Kathleen Denny

Nice Is Not What We Do…—Planetarium

It’s a funeral, with dark humour aplenty. You meet the deceased, who liked to boast, “I don’t get high blood pressure. I give it to other people!”

He charmed most of the world far better than his own family. You spend time with Kathleen and her family, who come right out and say things that Other People might keep to themselves. Even if raised by rabid penguins, this show might shift how you think about your own family.

Best Bitts Productions

Stories of Love and Passion—Eckhardt-Gramatté

Almost BANNED in Saskatchewan and protested by a pastor, too!!

Recently hauled off stage during a bit questioning Saskatchewan’s laws, Bitts knows controversy.

“I don’t plan to be heavy-hitting or subversive, but it seems to end up that way.”

Stories of Love and Passion isn’t just a controversial show, it’s filled with love, heartbreak, and sexuality. If you want titillation, uncomfortable subjects, a reason to cry, and to laugh uncontrollably, this is the show.

Plus the singing and striptease ain’t bad!

James Jordan

Vaudevillian—WECC Acu Hall

James Jordan fell in love with vaudeville as a young boy watching The Muppet Show. The music and comedy combined with magic, juggling and the death-defying stunts from Gonzo the Great enchanted and inspired the young hyperactive boy.

Two circus schools, 3 theatre companies and a lifetime of street performance later, he was finally ready to step onto the boards to be the vaudevillian he always wanted to be.

Bad news—Vaudeville has been dead for 50 years. The only way to reach his life-long dream was to create his own one-man Vaudeville variety revue.

Empty Sea / Invincible Emu Prods.

Georama—Son of Warehouse:

From the mind of Jackie Torrens, Gemini-nominated screenwriter for TV’s The Trailer Park Boys, comes Georama, a compelling story of two best friends who make a life-changing discovery that threatens their life-long friendship.

Unable to resolve the situation themselves, they face off in a “friendly” debate in a theatre full of strangers, but it’s hard to win a debate against someone who knows about the time you peed your pants at the bank…

Wonderheads

LOON— Warehouse

Eleven time Best of Fest winners and mask imagineers, the WONDERHEADS are back with their whimsical and wordless love story, LOON.

Francis is a lonely bachelor looking for love but he can’t seem to find it through earthly means. Instead, he falls in love with the moon…but can the moon bring him the happiness he is searching for? Fans of Pixar, Jim Henson, and Triplets of Belleville will love this multi-award winning show.

Hole Punch Productions

Hey ’90s Kids, You’re Old—Planetarium

Calling all ’90s kids! Hole Punch Productions brings their award-winning comedy Hey ’90s Kids, You’re Old to the Planetarium Auditorium.

This ’90s nostalgia sketch comedy show features your favourite ’90s characters and products in modern day situations, including Power Rangers, Midnight Society, S Club 7, and many more that will test your ’90s IQ.

Come celebrate the best decade ever—the ’90s (duh!) – and relive the days of dial-up Internet, TGIF, and Dunkaroos!

Together and Aloof

H, H & M Group—Rachel Browne Th. (Crocus Bldg.)

The unfortunate thing about having a live string quartet is that you need to be able to be heard over them. They were integrated very nicely into the show, but I found it difficult to hear the actors more often than not, and I missed a good chunk of what was being said or sung at the time.

Because of that, it felt like the show wasn’t sure what it wanted to be, or that it was trying to be to many things at once. It felt unfocused, and that’s why it lost me.

Arden Pruden

The Nurdables

Smartyesque Productions—Planetarium

This show was very cute. The sketches were original and surprised me in places. The two actors committed to their characters and sold me on the sketches.

That being said, it was not as nerdy as I thought it would be and most of the jokes were incredibly predictable. It was a very cute g-rated show but not one that I would pound the pavement to see again.

Kaitlyn Kriss

Barely Living

Shelby Bond – MTYP Mainstage

A zombie musical? This almost felt like a Kids’ Fringe show, in spite of the content.

The three performers from Los Angeles give a lengthy spoken introduction before the show proper, asking people to make certain sounds when certain actions occur, and to not be bothered by them moving about the audience to gently hit them with plastic weapons as if they (the audience) were zombies.

When the show begins, we meet slacker roommates Caleb and Toby, who barely leave the confines of their home, a more adventurous survivor named Mariah, who shakes up their routine, and finally an actual zombie named Emily.

This fourth character is played by a woman picked from the audience and given extensive zombie face makeup before appearing in the story.

There are also some well-sung songs that appear intermittently throughout the show, but the plot itself tends toward the perfunctory.

Konrad Antony

Barely Living

Shelby Bond – MTYP Mainstage

The premise here had so much potential but so much of it wasn’t delivered.

The characters are human survivors trapped after a zombie apocalypse—and the audience members are the zombies! This could have been hilarious, but they didn’t make nearly enough use of the audience. They traveled up the same aisle a few times, but they could really have exploited the hams in the crowd.

As far as the plot goes, there were a lot of moments that dragged on and on, like a zombie dragging a broken leg in pursuit of warm brains. The execution was adequate, bordering on poor.

This is their third performance of the show in this year’s Fringe; and by now they should not have microphone problems. There were also a lot of dialogue problems, enough where it started to feel like improv. I understand that there will be issues when you recruit an audience member to be a made-up zombie, but you should not have those same issues among your own actors.

And the singing! Jeez! There were moments when these actors showed that they could actually sing, but through most of their songs, they sounded little better than karaoke night.

This was a show that could have been so much fun. Instead, it was unnecessarily hammed up, poorly prepared, and not that funny.

Ray Yuen