The Adversary, written and performed by Andrew Bailey as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival, is an autobiographical one-man show about Bailey’s experiences as a church caretaker in Vancouver’s notorious lower east side. A part of his job is to deal with the local street addicts, a task he takes on with compassion but which also requires some self-preservation, and this is the context where he wrestles with his faith and his relationship with God.
This sounds like a show that could be horrible, but it’s really not. It’s quite good and it made me feel an immense respect for Bailey. It also helped me feel some appreciation for people like the church’s tattooed priest, Max. I don’t always have a very positive view of religion and anything associated with it, so this was very good for me. Continue reading The Adversary (Andrew Bailey) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review→
If you’ve ever seen the movie Midnight Express and thought to yourself “what if the lead character were Canadian, instead of American?” then Kuwaiti Moonshine is the Fringe play for you.
The movie almost literally destroyed Turkish tourism. Kuwaiti Moonshine, on the other hand, might encourage a few brave, rich Canadians to visit Kuwait. Both involve stories of North Americans partaking of banned substances in very foreign countries. Both men serve time in prison.
Mina Samuels calls New York City home, and Toronto is fortunate to have her as a visitor for this year’s Fringe. She performs her fascinating one-woman show Hazards at The Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse, and you should go see it.
Hazards is sort of two plays in one. The first half is very absurdist. Samuels literally crawls onto the stage, eventually becoming upright and walking. She points an imaginary gun at her head and shoots herself. Then things get really interesting.
Lorenzo Pagnotta’s Making Love With Espresso is a solo piece about being Italian and being gay and reconciling the two. Pagnotta wrote and performed the piece and Tony Babcock directed.
One of the many joys of watching a Fringe show is that there are so many new and innovative ways a performance is presented to us. How to become a Spinster by Peppermill Productions comes in the form of a seminar. The result is a lively, hilarious and interactive take on the subject of being single, which gets much deserved spotlight instead of the oh so clichéd quest for love.
Diana Galligan and Wanda Carroll start the show energetically, throwing questions into the audience. “What does a spinster mean to you?” they ask. “Fun,” says an audience member. A simple, but most perfect word to describe the show. They take us through ten practical and amusing steps towards achieving lifelong spinsterhood and thus happiness and fulfillment. Each of these steps is a comic sketch that had the audience doubling over with laughter.
