Editor’s Note: In the review of Sherlock Holmes & The First English Gentleman by Sam Mooney she mentioned that she saw the show with "My 82 year old mother and 15 year old niece are fringing with me for three days" – Lauren is the 15 year old niece she was referring to. And now, without further ado, on with the review (see how that rhymed? pretty cool eh?)…
From the perspective of three generations, this play could have been worse, it could have been better. Sherlock Holmes & The First English Gentleman has potential, but also a broad area with room to improve (including cutting the painful chant at the beginning.) It also had a plethora of humorous moments.
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
First – go see Jem Rolls. Even if you have to skip something else.
His show is an hour of high-energy, full-body "theatricalised performance poetry". I had no idea what that meant when I read the blurb in the program but it sounded interesting so I went with no expectations.
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.
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.
