TJ Dawe’s autobiographical one-man, Lucky 9, show gets stronger with each passing minute. He draws together seemingly random and disjointed anecdotes from his childhood, school and his adult life into an artful voyage of discovery about personality types and what it takes to transcend them.
Bremner Duthie, a classically trained singer and musician gives us an idea of how stifling and stultifying it must be for long-term performers at Disneyland, 'the happiest place on earth' ™. But what about the risks of moving on and leaving the security of a good pay cheque, benefits, an early retirement age? With story-telling, songs and mean self- accompaniment on the button accordion and ukelele, we're taken cabaret-style through an exploration of one of those timeless questions: What is happiness?
Characters like a world war veteran returning home to Canada (with a somewhat anachronistic but kinda sweet Joni Mitchell...
With a lust to wander, and a desire to connect to an evasive, possibly illusory, principle of universal truth, Martin Dockery takes his audience on a dynamic, fast-paced, quirky, and hilarious odyssey through the trials and tribulations of independent travel through West Africa.
All gong and no dinner. A lot of Fringe shows suffer from this condition - a decent premise but miserable execution. You see, a show about a black woman becoming the Queen of England seems like a sure Fringe bet. Especially if you toss in a solid performer (Valerie Mason-John) with phenomenal British elocution wearing a silly blonde wig and hot pink prom dress. But no - Brown Girl in the Ring is a full-on disaster.
Our erstwhile queen starts the show with a series of pointed proclamations for her Canadian subjects - then proceeds to descend into what I...
The program brochure led me to expect at least a duologue when in fact this is another male monologue. The brochure credits Jeff McMahan only as writer of The Boy who had a Mother, when also presumably he is the performer and probably self-directed.
Jon Paterson in Daniel MacIvor’s award winning play House is mesmerizing and explosive. I left the theatre feeling like I needed a good stiff drink or a neck rub … preferably both.
Andrew Bailey is a geek with a massive moral dilemma. Somewhere deep inside he doesn’t feel worthy of the earthly life he’s been granted. An adolescent urge to grab a girl’s tits leads him to believe he’s a potential rapist, and thus the self-loathing begins. His tortured psyche posits that somebody else could make much better use of his life force, and so he attempts to kill himself. This is how Limbo begins.
Bailey recounts the details of his teenage suicide attempt and his subsequent psychiatric ‘care’ with candor and wit. Over the course of his hour-long monologue, Bailey is...
My cheeks still hurt from all the laughter and enjoyment I received as Miss Hiccup (Japanese clown Shoshniz) went about her day on opening night. The pace of the show was fast, with lots of physical comedy, dance, impressive vocal power...*hiccup*...and of course Miss Hiccup, hiccuping all the way through.
