If you’re new to Fringing our rave reviews can help you decide which shows to see. They’re the ones with the little green Rave Review in brackets next to them on the Fringe Reviews list.

These are the shows that made our reviewers want to run out of the theatre, grab people, and tell them that they absolutely ‘have to go see this show, it’s amazing’. Well, they make me want to do that.

It’s not the only way to pick a show but it’s one way to get started. Here are a few that our writers have raved about.

Continue reading July 10 Rave Roundup for the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival →

From Press Release

Scotch Tape is Marryl Smith’s debut as a solo performer and playwright. After facing a lot of unexpected changes in her life this past year—quitting acting, running away to the South of France, falling in love, falling out of love (thank God), learning French but forgetting who she was—Marryl has found herself again, and her love of theatre. Life handed her lemons, and her lemonade is this one woman show. “I wrote this play for me, but I am performing it for every woman who has felt like her story was being told by someone else.” Together with director Clarice Goetz, this dream team of feisty ladies are here to take back the narrative.

From Press Release

Stranded in the unknown space between life and death, a shocking secret has come to light. Join the cast of Ether on an unsettling journey from this realm into the beyond, where past regrets come back to haunt us. In a room with no entrances or exits, the characters must navigate the defining moments of their lives, but can they outrun their shame forever? Exploring the relationship between morality and the afterlife, Ether unites an unlikely group of women to confront the betrayal and inaction that may have cost them their lives. Perhaps they can brave this limbo together.

Loosely based on the life and observations of playwright and actor, Brendee Green (best known for her recurring role on Global TV’s Rookie Blue), the characters of Ether are firmly rooted in her experience as a queer woman in 2019. Though the events of the play have taken on their own narrative, Ms. Green voices her unique perspective as a caretaker, minority, and domestic partner through her characters’ unusual journeys. A vehicle to examine questions of identity and self-acceptance in an uncertain moral environment, the production demonstrates the challenges and social expectations of womanhood from the 1950s to present day.

From the creative minds behind Spadina Museum’s 2018 immersive horror-opera, The Medium, comes a highly anticipated collaboration between directors Brandon White and Shannon Mills of White Mills Theatre Co. Ether marks the company’s first departure from opera since its inception, as well as their Fringe Festival debut. A shocking journey into the unknown, Ether is certain to transport audiences beyond the limits of life and death.

From Press Release

Wherever Our Heroine goes, she is not Black Enough nor White Enough to find her people. In Who you Callin Black Eh? Our Heroine does not live in the utopian world that is non-racist, non-sexist, multi-racial, and colour-blind that many twenty-somethings claim is their world.

Who You Callin Black Eh?, world premiere at the Toronto Fringe 2019, is a coming of age/identity play set in Canada’s largest, most multicultural, multilingual city, that is not about sexuality, but about colour. Our Heroine is slowly pushed to the unstable brink of personality disorder, colour disorder.

Playwright/Producer Rita Shelton Deverell, broadcaster, theatre artist, and Member of the Order of Canada, says: “I grew up in the US South pre-civil rights legislation. I’m black and that’s that. But I’ve discovered that for many young people, biracial young people especially, black or white is not the end of their story. Shadism is their reality.” The play is written for 5 actors, 21 scenes, and many masks in colours and shades.

Who you Callin Black Eh? boasts an award-winning Ensemble: Director Clara McBride, lecturer at Ryerson School of Performance, teacher in the MA program at RADA, Director “How to Beat Up Any Man” by Carol Zoccoli at the Second City; Designer Jim Plaxton, 8 Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding Design, Associate Artistic Director for Theatre Passe Muraille in the mid 1980’s; Actor/stage manager Clayton Batson, two episodes of “Paranormal 911”, Gallery 44 and Artscape Youngespace, Featured artist at 2018 exhibit “Exposing Liminalities”. Actors: Jessica Bowmer, “F*cking Perfect”, Best of Fringe 2018, Theatre Performance Scholarship and Academic Excellence in all studio classes award, Humber College; Brendan Chandler, “Spirit Horse” Pa/Grandfather, Roseneath Theatre, “Almighty Voice & His Wife” Voice/Ghost, Theatre Kingston; Chattrisse Dolabaille, High Society Cabaret’s “The Silent Goodbye”, Mysterious Entity Theatre’s “The Blind Eye”; Jason Pilgrim, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Stage Centre Productions, “Ghostbusters: The Movie Experience”; and Iliana Spirakis, one of the creators and performers of the devised Fringe Festival show “F*cking Perfect”, Best of Fringe 2018; Musician: Osaze Dolabaille who has been performing and teaching African percussion for 18 years.

Toronto Fringe 2019 Performance Times – Factory Theatre Studio Thu 4th Jul, 10:15 pm; Sat 6th Jul, 6:45 pm; Sun 7th Jul, 1:00 pm; Tue 9th Jul, 8:00 pm; Thu 11th Jul, 5:45 pm; Fri 12th Jul, 4:15 pm; Sun 14th Jul, 12:15 pm