Alison Lynne Ward delivers an honest, funny one-woman show in ¼ Life Crisis. It’s a lively monologue about the struggles of being twenty-something, single and an artist with too many degrees and no career worth mentioning. The show is revealing, relatable and had the audience falling out of their chairs with laughter. The disappointment was the ending, which was a sadly cliché.
Clown sisters Morro and Jasp (Heather Marie Annis and Amy Lee) continue their roll of Fringe successes with this increasingly mature tale of sexual awakening, substance use, and teenage identity forming. Based on that description you may be thinking Spring Awakening more than “charming Fringe show”, but don’t be fooled - it is charming in spades.
This stylish vintage-improv show courtesy of National Theatre of the World (Matt Baram, Naomi Snieckus, Chris Gibbs and Ron Pederson) presents absurd comedy within the framework of a genteel variety show. It’s a perfectly contradictory setup given the sometimes dark and demented places the scenes go.
Matt Baram, Chris Gibbs, Ron Pederson and Naomi Snieckus looking good in tights
These perennial Fringe favourites, Die Roten Punkte, have come a long way. Forgive the subjective first person, but I saw them when they first came to Toronto and were stuck, with many of the other international companies, in the visually interesting but small and stiflingly hot Robert Gill Theatre (thankfully no longer in use by the Fringe). Despite this technical disadvantage they still managed to rock the house with their pint-size but full volume instruments and obviously made a lasting impression given that their audiences have been growing ever since.
With hints of Tim Burton and Edward Gorey (and Catalyst Theatre for you Canadian theatre nerds), this uber-stylish satire about a turn of the century town besieged by a mysterious and deadly plague offers a rich audience experience. Director Rosanna Saracino (and the rest of the large collaborative team from Randolph Entertainment and REDHANDED Theatre) bring Eugene Ionesco’s vignette-based script to life with lively blocking, admirably cartoon-like performances, and many a subtle touch like the inclusion of caricatures of William Shatner and Sarah Palin.
This condensed adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s work from Harley Dog Productions is commendable on every level. Dedicated and authentic performances from the cast make the literary and monologue heavy script come alive, elegant direction allows the audience to stay immersed and engaged, and an above average set and production design lend it appropriate spit and polish.
From Proper Entertainment, this frothy musical take on the behind-the-scenes world of product demonstrators and trade show presenters (a job more than a few of Toronto’s actors are familiar with) is sharp, fast paced, and funny.
The indefatigable Jonno Katz brings his frenetic physicality back to this year’s Fringe with Cactus: The Seduction…, a surreal exploration of the artist’s psyche. Katz wanders through a barren desert with two mysterious companions, in constant pursuit of a distant figure on the horizon. He periodically lapses from this ‘reality’ into a dreamlike ‘fantasy’, during which points he engages the audience in conversation and delivers personal anecdotes.
Inveterate monologuist TJ Dawe returns from a Fringe sabbatical with his newest show Lucky 9, though something seems different this year. Notorious for his rapid fire, scattershot diatribes on any number of interwoven topics, Dawe usually comes across like Jerry Seinfeld on speed. In this instance the topics on hand include parenting, personality tests, addiction and HBO’s hit crime drama The Wire, though the most noteworthy theme weaving betwixt all his anecdotes and observations is the developments in the performer’s life over the previous year.
The hypothesis that the works of Shakespeare were penned by someone other than the Bard himself is hardly new or shocking; the academic world is fairly glutted with advocates of the point. Monster Theatre’s The Shakespeare Show offers a fairly lighthearted approach to this age-old scandal, telling a theoretical tale of how the talented and conflicted Earl of Oxford used an illiterate horseholder named Shakespeare to vicariously express his theatrical passions.
