All posts by Mike Anderson

Mike was that kid who walked into the high school stage crew booth, saw the lighting board, and went ooooooooooooh. Now that he’s (mostly) all grown up, Mike keeps his foot in the door as a community-theatre producer, stage manager and administrator. In the audience, he’s a tremendous sucker for satire and parody, for improvisational and sketch-driven comedy, for farce and pantomime, and for cabaret of all types. His happiest Toronto theatrical memory is (re) Birth: E. E. Cummings in Song.

Fantastic Extravagance (Steady State) 2014 Toronto Fringe Review

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Fantastic Extravagance (Steady State’s Best New Play shortlistee) plumbs Toronto’s literary scene, skewering the critics, the authors, the readers, and everyone else who has so much as touched a book in the last century. In this Fringe Festival serio-satire, a neurotic novelist kills off her fifth consecutive protagonist, and finally finds the success she craves — but when that protagonist starts to appear in her apartment, following her around and pleading for salvation, can she coax forth the energy to break out of her pattern, or will inertia and her inadequacies lead to her own final chapter?

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Pardon Me Cow (Farm Fresh Productions) 2014 Toronto Fringe Review

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Pardon Me Cow by Farm Fresh Productions, playing as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival, is a fast-paced one man show about growing up, and coming out, on the farm. When his family leaves town for greener pastures, Taylor Scott’s life gets turned upside-down: stripped of the modest luxuries of town life, he finds himself crushing on the dishy veterinarian, mastering his farmer’s blow, and befriending Nadia, a cow who may or may not be a bit of a queer steer herself.

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Three Men in a Boat (Pea Green Theatre Group) 2014 Toronto Fringe Review

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A late-Victorian week on the Thames isn’t my idea of a good time, but luckily I’ve got Pea Green Theatre Group’s Three Men in a Boat to keep me company, and what a ride it becomes. Easily one of the finest pieces you’ll see in this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival, it surprised and delighted its opening-night audience (a sell-out crowd, I might add), blending clever movement, innovative text and language, and a deep knack for physical comedy into one of the best things I’ve seen on stage in a good long while.

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Fringe for Free! Toronto Fringe ticket giveaways for shows playing on Wednesday, July 2nd

Fringe opens in just two short days, and Mooney on Theatre is all a’buzz. We’ll be bringing you comprehensive coverage, including long-format reviews of every show in the festival; we’ll be bringing you buzz, features, photographs and rumours; we’ll be bringing you live Twitter coverage of the most important and exciting events; and, thanks to the ongoing generosity of the Festival and its participants, we invite you to Fringe for Free once more!

Fringe for Free is as easy as it sounds: we’ll post a list of 5 shows for every day in the festival. If you’re interested in catching one, shoot us an email (see below for full details), and one of our Contest Elves will enter you in the drawing. We pick a name, they win two tickets, and then they–hopefully!–come back to Mooney on Theatre and tell us all about it.

Remember, you need a separate email for each entry. If you want to see all 5 shows, that means 5 emails!

Today, we’re posting contests for the very first day of the festival, Wednesday July 2nd. Click the jump to see today’s list!

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The Assasination of Robert Ford: Dirty Little Coward – Toronto Fringe 2014 Press Release

Jesse James, an Assassin named Robert Ford, and Gunfights in the American West

Excerpted from Press Release

The Story of Robert Ford, The Assassin of Jesse James, is often told as an epilogue to the famous outlaw’s life. But Robert Ford wandered free as a minor celebrity, thanks to his crimes, before he was also gunned down. This new play looks at the story of Robert Ford from his killer’s perspective, allowing for an examination of the paralyzing power of anger while drawing a comparison between the politics of a post-Civil War America to those we experience today. Performed as a saloon show novelty act, the narrative is accompanied by original music written and performed by Joel Lightman.

Director and writer, Adam Bailey, discovered the story of Robert Ford’s assassination two years ago and instantly knew it had to be told to the people of Toronto. After years of working in Toronto’s Cabaret and Indie theatre scene, including work on new theatre creations such as The Enchanted Crackhouse, a variety of Burlesque shows with the Shameless Dames and directing several Canadian Premiers of International works with Royal Porcupine Productions (Terrorism, The Shadow of a Boy), Mr. Bailey spent the last two years developing his own voice while working on this original script; his first solo writing project. He has gathered an exception group of talent to aid him in that telling this unusual story and created a new company, Still Your Friend, to premier this new work.

“I went onto a “This Day in History” as part of a writing exercise and was shocked when I stumbled onto the assassination of Robert Ford. The site didn’t give any explanation other than those five words, so it was a real WTF moment. Once I looked up the history I knew I had to write a play about it.” – Adam Bailey

Performance Dates
July 2nd 8:45
July 5th 9:45
July 6th 12pm
July 8th 6:15pm
July 9th 12:15pm
July 10th 5:45pm
July 12th 11pm

Venue
Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, 16 Ryerson Ave. (Bathurst and Queen)

Ticketing
Tickets are $10 (cash-only) at the door, $12 in advance. Advance tickets may be purchased online (visa/amex), or from the Fringe Club box office (cash/visa/amex), located in Honest Ed’s Alley during the festival. Money-saving passes are also available; see website for details.

Be advised that there is absolutely no latecomer seating at Fringe shows.