Toronto Fringe’s New Young Reviewers 2024 | Round One

A collage of photos from the productions reviewed

Reviews

/By Toronto Fringe New Young Reviewers Program / Jul 11, 2024

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The first round of reviews from the Toronto Fringe’s New Young Reviewers program is here!

Led by Signy Lynch (Contemporary Theatre Review, Canadian Theatre Review, Intermission Magazine) and Stephanie Fung (Kingston Theatre Alliance, Canadian Theatre Review, Single Thread Theatre), the New Young Reviewers program is a workshop series and writing group for emerging theatre and performance reviewers across Canada. Open to participants ages 15 and up, this program introduces participants to the basics of theatre reviewing, helping them develop responses to Toronto Fringe Festival performances. With support from the Jon Kaplan Legacy Fund, the program encourages participants to explore emerging creative approaches to criticism and to begin to define themselves as critics and reviewers.

Look below to read the first reviews from the 2024 New Young Reviewers! The shows included in this round are Rat Academy, Sheila! The Musical, Koli Kari, Remembrance, The Apartment, Escape From Toronto, Colonial Circus, CANCELLED!, The Bluffs, MONKS, and Crosstown.

For more information on this year’s reviewers, check out their photos and bios on the Fringe site here.

For more Fringe coverage, check out Intermission‘s other reviews here.

**With wit and heart, Rat Academy offers training in how to be a true rodent**

by Chase Thomson

Please note that this review contains spoilers.

For years, my friend Liam has called me a rat as a strange term of endearment. Imagine my excitement then, when presented with the opportunity to become an actual rat. And at the Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace? Sign me up. Directed by Joseph McManus, Batrabbit Productions’ Rat Academy offers an education in just that. Set in Alberta, Canada’s notoriously rodent-free province, this dynamic comedy follows Fingers (Dayna Lea Hoffmann), a resilient yet battered street rat, as he tries to teach an escaped lab rat named Shrimp (Katie Yoner) what it means to be a true, capital-R rat. With well-co-ordinated audience engagement, we too have the privilege of learning Fingers’ vermin vernacular.

There are four core tenets to being the ultimate rat: steal, hide, fight, and run.

Shrimp is not skilled at any of the above. With the help of Claire Somnor’s stage design, Fingers turns a brick-lined, garbage-littered city alleyway into a training room. Using a Die Hard DVD case, he demonstrates to Shrimp why rats should fear humans. But, as his pupil cuddles up to the twisted image of Bruce Willis, it becomes clear that there is a key disconnect between these comrades: Shrimp believes humans are good, and Fingers is adamant they are very, very bad.

Hoffmann and Yoner incorporate physical comedy, clever ad libs, and genius audience participation to create one of the most unique shows I have ever seen. Their confidence and ease as performers is no surprise given that this production has toured around Canada and the United States. Watching my dad be chosen to help Fingers with his fear tactics on Shrimp made it even better. As Fingers reminds us, bald men are the scariest types of humans (sorry dad), but even he couldn’t convince Shrimp of humans’ sinister nature.

The two bicker incessantly, trying to convince the other that humans are not what they believe them to be, until Shrimp experiences some traumatic flashbacks to his time in the lab. Their fight leads Fingers to expel Shrimp from Rat Academy, and the audience is led to believe that Shrimp has fallen victim to a rat trap (which Fingers had my dad roll offstage earlier). As Fingers cries and blames himself (and my dad) for Shrimp’s demise, the audience’s grief is palpable.

While Rat Academy will have you in tears of laughter, there’s something much deeper at the centre of the show. As per the synopsis on the Fringe website, Fingers and Shrimp are surviving in a “world that hates them.” Though the goal is to teach Shrimp how to rat, the pair learns much more about how difficult it is to survive in a world of upheaval and chaos by yourself. Fingers and Shrimp need to rely on each other, despite their differences, in order to truly survive.

As Shrimp returns to the stage with only his tail injured, the two finally understand that this is the real lesson to be learned at Rat Academy. I am honoured to be one of its alumni.

Sheila! The Musical drags the patriarchy with poodle-skirted pizzazz

by Jonnie Lombard

“Who is Miss Sheila?”

Inviting us into her cigarette-scented, lace-laden, Diefenbakerian dream home, Sheila! The Musical’s titular character ponders that question amid routines of domestic subservience. Performer-creator Jay Hill and director Adam Khomsi answer with a darkly hilarious drag exploration of how gendered expectations of the past persist. Wielding singsong satire and surreal sentimentality, it is as tight as the pincurls atop this housewife’s head.

Sheila V Toff, “Van Isle’s belting, bearded bombshell” (according to her Instagram bio) and drag artist elsewhere, is poised and chipper in the wifely servitude she happily performs. She tidies, takes calls from her hard-working husband, and cares for little Kenneth, portrayed in a star turn by a plastic doll. As her TV issues warnings of “homosexual menaces” and Barbies set on corrupting her baby’s masculinity, Sheila enforces lessons of manhood and sings the praises of isolated suburbia to her (suspiciously) still son.

I was struck by the inspiredly intimate reserve that Hill as Sheila brings to the stage. Satires on gender are older than Eisenhower; what makes this story’s humour and bite unique is Sheila’s genuine, innocent belief in the absurdly misogynistic demands placed on 1950s homemakers. The script is saturated with hysterically vintage innuendo (you’ll never hear “tenderloin” the same), and Sheila’s doe-eyed obliviousness gets many a delightfully cringing giggle.

These gender jokes hit deeper as their self-deprecating effect on Sheila weaves into a greater, psychologically subversive character study. When a “femin-in-in-ist” neighbour unexpectedly introduces herself, along with newfangled ideals of independence, that reserve cracks open as we witness Sheila grapple with her loneliness, preordained identity, and sense of self for the first time. Hill dials up the patriarchal absurdity as the cramped Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace evokes a picket-fence prison, and little Kenneth’s plastic form pays off in a delightfully horrific twist that leaves us wondering what in this surreal suburbia is fact or act.

Sheila! shines in these winks to the audience that highlight drag’s power as an art form. In exploring 1950s gender roles through a literal performance of gender, Toff reminds us how so-called “rules” of the binary persist to the present. For myself as a trans audience member, drag added poignant layers to Sheila’s journey to discover herself beyond external expectations of home and husband. Like Sheila’s many fabulous satin ‘fits, what layers do we don for others, and which to celebrate ourselves? It’s a question Hill asks that far transcends the doo-wop decade.

The play’s musical structure further develops Sheila’s journey. Toe-tappers like “I Love Cleaning” employ jingle-like piano stylings on the joys of patriarchy, echoing the subliminal TV advertisements Sheila absorbs. A meta-theatrical twist revealing what these songs, and us listening, mean to Sheila allows the musical structure to break out of its shell as she does, adopting its own journey through ‘50s genres and showcasing Sheila’s stellar, emotionally evocative vocal range.

“Who is Miss Sheila?”

“I’d like to get to know her,” our bearded bombshell croons in her domestic quest of self-discovery. You’ll be glad you got the chance to.

The chicken, the egg, and the cycles of familial ties: Watching Koli Kari

by Lulu Liu

If you happen to walk along Dupont Street this week, let your nose guide you to the Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, where TV chef Ravi (playwright Ganesh Thava) is sharing with audiences how to cook his family’s koli kari (or, to many of us, chicken curry). Ravi seems a little distracted… likely because he is being haunted by a mysterious chicken, a chicken that ultimately connects him back to his Amma (Asha Ponnachan).

Amma doesn’t understand why Ravi wouldn’t want a nice girl like Anika and a better career than becoming a chef. Despite these generational and cultural misunderstandings, the two have one shared language: food. With this helming narrative choice, food becomes synonymous with love, reminding diasporic families of what brings them together rather than divides them.

In an interview with My Gay Toronto, Thava said that Koli Kari promises a “bold twist on the Canadian identity play, challenging the tropes of the ‘immigrant experience.’” Riding against the current of the immigrant-child-tirelessly-fighting-for-strict-parent’s-acceptance trope, Pink Banana Theatre brings fresh, empathetic parity to both sides of the immigrant child-parent dynamic by considering Amma’s position too. Ravi learns of Amma’s dreams, how she was young and precocious just like him, and that maybe they are no different.

To that same trope, my writer friends and I often joke that we need to air our own immigrant family’s dirty laundry in order to make our stories palatable enough for recognition in the western public as brave or honest, Ravi thinks the same — vexed by giving up his secret family recipes to the world in order for the success of his culinary career, Koli Kari poses an important question to artists: what kinds of stories are meant to be shared, and which should simply be valued in their sacredness?

Directed by Sungwon Cho, Koli Kari cooks up many standouts. Ponnachan stuns as the heartbeat of the show, bringing a realistically pestering yet heartwarming performance as Amma. The show’s haunting chicken sports an impressive ghostly cape and an eerily mesmerizing paper mask (no costume designer is credited, but mask design is by Alexandra Simpson). The live cooking demonstration equips detailed prop choices, replicating the kinetic tactility of working on a kitchen counter (scenic design by Madeleine Gagnon), and earning the production the Fringe’s one and only “strong cooking aromas” warning.

But nerves were high during the show’s preview performance. Despite the well-intentioned winks remarking on the Odyssean trek from Scarborough to downtown, not all beats reached their punchy potential. The show’s duty to uphold a non-linear narrative unfortunately resulted in an inconsistently acted Ravi; this is where sound design might be better utilized to reinforce the narrative’s tonal shifts, to help orient actors and audiences, and steer us through the highs of being a TV chef and the vulnerable lows of Ravi’s past.

Despite these challenges, Koli Kari rallies for a heartfelt end. Ravi travels to the audience to share samples of that delectable curry we’ve been drooling over, ending the night in a tight, warm hug that is Amma’s koli kari. This is the one to bring mums to.

Dance the pain away with Kay-Ann Ward’s Remembrance

by Riel Reddick-Stevens

We’ve all heard the saying “the body keeps score,” meaning trauma and memories are stored in our flesh and blood.

To quote the show’s synopsis on the Fringe website, Kay-Ann Ward’s Remembrance uses “traditional Afro-Caribbean Dance, ancestral wisdom, [and] poetry” to explore a young Caribbean woman’s episodic spiritual journey toward accessing the memories stored in her DNA. This journey is told via a series of three parts, each looking at the story through a different lens of healing.

Ward begins the piece in a spiritual limbo to the sound of waves. Then enter dancers Michael Mortley and Josie Hamalengwa, who resemble ancestors attempting to protect Ward from dancer Szerelem Dutton, who to me appears to represent colonization and other outside harms that can push one further from their truths. The movements feel religious, traditional, and sustained as the character begins to rediscover her history.

The dance moves to a poetry soundscape that develops into beats, and popular music which occasionally feels like it is working against the dance. Where the movement is so rooted in the earth and the elements, the commercial, almost “top 40” sound of the music and the abrupt quality in which it emerges sometimes feels jarring in contrast.

I actually feel the piece is most compelling in its silences.

For example, in part two, Ward and Mortley play lovers. There is a moment where the music stops and the two continue to dance, exploring each other’s bodies in quiet, leaving the audience to hear only their breath and occasional sighs, as the characters fall deeper in love with themselves and each other.

These moments are visceral and real and the silence allows audiences to catch up with the dancers, and understand what the characters are experiencing emotionally.

We’re invited in again during part three, where Ward is joined by dancers Hamalengwa and Liana Lewis to explore self love, now through Dancehall and Soca dancing, resembling Carnival.

It is so refreshing to see a stage of strong, beautiful, Black femme people claiming their time and space, experiencing sensuality, love and joy! It felt really lovely to be celebrating Black bodies, in viewing this I felt invited to join the characters in finding my own truth.

The audience is invited to do this at the end by getting up and dancing along. I personally didn’t lift my little bop from the comfort of my chair, but felt joy as I watched the audience in a collective remembering as they danced, laughed, and celebrated.

Overall, this piece has a lot of potential, and could be a great show to encourage audiences to reach deep into their beings to remember how to live as our fullest selves.So, if at some point in your life you’ve found yourself searching for home, or simply want to have fun, smile and dance, check out Remembrance running until July 13 at the Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace!

The Apartment: A story of survival

by Kosar Dakhilalian

“Poverty, chastity, obedience, silence.” The Shadow is watching!

In the midst of the housing crisis in the GTA, The Apartment takes inspiration from actual events, and brings to the Fringe stories of homelessness and mental illness. Penned by Paul Bilodeau and directed by Nicole Arends, The Apartment will be on at the Tarragon Theatre Extraspace until July 12.

Walls, roof, a window to outside chaos, a bathroom of one’s own: The Apartment happens in a dim, messy, bare-bones apartment in Parkdale. We only see the inside of the apartment throughout the play, but we witness its current tenant Bonnie’s unsettling fear of losing the place.

Cathy Shilton portrays the soft-spoken and warm-hearted woman, who’s in her 60s. Early in the play, we learn of Bonnie’s turbulent past: her time spent unhoused, her studies to become a Catholic nun, and her child given up for adoption — hence her deep relationship with a small statue of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus, gifted to her by Toby (Bilodeau), a seeming friend who at one point humorously uses the statue as a mic to sing AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.”

But Bonnie is not alone! She is followed by a nun, a.k.a. the Shadow (Jan Boase), whom she calls “sister” — not to be confused with her biological, caringly bossy sister, Amy (played beautifully by Elizabeth Friesen). The Shadow, only seen by Bonnie, acts as the audience’s link to Bonnie’s psyche and is an embodiment of a religious superego, ferociously looking at Bonnie and judging her words and actions, causing her to apologize:

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry sister.”

The nun keeps her distance, suspending any touch or sound until a gasp-provoking climax when Bonnie experiences a psychotic episode.

The Apartment is a story of navigating life amid internal and external difficulties and also touches on power: who gets to decide for someone to stay and leave, who gets to judge, and who doesn’t.

The production employs simple lighting, sound, and set design, reflecting Bonnie’s stark and modest world effectively. (The only designer credited is sound designer Rick Sutton.)

Bilodeau manages to capture multiple tensions, twists, and messages in this hour-long, five-scene play. The play has complex characters, and I think it could benefit from developing relationships between them even further. The Apartment shows some signs of a play in development; the falling action slides quickly to resolution, and its ending scene might benefit from further fine-tuning.

The Apartment is an honest play that highlights the importance of care and support (the very element that distances the Shadow from Bonnie), showing that sometimes it takes only one comforting hand to save a person, and someone to say: “We will survive! We always have!”

If you use Letterboxd unironically, don’t miss Escape From Toronto

by Nate Ives

Living in Toronto is hard. Especially in the year 1997, when the government has erected a 50-foot-wall around the city, turning it into a high security prison, and your only hope of escape is one man — the incredibly multi-talented and truly mythic Snake Plisskin (Tamlynn Bryson).

This is the scenario as I sit down for Escape From Toronto, a comedy inspired by the ‘70s and ‘80s world of over-the-top action movies (and especially John Carpenter’s 1981 film Escape From New York).

To say that Escape From Toronto by Plisskin Productions merely breaks the fourth wall is wrong.

Instead, writer-performers Bryson and Rod Peter Jr. decimate the fourth wall via the show’s digital program (I highly recommend a read) and a pre-show theme song, and replace the remaining rubble with the aforementioned 50-foot-wall.

Bryson and Peter Jr.’s high-energy performances continue to shine as they make their way on stage and present a show filled with some incredibly fun and inventive puppetry, allowing for the larger-than-life set pieces you’d expect in a high-octane action movie to blend onto the stage rather seamlessly. These clever design choices are combined with some great physical comedy performances, topical references (to both 2024 and 1997, a.k.a. the future), and a great ensemble of supporting characters, all portrayed by Peter Jr.

While the first few minutes feel a little exposition-heavy, and it can take a minute to find out who the humour is aimed at, pretty soon you are buckled into a mile-a-minute experience.

The show seems to experiment in blurring lines, manifesting an action movie on stage, complete with performed edits, director commentary, and a kick-ass, 1997-fuelled soundtrack.

Despite this intriguing merging of mediums, time periods, and worlds, this is a show that so clearly has a love for theatre and the Fringe ingrained in it. The two stars revel in the occasional messy moments of the show and the grittiness of a Toronto they have created.

They quickly toss in improvised one-liners when things go awry, such as when a few too many promotional cards are thrown on stage and Snake is left to tidy them up.

The pared-down requirements of a Fringe show mean that only the most essential bits make it on stage, but this minimalism highlights the details that are shown.

Overall, I would recommend this show to anyone who unironically uses Letterboxd, anyone who loves Carpenter, and anyone who likes a good time. This is a show that dances along a lot of lines in terms of form, all the while knowing exactly what it is and what it wants to be.

Cleverly clowning the colonizer: A review of Colonial Circus

by Gus Lederman

Colonial Circus by comedic improv duo Two 2 Mango teases, toys with, and tickles you as you jump clown shoes-first into a harrowing and hilarious colonial conquest that pulls from the pages of current and historical ones.

Getting to the heart of Bouffon clowning as a means of social commentary and mockery of power, Shreya Parashar and Sachin Sharma (founders of Hindustani improv group HINPROV) hold a mirror to settlers everywhere and allow us to contend with a dark history through humour and bewilderment. The show pulls directly from the history of the genocide of Indigenous peoples, whether it be in India, so-called Canada, or Palestine.

The performers go from deeming themselves and the audience “savages” to being what they call “civilized” before embarking on a mission to colonize America for spices (whether or not you end up there is another story). A minimal yet intriguing array of props transform throughout the piece, becoming boats, robes, and objects of religious worship.

Parashar and Sharma’s amusing and colourful costumes set the tone for the ensuing ridiculousness. Their jester shoes and rattling caps make them a sight to gawk at; though classically clown, I read this as symbolizing the way colonized peoples have been dressed up and exhibited as a site of mockery.

Similarly, their white clown faces represent more than just a nod to the tradition of the medium; they act as skin suits of the European colonizer archetype, allowing the performers to wear the masks of their oppressors. This role reversal heightens the impact of the show, giving us a fresh and defiant retelling of histories we hear (and bear the consequences of) all the time.

The performers invite the audience to ask and respond to questions, and any and all offerings are fair game for play and ridicule. With the hysterical physicality and chemistry between Parashar and Sharma, you’ll find yourself immediately falling under their spell and submitting to whatever they tell you to do — even, say, becoming a choir of jungle animals. The more you engage, the more hilarity that ensues and the more the absurdity of colonial patterns is revealed.

As a white settler, I can only speak from my experience. This show presents itself for the enjoyment of everyone — not just as an opportunity for settler self-reflection. Rather, it allows for collective recognition of the complex impacts of colonialism.

A dramatic shift at the show’s end, while likely aiming to recognize how this dark history continues today, risks distracting from its message with its sharp change in tone and sudden introduction of new props.

This show’s clever concepts and quick quips will leave you with a sore Bouffon belly from laughter while simultaneously contemplating the ongoing legacy of colonization and our places in it. If you’re down to clown and (to reference Two 2 Mango’s Medium blog) be challenged, inspired, shocked, and surprised, catch Colonial Circus at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace for a baffling boat voyage and a hell of a good time.

CANCELLED!’s subject matter is timely — but its approach is irresponsible

by Libin Ahmed

What does it mean for someone to be truly “irredeemable?”

Written and directed by Henrique Santsper, CANCELLED! follows the trial of a college student named Chad who’s accused and brought to court by his peers for robbery, assault, and grievous bodily harm.

As a parallel to cancel culture, a phenomenon describing the social and professional ostracization of public figures as a result of poor behaviour or character, Chad (Santsper) is subject to these claims without a chance to interject, correct, or amend any details. He’s silenced by the other characters (played by Shayna Burns, Jona Villa, Cassandra Sinnaeve, and Phoenix) and the collective Voice that permeates the theatre, acting as both jury and judge of the trial. The audience may begin to see the cracks in these accusations, but it’s not enough to keep Chad from getting cancelled.

The conversation around redemption and reputation this show seeks to engage in is timely and compelling. Whose word holds more weight in the court of public opinion? At what point does someone deserve to be “cancelled?”

CANCELLED! confidently asserts the so-called toxic nature of cancel culture, focusing solely on the repercussions of accountability instead of the perspectives they may come from. And with a cast comprised of people with various marginalized identities, this feels both unresponsive and irresponsible. This play just as confidently does not address the fact that the core reason cancel culture is an internet phenomenon is because it only exists on the internet. Meaning, being “cancelled” may result in severe online backlash for a period of time, but it’s exceptionally rare to witness any lasting, real-world consequences for public figures. The terror of being “cancelled” online is also often used as a distraction to avoid exploring larger questions of accountability, particularly towards victims and marginalized groups.

I mean, Chris Brown just had a concert in Toronto.

Crooked cops, violent superstars, and morally questionable judges are just a few examples of people who can suffer from being cancelled online, but whose wealth and careers are largely unaffected.

And because the story never actually explores Chad’s version of events, it’s a missed opportunity for nuance and complexity. Santsper’s staging doesn’t add to its impact either. The audience only understands that his account deviates from the version they’re told, but never how or why. Considering these accusations include sexual assault, there’s more resolution needed than what the script provides.

Overall, this Fringe production feels as if it’s biting off more than it can chew, let alone swallow.

This sort of discourse feels strikingly similar to the kind of thing you would see on X, formerly known as Twitter, on a weekday afternoon. The play feels resistant to nuance, in my opinion, offering very little to a straightforward narrative of a college football star named Chad, whom we have reason to believe is innocent of the charges thrown at him, getting punished for it.

CANCELLED! tries to ask if we can bear the truth while neglecting the foundation of its own premise — that cancel culture ends the moment you stop looking for it online. It ends when you turn your phone off.

The Bluffs isn’t just a ghost story — it’s a grief-riddled search for shared understanding

by Ferron Guerreiro

A tightly scripted neo-Gothic drama, The Bluffs (written by Sarini Kumarasinghe and directed by Jacqui Sirois) sheds an eerie, flickering light on the messy contours of loss.

Grieving her wife’s recent passing, Eleanor (Shelayna Christante) follows the siren song of self-help to Lake Muskoka. It’s time to pack up the past and, apparently, healing is possible in three measured steps! The podcaster (Justine Christensen) crooning in Eleanor’s headphones would never lead her astray.

Life, of course, is not that simple. Eleanor finds her brother-in-law Jordan (Malcolm Green) lurking in the family cottage, intent on interrupting its sale. Meanwhile, storm clouds are gathering — and there’s something sinister about that morse-coding lamp…

Freudian psychoanalysis — paramour of the Gothic genre — claims we direct grief at concrete love objects, while melancholia often begins with an inarticulable loss. If we cannot identify what we mourn, we cannot let it go. This is how ghosts get under our skin.

A related principle motivates the spectral logic of The Bluffs, with the departed Lorie congealing into a mass of guilt and regret as Eleanor, Jordan, and neighbour Macy (Cydney Watson) parse their unsettling memories of her. If someone you love hurts you, and you inflict cruelty in return, a sudden death forecloses the possibility of reconciliation. An alternative self, and an alternative relationship, dies with them. As we discover Lorie’s legacy of hurt and betrayal, she transforms from a lost loved one into a reflection of each character’s most terrifying self-image. And Eleanor’s attempt to muffle her pain with pop psychology only makes the dead more insistent, taking the form of a ghostly podcaster who walks through fourth walls.

A character-driven script and standout performance by Watson ground this ghost story in the drama of human perseverance. Unmoored from normalcy in the house of the dead (or onstage at the Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, on a set designed by Mike Sirois), we reach for shared understanding. In the hands of the Midtwenties Theatre Society, this gesture becomes a display of tender solidarity.

However, if you were hoping for something more phantasmic, you may be disappointed. Advertised as part-modern Gothic, part-classic horror, the show never fully achieves the sensation of liminality necessary to deliver a hair-raising atmosphere. While the usual suspects (rain, wind, faulty electricity) tease an appropriately moody experience, Jacqui Sirois’ staging isn’t fully formed enough to shoulder the weight of the genre.

Perhaps a more deliberate use of space would help solidify the significance of the cottage to those in mourning. An uncanny affect is usually built on the foundation of familiarity, but I didn’t get the sense that these characters were in a space they knew well. Sharper blocking and set dressing (why does the couch become a pile of boxes?) would better frame the subtle shifts in light (designed by Vishmayaa Jeyamoorthy) and sound (designed by Connor Wan) that signal something’s wrong. This show’s emotional core and supernatural payoff depend on such details — without them, the large space feels impersonal.

Still, The Bluffs does its ambitious concept justice through propulsive writing and a cleverly choreographed arc. I look forward to seeing how this show develops in its afterlife.

MONKS is a religious experience

by Catie Thorne

I stood in the rain for half an hour just to catch this show, and like all good monks will tell you, suffering shall be rewarded.

Created and performed by Annie Luján and Veronica Hortigüela, MONKS is a raucous 60-minute romp through a medieval monastery that packs a surprising emotional punch.

While their abbott is away, two monks come out to play in Good Fortune’s latest production. The audience is ushered into their abbey (the Tarragon Solo Room) and invited to partake in a simpler life, spending the next hour chanting and counting lentils as the brothers preach the joys of doing nothing.

In the program notes, the Dora Award-winning duo explain that their show was influenced by an audience’s desire to watch “two women dive headfirst into wild mess-making”. Female actors often find themselves playing doting daughters, wives, and mothers, but these monks are far from it. Hurling hunks of bread at the audience and performing storms with such vigour that their wigs fly off, Luján and Hortigüela clearly aren’t afraid to get weird. As a messy, foolish woman myself, this unbridled chaos made me feel seen.

Interactivity is baked into the DNA of this show; there is no MONKS without its audience. The piece relies on an audience’s presence, whether they’re getting fed grapes or stroking a donkey tenderly in a sequence straight out of Seabiscuit. MONKS is an experience in which the line between performer and spectator gets excitingly blurry. Rather than explaining the delights of skirting obligation, the duo coaxes you into their world and makes you play with them. The show teeters on a razor’s edge dependant on the sheer ability of its clowns, who never falter.

Delightfully scrappy, this creative team makes a meal of their limited resources, staging a storm with a collection of fake branches and spray bottles. Stage manager Dylan Tate-Howarth deserves equal recognition for executing lighting and sound cues in tandem with the show’s breakneck pace. MONKS is by no means effortless, but there is a certain glory in its emphatic earnestness and low-budget charm.

But my favourite thing about the show is how its absurdity is deftly undercut by its emotional core. MONKS is a disarming comedy that allows us to confront the monotony of life, making it reminiscent of Waiting for Godot. Like Estragon and Vladimir, the monks find fulfilment not in the pursuit of an ever-elusive goal, but in each other. Hearing Luján and Hortigüela speak about cherished moments spent with loved ones, you realize we’re all monks in one way or another, committed to serving a higher purpose — people. MONKS proves that we can find absolution in the simple joy of playing together.

Our lives are full of pain — traffic, taxes, standing in the Fringe rush line while it’s pouring — but it’s comforting to know that there are shows like MONKS that make all that suffering feel worthwhile.

**In Crosstown, HRH Anand Rajaram takes us on a journey around Toronto using his voice alone**

by Jenna James

Disclaimer: This was a preview performance of Crosstown.

In @N@f@N@’s Crosstown, privilege is not a plateau — it is an ever-slanting precipice to hook into, toe the edge of, and tumble all the way down.

In his riveting one-man adaptation of Richard Scrimger’s 1996 novel of the same name, writer and performer HRH Anand Rajaram manages to do all this and more with just a music stand and a piece of clear plastic. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the source material, though — a show like this is best to head into without any knowledge of what’s to come.

Crosstown is comprised of two timelines, both circling each other until they crash into a halting midpoint. In the present, Mitchell is unhoused, wandering the streets after he was kicked out of the park he had been sleeping in. Looking to access a shelter across town, he encounters a collection of kind souls and hard-asses that help and hinder him on his journey.

Yet with the chime of a kalimba, we are thrust into the past, where Dr. Mitchell — a lowly obstetrician — tries to balance risk and reward to build the career that could finally grant him a sense of stability. But as luxury and comfort enter his life — a position on the ominously titled “board,” a loving wife and daughter — so too does the creeping knowledge that the more you gain, the more you have to lose.

As the story oscillates between sleeping in church pews and sleeping in mansions, the price of ambition ripples and swells into a clear understanding: poverty is always in startling proximity, no matter what measures you take to set it back.

Pay close attention because it doesn’t take long to get from one end of Crosstown to the other. Rajaram’s vocal puppeteering brings humour, compassion, and heartbreak to a suite of over 20 characters. Regardless of the multiple voices he juggles (I swear he spoke over himself at one point!), the stage never feels too aurally crowded. But he is equally a connoisseur of a space left blank, leaving the audience in suspense until everything hurtles back toward disaster.

Despite Rajaram’s theatrical precision, some clarity is lost when moving between scenes. Using the metal peal of the kalimba as a signifier of a chronological shift is a strong choice; however, things get a bit muddy when the same sound is used not only for changes from scene to scene, but also from timeline to timeline. You won’t be lost for long, though — Rajaram’s efficient use of dialogue ensures that only a few seconds are missed before you know exactly where and when you are.

In defiance of the confines of the Tarragon Extraspace, every Toronto alleyway, musty church, and hospital is brought to life before us, and with it, the portrait of a man at the crux of class and loss. In assigning a complex and nuanced story to the too-often invisible front of poverty, this show makes a strong addition to Toronto’s burgeoning efforts to bring awareness to its houseless-ness crisis. Crosstown is a Fringe must-see and a testament to the stories we choose to tell about ourselves.

The Toronto Fringe Festival runs July 3 to 14. More information is available here.

WRITTEN BY

Toronto Fringe New Young Reviewers Program

The New Young Reviewers Program (previously, Teenjur Young Critics), supported by the Jon Kaplan Legacy Fund, is a workshop series and writing group for emerging theatre and performance reviewers Canada-wide, ages 15 and up.

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