dr. Watson and other characters, was terrific. Not that Nick Cumming and Tina Sterling weren’t.

Continue reading Sherlock Holmes & the First English Gentleman by Doug Warwick (Toronto Fringe 2008 Review)

Stand Up Monkey Poet – Matt Panesh (Fringe 2008 Review)

Review by Megan Mooney

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Okay, so, lets just get things started here by saying…  GO TO THIS SHOW.  Seriously.  It’s a wonderful thing to behold.

Whether you agree with Panesh’s views or not, his passion and energy are infectious.  Plus, the whole thing is bloody hilarious. 

I debated about whether I should put a warning about ‘strong language’ after the jump.  I decided I would, because if you can’t deal with ‘strong language’ you’re not going to enjoy this show, so you may as well skip the rest of the write-up.

Now, onto the bad words… 

Continue reading Stand Up Monkey Poet – Matt Panesh (Fringe 2008 Review)

Damages (Toronto Fringe 2008 Review)

Review by Megan Mooney

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Review of Damages(Note:  This is a longer version of my write-up on blogTO. The blogTO write ups include write-ups from multiple reviewers on multiple shows, check them out!)

I think this is a good play, but not executed as well as it could be. The two main actors in the show are veteran actors, I would put money on most people recognizing them. But there was something missing.

Continue reading Damages (Toronto Fringe 2008 Review)