Follow Your Fear, playing at Tarragon’s Solo Room as part of this year’s Fringe Festival, is an endearing piece. The title is very apt. Follow Your Fear is Todd Charron following his fear of performing a one-man unscripted show.

This means that every performance he will stand up alone in front of the audience with nothing prepared, other than (it seems) a roster of sound effects that tech might work into his piece. And he will stay there for 45 minutes to an hour. Continue reading Follow Your Fear (Follow Your Fear) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →

Jem Rolls is a pretty dynamic man. He would have to be, to captivate an audience for a full hour with only his voice, his stories, his poems. Some people have this quality where they needn’t do much and people will enjoy watching them. Jem is one such lucky folk.

Not to suggest he isn’t talented. He’s a spoken word/performance poetry artist and his show jem rolls ATTACKS THE SILENCE, part of this year’s Fringe Festival, is clever, quick, teeming with wit. His delivery is theatrical and captivating. He has all the right measures of provocative bravado and norm-subversion that you’d expect from spoken word.

Continue reading jem rolls ATTACKS THE SILENCE (big word performance poetry) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →

I just can’t get behind Surviving Speares. I want to, because Charlatan Remedies has done a good job of putting it together, and it’s more polished than many of the other Fringe Festival plays I’ve seen so far. But I can’t.

I’m always a fan of interactive theatre that borders on improvisation. I like that this play makes use of its surroundings and its changing audience, and it does so quite well. It’s staged in Magpie Taproom, and it’s immersive from the moment you enter the bar. The actors are wandering about in their full Shakespearean dress slinging beers and giggles.

The play is about Shakespeare hanging out in a 21^st century bar with a number of his more famous characters: Hamlet, Juliet, Romeo, Lear. He’s sort of writing this play as it goes along, but he’s a participating character as well. He knows he’s invented half of the English language but he’s worried because he hasn’t written anything new in several centuries.

Continue reading Surviving Speares (Charlatan Remedies) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →

Give Up the Ghost, playing at the Annex Theatre as part of this year’s Fringe, has some great moments. Overall, I wasn’t in love with this production, but I see it as a piece with future potential.

It takes place at a cottage in Northern Ontario and follows a group of uncommunicative siblings/relatives as they try to come to terms with the death of their philandering grandfather.

The Ontario part is pretty cool, references the characters make to places you may have visited like Huntsville or Santa’s Village are gratifyingly localizing – this is supposed to be “an Ontario tale” and many will likely recognize themselves or someone they know in this piece. Continue reading Give Up the Ghost (Slumgum & Quaqua) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review →