By Hamutal Dotan

Photo of Celeste Sansregret by G.F. MacKenzie.

Last night’s performance of In a Magic Kingdom was, in a sense, an archetypal Fringe experience. Having just missed entry into the show we had been aiming for we simply decided to roll with the theatrical punches and see whatever was playing next. The audience was small in number (fourteen in all), but made up for in camaraderie. (Upon hearing the clatter of a dropping piece of gum a woman in the first row turned around to see what was up. The stovepipe hat–wearing clumsy culprit leaned across two rows of empty seats and promptly offered her a piece.) It is moments like this—an actor facing a nearly empty house, an audience relaxed enough to start chatting—which reveal both the frustrations and the charms that are found at the festival.
And what about the play, you ask? It too was a very Fringe-y sort of thing. Heartfelt, clearly toiled over, a one-woman show that might otherwise never get staged. But also, we must reluctantly report, still fairly rough around the edges. In a Magic Kingdom is billed an exploration of that perennial chestnut, “what happens when you die?” but this doesn’t quite capture the play’s real thrust. It is less about the metaphysical or spiritual mysteries which surround death and more about mourning, about what it’s like for the people who have been left behind. We don’t know how much of Sansregret’s material was drawn from her own life; certainly there were several points at which it felt nakedly autobiographical. To a degree this gave her work (she both wrote and performed the piece) an immediacy which is invaluable, but to a degree it also left the play feeling a bit like a therapy session, a dissection of particularities which have more meaning and interest for the subject than for anyone else. Sansregret’s delivery, while clearly earnest, also didn’t entirely help, staying for far too long at the strident end of the register to be compelling.
It is hard, when an artist offers you their heart, to say that you find yourself less moved than they had hoped. We are still, and always, near the end of another year’s Fringe, profoundly grateful for the attempt.
In a Magic Kingdom‘s last Fringe performance is on Saturday, July 11 at 1:45 p.m. at the Factory Studio Theatre.
The Fringe runs until July 12 at various locations around the city. Check back for Torontoist’s daily Fringe coverage throughout the festival.