The drama club at the St. Catherine’s all girls school is struggling to put on their first play, Sophocles’ Antigone. This all-girls Catholic school in the ’90s has their work cut out for them in staging this famous tragedy but if the struggles in the play alone weren’t enough, their male director is caught in a scandal right before opening night. Playing at this year’s digital Fringe Festival, Antigone, As Presented by the Girls at St. Catherine’s (An Excerpt), presented by Monologue Slam Canada, is a coming of age story that deals with all the pitfalls of growing up.
Fringe Festival
A collection of everything to do with the Toronto Fringe Festival, including reviews, features, press releases etc.
Honeymoon: Played Out (Ok, theatre) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review
Honeymoon: Played Out, produced by Ok, theatre and now playing in the 2021 Virtual Toronto Fringe Festival, bills itself as a “curated arts spree featuring over a dozen new and exciting young artists.” This is its second installment, the first being a live event in 2019 before the world shut down.
As the company title’s sly reference to the “Ok, boomer” meme suggests, this is a show filled with young talents hoping to blast their way past the establishment into recognition. As its previous live incarnation suggests, it closely resembles a chill night at a trendy, grooving open mic in a downtown warehouse, but with better transitions. While it loses some of its vibe in the digital translation, it’s funky fresh enough.
Continue reading Honeymoon: Played Out (Ok, theatre) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review
Bannock Republic (Centre for Indigenous Theatre) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review
Cree playwright Kenneth T. Williams’ Bannock Republic comes to the Toronto Fringe Festival with the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. Written in 2010, the production feels as if it could have been written this month as the characters reveal the devastation of the generational trauma caused by the Residential School System. Continue reading Bannock Republic (Centre for Indigenous Theatre) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review
We Knew Each Other Once Before (Sheridan College and Open Door Theatre Collective) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review
We Knew Each Other Once Before (now playing at the Toronto Fringe Festival) is a collection of experimental, abstract videos curated by Dante Green and created as part of a 3 week collaboration undertaken by Green and the students of Sheridan College’s Musical Theatre class of 2022. Each of the videos has some sort of tangential relationship to the theme of connection, which is the thread that ties them together. Taken as a whole, I found the experience to be like scrolling through an Instagram feed, filled with beautiful images focused on aesthetic, pretty little ukulele ditties, and slam poetry-style reflections on missed connections. If you like those things, you’ll enjoy the show. Continue reading We Knew Each Other Once Before (Sheridan College and Open Door Theatre Collective) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review
UnTuned (Golvareh) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review
Golvareh’s UnTuned (playing now at the Toronto Fringe Festival) is a compelling character study of a 40-year-old Iranian-Canadian music teacher struggling with his fears of inadequacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. On his 40th birthday, Massoud (Amirhosein Taheri) takes phone calls with six different women and each phone call gives the audience a little more insight into his life. (It’s kind of like a more realistic version of Fellini’s 8 ½ and Arthur Kopit’s Nine). The seemingly improvised dialogue and fantastic performances from the whole ensemble cast make watching this intimate portrait of a man a really enjoyable experience.
Continue reading UnTuned (Golvareh) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review