Fringe reviews #12: You blink and the clown is closer

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This article was published 20/07/2025 (420 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CHASE PADGETT: HOW TO PLAY GUITAR POORLY

Chase Padgett

PTE — Cherry Karpyshin Mainstage (Venue 16), to Sunday

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Fringe favourite Chase Padgett returns with a powerful new show with a title that is both true and serves as a slight misdirection: sure, if you follow his eight rules for playing guitar poorly (make it hard to access, never express joy, don’t learn theory, etc), you will stink on the six-string, but if you do exactly the opposite of what he says, you can succeed in doing what you love.

Padgett’s (6 Guitars, Nashville Hurricane) latest one-man performance is his most personal yet, as the Naples, Fla., native relates in gripping detail his relationships with his father and his musical mentor, along with his rise to small-F fame and lack of fortune. The 42-year-old has a music degree and is a master storyteller, weaving heartwarming and heart-wrenching tales from his life in with original songs and some poignant covers.

The 60-minute show spans the entire emotional spectrum and will have you laughing, crying and thinking more about how interesting construction cranes are.

— Rob Williams

DIVORCE CLUB

TBA Productions

John Hirsch Mainstage (Venue 1), to Saturday

⭐⭐ ½

Things get tense among the women in Divorce Club when one of the jilted ladies brings in a new member — a man. A man who isn’t who he says, but the group isn’t exactly what it seems, either.

This hour-long comedy from a local company is steeped in white wine and clichés; the women here are bitter and out for blood, mostly that of the “newer models” their husbands “traded them in for.” (Groan.)

While there are a few laugh-out-loud moments, thanks mostly to Shannon McCarroll, who brings a Sophia-from-Golden-Girls deadpan to her performance as club VP Katherine, the other actors’ performances are often too straight for the play’s soapy premise. Some lines are flat, as if being read, and the whole thing suffers from odd, distracting blocking. This one could be really fun if its actors leaned into the silly.

— Jen Zoratti

FINDING RICHARD CLOSE

So I Guess We’re Doing This? Theatre Company

Asper Centre for Theatre and Film (Venue 10), to Sunday

⭐⭐⭐ ½

Lisa Habermehl is a real-life family doctor whose original intent was to write a comedy, but as she explains in the show’s digital program, the mother dying offstage presented a real challenge.

But humour is a most solid companion on the road to death, both in life and onstage with this Kenora, Ont.-based company. Ethan (Jonny Grek) and Maryn (Habermehl) have not seen each other since she, the eldest, left her brother and mother in a huff decades before. Ethan has summoned her and husband (Derek Favreau) to London, England, as their unmotherly mother breathes her last. The painful gulf between these siblings gets mended as they accept her written command to find Richard Close and the answers to many questions.

Brief moments of stiffness aside, the production is warm, very funny and deeply moving.

Also of note: the spartan set, composed of two doorways, is ingenious; the mother’s feather trimmed fuchsia dressing gown deserves its own acting credit; and that great music played before the show is by another Kenora star, Jackson Klippenstein.

— Denise Duguay

THE GOOSE

Tin Fish

The Gargoyle Theatre (Venue 25), to Sunday

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Transposing a Japanese folk tale, The Crane Wife, to a drought-ridden prairie farm in the Dirty ’30s, this three-person drama weaves a transcendent spell.

Winnipeg writer-director Ellen Peterson beautifully renders a haunting story that resonates with mythological power (sounding some echoes of Swan Lake). The evocative acoustic score by Lloyd Peterson, exquisite visual and sound effects and superb performances coalesce into a breathtaking whole.

After a gentle farmer (Delf Gravert) finds a trapped goose and sets it free, he meets and marries a strange, naive young woman, unaware that she’s the bird in human form. The new bride tries valiantly to please her hardbitten mother-in-law (Maggie Nagel) and begins weaving in seclusion to support the household.

The hour-long tale metaphorically suggests the struggle of a foreign-born wife to adapt to a new culture. Gwendolyn Collins is simply stunning — and very funny when she tries to suppress her honk — as the endearingly skittish goose-woman who asks so little and sacrifices so much.

— Alison Mayes

THE ILLUSIONARY MAGIC OF SITRUC JAMES

PTE — Colin Jackson Studio (Venue 17), to Sunday

⭐⭐⭐ ½

Illusionist Sitric James, from the presumably magical place of Riceton, Sask, practises old-school magic. When was the last time you saw a fringe wizard with a spangly-clad assistant?

The tricks are very traditional: the linking metal rings, the sawing-a-woman-in-half trick and the Zig-Zag Girl. (Shout-out to the assistant “Sarah,” whose own talents are necessarily secret but invaluable to the show.)

James has a big, blustery manner as one would expect from a traditional showman. He will require volunteers from the audience, and he handles children with ease, but he is not above the sly aside delivered to adults. You can’t blame him. When viewed live, it turns out the trappings of traditional magic are a tad kinky, what with people being tied up and strapped down.

— Randall King

INSTANT MODERN CLASSIC

The Improv Company

PTE – Cherry Karpyshin Mainstage (Venue 16), to Saturday

⭐⭐⭐

A skilled group of local and American improv veterans presents what maestro Stephen Sim promises to be a made-up-on-the-spot production that will feel like a real play, decided on a show-by-show basis after a conversation with the audience.

Saturday’s performance turned into a family drama called The Condo, revolving around sisters Jessica (Kerri Woloszyn), Cynthia (Caity Curtis) and Margie (Jeannine Clarke), whose father (Sim) has signed the condo they all live in over to the catty Cynthia on sweet Jessica’s birthday.

Naturally, this proves problematic. Along the way we meet Margie’s one-night-stand Dough (Kevin Ramberran), who provides the much-needed comic relief, and Kevin (Tony Beeman), Jessica’s ex, who throws out some of the best lines.

The characters were well-defined, but the story couldn’t match the talent of the cast, and the two big reveals were unsatisfactory. But the next show is going to be completely different, so there could be a modern classic presented at some point.

— Rob Williams

JULIUS CAESAR

Indifferently Reformed

Asper Centre for Theatre & Film (Venue 10), to Saturday

⭐⭐⭐⭐ ½

“I love the people and the people love me!” These words, brayed by this local company’s title character, are the Trumpian icing on the chilling cake of this perfectly timed Shakespearean adaptation.

But while this tragedy eerily benefits from the headlines about MAGA turning on the U.S. president over the release of the Epstein files, the work of this sharp-dressed troupe stands on its own powerful talent.

In modern dress, and trimmed to fit 75 minutes, it asks and partially answers the question of how to challenge unchecked power and ambition. Spoiler alert: nobody here wins, certainly not Caesar, played with sinister slapstick by Cole Recksiedler; not onetime devotee Brutus, portrayed on the knife edge of moral outrage and devotion to democratic ideals by Isabella Lischka; or even Ben Robertson’s deliciously drawling Marc Antony.

All hail this Caesar.

Make sure to go early, to enjoy the pre-show cable-news-channel-style video clips that help establish the characters. Quibble: the seats in the Asper Centre really rock, and not in a good way.

— Denise Duguay

A PETE SEEGER TRIBUTE

Woody’s Choice

Centre culturel franco-manitobain (Venue 4), to Saturday

⭐⭐⭐

Diehard folkies will love this musical tribute. Winnipeg band Woody’s Choice — Gary Watkins (banjo/guitar/vocals), Beverly Solomon (guitar/vocals), Jim Waterous (bass/vocals), and Linda Cassell (percussion/vocals) — pays homage to American folksinger Peter Seeger with such iconic hits as We Shall Overcome, Where Have All the Flowers Gone and If I Had a Hammer.

Watkins sets up each of the tunes with lore; more of his personal stories, including his volunteering on Seeger’s sloop, would have made this a more compelling show. The 10 songs (out an intended setlist of 12) often felt overly homogenous, lacking the passionate zeal of a political activist.

A few technical glitches with the visual projections also marred the overall performance, with the house lights virtually on throughout, making the audience participation/sing-along numbers painfully self-conscious. An in over 10 years of fringe reviewing, this reviewer has never had a curtain literally closed on performers attempting to deliver their final number, with audience members filing out as the band played on.

— Holly Harris

SAINTS & SINNERS

Crosseyed Rascals

One88 (Venue 23), to Saturday

⭐⭐ ½

Right on brand with this year’s fringe marketing campaign, Winnipeg’s Crosseyed Rascals have locked in for their Choose Your Own Adventure clean improv show.

The 60-minute performance commences with the audience calling out suggestions, landing on five scenes to be acted by five of the “rascals,” who are subsequently voted out by the audience each round.

Following the completion of each round of scenes, the troupe dives into a “mini game” style of improv. While this format allows for ample audience participation, it also allots the majority of time to scenes not worth playing out.

The troupe’s members do their best to get creative with the audience’s input but occasionally gets in their own way of bringing those ideas to a natural conclusion. Whether it be by not rolling with the punches or hesitating to commit to a storyline with the most interesting or comical outcome, these approaches left scenes losing momentum and laughs. (Note: late-night shows welcome “dirty” guest improvisers for a saints-vs.-sinners improv battle.)

— Nadya Pankiw

TRAGEDY OR TRIUMPH: AN IMPROVISED SHAKESPEAREAN EPIC

The Spontaneous Shakespeare Company

MTC Mainstage (Venue 1), to Sunday

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This seven-member troupe from Vancouver (travel budget — ouch!) came all the way to the Winnipeg fringe with neither script nor plot — and it’s amazing.

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They begin by asking audience members to recount a recent minor mishap. At Saturday’s show, a Transcona dental hygenist related that she was late for her job after getting stuck at a train crossing.

And zounds! The company doth live up to its name, as the tale of a mother and son yearning to leave London town for the wonderous Transcona crosses paths with Elizabethan-era dentists at the dawn of the profession, a team of travelling tooth-sellers, and the Tooth Fairie Queen and her minion, Cobweb.

All the iconic Shakespearean devices are there: Meddling fairies, magical spells gone wrong, clashes between the classes, and passionate romance. It’s all hilariously improvised with Shakespearean-style speech and in rhyming couplets.

Get ye hence with haste, before time runneth out.

— Janice Sawka