Results tagged “fringe2008”

We really hope you saw The Swearing Jar by Kate Hewlett (pictured) at the Fringe, because it just had its last performance yesterday evening. Funny, compelling, and at times heartbreakingly sad, Hewlett's top-notch script (developed in the 2007 Tarragon Playwrights Unit) was brilliantly brought to life with Geoffrey Pounsett's direction and an absolutely perfect cast.

Domestic is an absolutely insane black comedy about a bright-eyed 50s housewife who has to deal with an encyclopedia salesman who keeps dying in her kitchen, pesky phone calls from someone named "God" who keeps talking about the end of the world and her inability to have enough cat food. Also, a pair of fast-talking weirdos with faux British accents (pictured) keep bursting into her home and she may or may not have murdered a homeless man earlier that day. Oh, and her husband shot himself in the head and she just doesn't seem to have noticed yet.

When Antonin Artaud wrote Theatre and Its Double, the manifesto for his so-called Theatre of Cruelty, he called for the actors to bleed on the audience as well as a bunch of other things that are probably best left interpreted metaphorically. Surely, Glen Callendar's Transcendental Masturbation, now playing at the Fringe, was not exactly what he had in mind? During last night's performance, during a "peeling" joke gone awry, Callendar wound up removing not just the skin of a carrot over top of alarmed audience members, but also a not-small chunk of his finger, which soon started to bleed somewhat prodigiously. Ever the trooper, Callendar decided to keep going with his oddball one-man comedy act, thanks to a few nervous Fringe volunteers who were willing to run around looking for paper towels and gauze. By the time the show ended, the piece of finger had yet to be found.

Caterwaul Theatre's How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Abortion, currently playing at the Fringe, is a heartfelt and hilarious dark comedy about a devout Christian named Esther who lives a happy existence with her husband in a small religious community, but also happens to run a secret midnight abortion clinic under the name "Medea's Buy and Sell." Things get complicated when a splinter cell within her Bible study group hears about the local abortion doctor and decides to take "him" out Old Testament style.

The name "TJ Dawe" has become ubiquitous at the Fringe. In any given summer, it seems like not only are we bound to see one of his famous one-man shows, but probably when we search through our programs at the end of various other shows we will undoubtedly discover that he has directed them or been in some way involved. This summer is no different. Not only is his new 90 minute one-man show Totem Figures playing, but so are Greg Landucci's Mr. Fox and Keir Cutler's Teaching the Fringe, both of which he directed.

David, a show playing at this year's Fringe, opens with a video projection of a man taking a shower. This should come as little surprise for anyone who's seen the play's racy poster (although, don't be fooled into thinking you'll get to gawk at a nude dude, the super NSFW trailer on their website shows more nudity than the actual play). The shower scene segues into a light show with a pre-recorded voice over telling a story about a Montreal sex club, which segues into the actual meat of the show, a lengthy monologue performed by actor Joseph Bembridge about a night out at the club which culminates in an intense encounter with a man named David. Beyond these three vignettes all involving Bembridge's character, Nick, and all being sexual, it's unclear what the connection between them is. Probably, the show could have started the way Nick's monologue does, with Bembridge coming on stage in his underwear, getting ready for a night on the town.

Not all Fringe shows happen at the main or studio spaces of the big three (Tarragon, Muraille, Factory); some are in school basements (like Eve Ensler’s A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and a Prayer), others are in smaller theatres (like the Robert Gill or Glen Morris), and others take place in bars. The Cameron has the Christian Republic Fundraiser in Dayton Tennessee, Paupers has Opera on the Rocks, and Bread and Circus has The Zombie Dialogues. Written by Jim Annan, Sean Browning, and Brian Froud, The Zombie Dialogues is a silly romp that is clearly taking its cue from its more established un-dead cousin, Evil Dead: The Musical.

Thick-Skinned is a play by first-time writer Laura Ross about Scleroderma, a rare and sometimes debilitating disease. Susie is a painter who always thought she just had cold hands until she gets diagnosed with a condition her doctor doesn't seem to know more about than she does. But pride gets in the way of her being able to fully share the full details of her condition with her roommate Ember or her new boyfriend Blake, even though all they want to do is help.

It may be too early to call, but Lupe: Undone might just be the funniest thing at this year's Fringe. This completely insane one-woman show starring Melissa D'Agostino as a charismatic South American woman waiting for her lover, David Mirvish, in the alley behind Honest Ed's is one of the freshest, weirdest, and utterly charming pieces of theatre we've seen in a while. Lupe enters the scene scaling down a fire escape in a négligée and a blindfold, expecting to be met by her producer paramour, only to instead find herself in front of an audience of strangers. So, what can she do but serve up some chips and salsa and tell everyone her life story? D'Agostino is an incredible performer an improviser who has been working on her Lupe character for a while now (you'll probably want to check out the first episode of her web series The Lupe Show, in which she interviews David Miller). And Lupe:Undone is the perfect introduction to the wacky world of this hysterical woman. Warning to wallflowers: audience participation is not a small part of this show. Lupe expects you to talk to her, share a drink with her and occasionally dance with her to Jennifer Lopez music while giving her estranged husband the finger.

Sky Gilbert's Ladylike, a new one-act play written specifically for Canada's favourite trans woman, Nina Arsenault, comes to us by way of a well-received run in Hamilton. The play—in which Arsenault's character mostly addresses the audience (and occasionally her boyfriend, played by Wes Berger) on subjects like her family history, her many cosmetic surgery procedures, and ideas about gender construction—probably seemed pretty audacious and daring for Hamilton, but it's interesting to see how a downtown Toronto audience reacts to the subject matter. Although the story is fictional, the character is obviously modelled after Arsenault, giving her the opportunity to pretty much be herself on stage. At various times she challenges the bourgeois sensibilities of the audience, calling them middle class and demanding that they not judge her... which is a kind of judgment itself.

Dear Jimmy Hogg,

For patriotic theatre-going homosexuals (and really, is there any other kind?), there has been little downtime as of late. Pride, Canada Day, and now the mighty Toronto Fringe Festival have all bled into each other, separated only by a single Monday in which to nurse RuPaul-induced hangovers. Now in its twentieth season, Toronto's biggest theatre festival takes over the city as of 5:30 p.m. this evening. (And it's for straights, too!)