Of all the Toronto Fringe Festival shows I’ve attended thus far, Potosi is the only one I’ve seen in a literally full house.  The Tarragon Mainspace was packed for this show, viewers no doubt drawn in by the posters that have sprouted across the city, each reminding all who see them that Potosi is the winner of the Fringe New Play Contest.  In short, this show had some very high expectations to live up to, and as a play, it definitely achieved that much.

Continue reading Potosi (Good Old Neon) 2014 Toronto Fringe Review →

It’s a hell of a thing to wind up on the front page of the Toronto Sun with the words “DEVIL” and “TERRORIST” printed under your face…especially if you’ve got a job interview later that day.  But Lwam Ghebrehariat has a knack for turning pitfalls into upsides, or at the very least getting a good laugh out of them.

Lwam is Eritrea’s Greatest Hockey Player is the true story, told in stand-up comedy at the Toronto Fringe Festival, of one man’s journey through the not-so post-racial wonderland of Canada, a journey that took him from his childhood home in Alberta to the Tarragon Theatre Solo Room. Continue reading Lwam is Eritrea’s Greatest Hockey Player (Lwam Ghebrehariat) 2014 Toronto Fringe Review →

The playbill for this Mind Bang Productions family drama asserts that the play is based on a true story.  What the playbill doesn’t tell you is that the play’s true story might very well be yours as well as its creator’s.  For an hour’s time during the Toronto Fringe Festival, St. Vlad’s Theatre is transformed into a place of warm welcomes, homemade food, and deeply uncomfortable personal questions: Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  And for an hour’s time, audiences are invited to step inside and eavesdrop on one weary grandson’s Conversations with Dork.

Continue reading Conversations with Dork (Mind Bang Productions) 2014 Toronto Fringe Review →

“Beat them.  Arrest them.  Cure them.  Whip them.  Burn their hearts.  Kill them.”

It is a turbulent time in Moscow.  It is the age of Putin, the days of the Sochi Olympics, against the backdrop of growing LGBT visibility worldwide.  And for sixty minutes during the Toronto Fringe Festival, the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse becomes a window into the heart of a faraway place that is nevertheless very much like home, as it is transformed into a communal apartment in Moscow populated by seven disparate, dangerous, and delightful people, brought to life by Hooligans Theatre: a Komunka.

Continue reading Komunka (Hooligans Theatre) 2014 Toronto Fringe Review →