There’s still a few days left to check out the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival! If you want to make the most out of your theatre-going this week, here’s a look at a few rave reviews.
These are shows that blew our writers’ minds, got them talking, kept them enthralled, stuck with them, and made their editor write a list of exciting descriptive actions.
While we always encourage audiences to take risks at Fringe, here are some sharp picks that especially paid off for our team:
The Resistance Improvised (Kicks and Giggles Entertainment)
What It’s About: “Six characters attempt to overthrow a tyrannical government through sabotage. The “resistance” will scheme, share intelligence, and attempt up to five missions, all improvised by a slate of comedians. But there’s a catch: two members of the resistance are double agents, and will do all they can to wreck the operation from within. Will the resistance succeed, or will this betrayal prove fatal?”
Why Our Reviewer Loved It: “This show is inspired by one of the most popular grown-up board games of the last decade – watching it in this new format is an absolute delight, replacing all of that drama with some of the city’s best improvisers sizing each other up. If you’ve got a date, a group of gamer friends, or a hole in your schedule, The Resistance Improvised won’t let you down. (That is, if you believe I can be trusted).”
The December Man (Theatre@Eastminister)
What It’s About: “The December Man traverses the intangible, explosive tinderbox of grief and mental illness experienced by Jean (Jonas Trottier), a young man who was told to leave his classroom at gunpoint by Marc Lépine, the perpetrator of the mass murder now known as the Montreal Massacre.”
Why Our Reviewer Loved It: “Gripping, beautiful, and thoroughly stimulating … It is a richly authentic, intimately human storytelling of a family trying to grapple with the unthinkable.”
In Waking Life (Spicy Day)
What It’s About: “The show’s a zippy 50 minutes of fortune-telling, card-reading, horoscope-casting and audience advice, set against a backdrop which feels like an SNL sketch gone right.”
Why Our Reviewer Loved It: “This is also a show for all audiences: the overall energy is playful and non-judgemental. Everyone along the spectrum from skeptic to scholar (and all the “spiritual-but-only-in-a-fun-non-committal-way” people in between) will get their hooks right into the show.”