Boor on the Fringe - From Broadway to Burlesque
Last Wednesday marked the beginning of the Toronto Fringe Festival. I'd never actually made it to one of these before,1 so I was determined to make up for lost time. What follows is a quick recap of my first five Toronto Fringe shows: I chose them with no particular methodology save for a desire to take in a range of different things and see what the festival has to offer. Suffice to say, it offers a lot.
Almost Ever After
My first ever Toronto Fringe show! Arriving at Artists' Play, I found myself waiting in a very long line of people. I expect the line hasn’t shortened much for subsequent performances because it looks like the entire run of Almost Ever After has sold out. This show wears its influences on its sleeve and the event page plainly announces that it’s essentially a musical take on a Love, Actually. I'd say the staging was minimalist, but it may be more accurate to say that it was non-existent as it played out with actors at microphones with naught behind them on stage but the band and a brick wall.
The 90 minute performance is made up of a series of semi-connected subplots with its expansive cast cycling through to take their places on stage. There was a fair amount of variety in the songs, ranging from ballads to others with more of an up-tempo rock sound, and one that prominently featured a ukulele. It was all pleasant enough, and some of it was quite catchy, though I thought it a bit too on the nose that the finale’s "Where Would I Be Without You" chorus sounded like a carbon copy of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows."2
The subplots were diverse enough to keep things interesting, and scenes were well done by a mostly charming cast. The dialogue was on the quirky and cute side, which you may find clever or cloying depending on your mood. There's a pretty good joke at one point about a bottle of wine that's like Tom Hanks inasmuch as it will offend no-one and everyone will like it: I'd hazard a guess that this is essentially what the show was aiming to be. By and large, I think it achieves that goal. It's fun, the music sounds nice, and it doesn't exactly rock the boat.
Bitty-Bat and Friends
Scurrying down to the Distillery District to find Soulpepper Theatre’s Tankhouse Theatre, I found something completely different waiting for me on the next leg of my Fringe odyssey. How to describe this one? The titular "Bitty Bat", played by comic actor Emily Jeffers dressed in a bat costume, is essentially the subject of an absurdist nature documentary, complete with an Attenborough-esque voiceover. We see her go about her night, explore her cave (implied by some purposefully unconvincing glow-in-the-dark stalagmites), hunt and be hunted, find a mate, and give birth to a new baby bat. I guarantee that every stage of this story is far sillier than whatever you're picturing right now.
A host dressed as a zookeeper (Hilary Wheeler) opened the proceedings and helped move things along. Considering that Jeffers steadfastly avoided speaking English while in costume, rather opting for various squeaks and gestures, the host role was a helpful one. And our zookeeper added good value with her humorous introduction, and ensured the audience was in the appropriate mood. Bitty-Bat's other friends, as it turns out, were a pair of burlesque performers that opened the show, although the opening act will vary with each performance. First up Dolly Wilde's routine clearly took some inspiration from the horror genre, a bit like something out of Silent Hill.3 Next Ingrid Moonshine clowned around as the janitor who came to clean up when she was done before beginning a bawdy performance of her own.
This show leans into the ridiculous, and not only was Jeffers not afraid of an awkward pause she seemed to positively revel in it. The fourth wall was all but nonexistent throughout, with a good deal of audience participation at points.4 Let's just say that sitting in the front row may not be for the faint of heart. Overall it's a very particular show for a very particular audience, so you'll have to sort it out for yourself whether it's your kind of thing. Certainly, though, it is anything but generic.
The Iron Mask
In case you aren't familiar with the inspiration for this show, "The Man in the Iron Mask" was a prisoner in seventeenth century France who has inspired a plethora of theories over the past three centuries. The most striking idea, that he was the secret twin of King Louis XIV, inspired the plot of Alexandre Dumas's final novel about the Three Musketeers, in which they seek to swap the prisoner and the King.5 The Iron Mask, performed by Breakaway Entertainment at Theatre Passe Muraille, takes the basic idea from Dumas and adapts it into a tight sixty minutes set during Prohibition. It features a racketeering queen in place of the Sun King, and there is lots of dancing.
A twin myself, I felt obliged to check it out on Friday evening.
Rather than having a full cast of singing actors, the only speaking roles are for two narrators who variously describe the action and, gradually, involve themselves in it. There are also numbers where they simply play recorded music including "I Surrender", and Frank Sinatra's rendition of "The Best is Yet to Come."6 Both of the narrators sing pretty well, but the real focus of the show is the stunning performances given by the cast of six dynamic dancers. It is all highly engaging throughout and the hour flew by.
I enjoyed this show, and recommend it if you can get out to see this group perform. I don't know if every creative decision worked as well as intended, and there's an attempt to tie things together with a broader theme that didn't quite hold together for me. Nonetheless, I can't fault them for trying to frame things around the bigger picture, and I think the performers were scintillating regardless.
Mathew’s Big Broadway Bash
The Heliconian Club always makes for a convivial atmosphere with pretty good acoustics, so you could do a lot worse for a Broadway singalong. I arrived there about 20 minutes after The Iron Mask wrapped up, and found Mathew Mac Lean playing host for a party of his own devising. In case we couldn't tell he was making himself comfortable at the venue, he spent the duration of the performance with his shoes off. The show featured numbers from several Broadway musicals, and Mathew sang them well. In between songs he offered amiable banter and a few choice anecdotes, and it all made for a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere.
To add variety there were a few singalongs to familiar tunes, and lyrics were provided. The chosen pieces for this portion of the evening were "Do-Re-Me", "Under the Sea", "You're the One that I Want", and "Dancing Queen". Likewise a rendition of "Ring Them Bells" brought volunteers from the audience on stage to shake bells and a random assortment of other instruments. There was also some dancing. I imagine your level of enjoyment at a show like this somewhat depends on how you feel about singing yourself, and how much you expect you'll enjoy hearing from the excited theatre kids sitting behind you. I’ll say that other people seemed to be having rather more fun than me, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy myself.
Sweet & Sultry Burlesque
My third show Friday night was once again something on the silly side. Yet another venue, the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse on University of Toronto's campus played host to the carnival-like atmosphere of Sweet & Sultry Burlesque . It was billed as a combination of clowning and burlesque, which it fairly delivered on.
We were welcomed to the venue by stage kittens7 offering trays full of candy, so there was the "sweet" part of the evening taken care of. They also offered reflective bands that audience members could wear if they were willing to have performers interact with them during the show, which I thought was pretty handy.8 The kittens had a recurring gag between acts with host Ava Val, in which they kept on performing suggestive bits while she admonished them to knock it off and told the audience not to encourage them.9
The acts were as colourful as they were varied, each with some kind of gimmick that kept things from feeling at all serious. I found Samantha Halas's routine, which saw her spinning prop pizzas on her hands and feet in various positions, was hard to beat.10 The final act was “Sweet Dolly”, a rather explicit burlesque puppet that was probably the most absurd portion of the evening. There was really nowhere to escalate to from there, so it was just as well they wrapped up with that one.
Admittedly, not everything worked for me. I think there is a thin line between provocative and crass, and there were moments when the show landed on the side of the line that I don’t find particularly entertaining. Fortunately, however, there was something for everyone, and if I wasn’t having a good time I only needed to wait a couple minutes and I was watching something else entirely.
Wrapping Up
So that's my first stab at the Toronto Fringe Festival. Definitely a few things that took me outside of my comfort zone, but on the whole I had fun. I'll be following up soon with a few more shows. Not to get ahead of myself, but considering it’s going to be a couple of days before my next instalment I’m going to take this opportunity to say right now that Apothecary at Theatre Passe Muraille is the show I’m most eager to recommend. More on that soon.
In case you were wondering (or worrying), it looks like everyone in the remaining shows will be fully clothed. But I make no promises.
Although I did find myself at the Edinburgh Fringe one August, entirely by accident, many years ago. But that's a story for another time.
You know, the song that plays over the final scene in Love, Actually? I can't be the only one who watches that movie every Christmas.
If I remember correctly, they also did the Friday the 13th horror routine at Cake Cabaret's "Wet Hot Canadian Summer". We do adore a performer who commits to a theme, and they pull it off very well…no pun intended.
I mentioned the "find a mate" part, right? I’ll leave it at that.
This was also adapted into a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio portraying the brothers…you can guess which version of the story I’m more familiar with.
Some musical choices were a little bit anachronistic and didn’t really fit the 1920s, but as far as the vibes go I think they still hit the mark.
I’d better explain that term, right? Just in case. They're the members of the troupe who pick up all the performers' discarded clothes.
I took one, of course. One needs to get the most out of these experiences after all.
The audience, undeterred, encouraged them constantly.
It also provided a very appropriate prelude to my very pizza-centric Saturday.