Catch of the day: Five-star shows at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/07/2024 (412 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival offers many, many shows — and all of them have been reviewed by our dedicated team of writers.

There is something for everyone to see and enjoy, but there is a lot to choose from. If you don’t want to “eeny meeny miney mo” to decide what to watch, take a look at the list of shows that received the highest rating from our reviewers.

Check out the five-star — er that is… five-FISH — reviews from this year’s fringe festival below.

---

BETWEEN GIGS

Tickle the Lemur Productions

Rachel Browne Theatre (Venue 8), to Sunday, July 28

There are tens of dollars to be made in the world of musical accompaniment, Vince (Joseph Aragon) tells Moira (Heather Madill), a singer who never dreamed of becoming a soloist.

For years, Vince has been slapping together multiple streams of income to keep his melodic dreams alive, writing private opuses and corporate hold music. “Compose eight bars and you loop that shit,” he says. Vince needs a voice and, in Moira, finds one who can sightread right as wedding season is upon him.

A duet in song told through funny, sweet, and insightful conversational intermissions, the Madill- and Aragon-scripted Between Gigs is an etude in grief marked by measured performances. An introspective peek into the lives of artists forced to hyphenate, the two-hander is a meditation on the reasons we create, even as the rewards seem to diminish.

Aragon and Madill are wonderfully understated performers, with director and dramaturg Cory Wojcik instilling the production with balance and light.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Ben Waldman

---

BLOODLINE

Taylor Presents

Dave Barber Cinematheque (Venue 7), to Sunday July 28

Los Angeles-based, award-winning playwright, actor and director Paris Crayton III takes centre stage in this gripping 60-minute solo show. This semi-autobiographical monologue delves into the lives of three generations of men, all named Paris, exploring their struggles with love, identity and family legacy.

Crayton brings each Paris to life with raw authenticity and emotional depth. From Paris Sr., a Mississippi sharecropper chasing love, to Paris Jr., an animal technician grappling with fatherhood, and Paris III, a struggling artist searching for connection, Crayton navigates their stories with a poetic touch. His performance is captivating and evocative, blending moments of humour with scenes that stir a range of emotions.

With minimal props, Crayton’s seamless transitions among characters are nearly flawless, adding a lyrical quality to the narrative. He touches on Black masculinity with remarkable tenderness, offering a nuanced exploration of the complexities of identity and familial bonds. While Bloodline is engaging and heartfelt, Crayton’s exceptional talent and the show’s emotional depth make it a standout experience.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Thandi Vera

---

BURNS AND ALLEN: COMEDY DUO

Dog and Pony Shows

Tom Hendry Warehouse (Venue 6), to July 28

An hour flies by when you’re in the company of consummate double act Caity Curtis and Stephen Sim. Taking us back to the golden days of radio, when the vaudeville legends Gracie Allen and George Burns reigned supreme, the pair successfully capture the magic of the real-life comedic couple with impeccable vocal mimicry and comedic styling.

Expertly weaving their way through timelines, aided by recordings of the original comedy duo themselves, Curtis plays an absolutely pitch-perfect Allen (evidenced by the seamless continuation of a joke from a recorded skit) while Sim, complete with (unlit) cigar, has Burns’ droll delivery and languid posture down pat.

In a sparky performance full of wit, heart and laughs, Curtis and Sim invite us to fall under their spell and we’re only too happy to oblige. A masterclass in the art of comedy that hits all the right notes.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— AV Kitching

---

CIRCUS!

Mr. Circus Productions

MTYP Mainstage (Kids Venue), to Sunday

Local performer Isaac Girardin dazzles as a roadie-turned-juggler who must utilize Circus GPT to put on a performance after being left behind by his troupe. But there is no AI involved in this 45-minute joy as Girardin charms the audience, both young and old, with the usual circus staples (including an “animal” parade). Be warned, adults attending, you may be “voluntold” to assist during certain segments, but will walk away with a new talent for juggling.

Girardin has a natural ability to spellbind his mostly young audience through his bubbly personality and likability. Little ones, be sure to bring in your own animal headband or mask if you wish to take part in the impromptu parade!

Kids and their grown-ups will love this delightful show that manages to do the impossible: get a theatre full of children to listen to instruction.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Sonya Ballantyne

---

FAMILY MAGIC SHOW!

Evan Morgan/The Magic of Evan Morgan

MTYP Mainstage (Kids Venue), to July 28

With the audience in the palm of his hand and plenty of fun tricks up his sleeve, Winnipeg magician Evan Morgan wows both kids and adults with some seriously funny magic. This is Morgan’s first show at the fringe, but he’s got 25 years of performance backing him up and it shows.

Family Magic Show! has polish, pacing and patter, sprinkled with plenty of cheeky kid humour. Morgan even delivers some brief but nifty ventriloquism with a walk-on from his slightly naughty puppet Buddy. Featuring a problematic wand and an impressive finale, this is a well-designed, skilfully executed show.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Wendy King

---

HAPPY GO LUCKY

Shoshinz

Le Studio at Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 20), to Sunday

Tokyo’s Yanomi Shoshinz is the master behind this funny, touching and utterly magical one-woman puppetry show that will stay with you long after the lights come back up.

The 60-minute performance is composed of short stories starring charming puppet characters created and operated by Shoshinz: a two-faced woman who teaches us that honesty without tact might be cruelty, but saccharine false faces are also not to be trusted; a little xylophone-playing spirit whose head is operated by Shoshinz’s mouth and wee mallet feet are controlled by her hands; and a Little Red Riding Hood updated for 2024 who declares “I am famous!” by way of introduction when she steps onto her miniature stage.

Shoshinz herself is visible for the whole show, but you almost forget she’s there, a testament to her vivid, fully realized characters and her skilled puppetry. But it’s the last character, an elderly woman who quietly honours the memory of a loved one, who will leave you feeling like you just witnessed something truly special.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Jen Zoratti

---

HOUSE OF GOLD

Brighter Dark Theatre

The Output (Venue 12), to Saturday, July 27

The greedy adult children of country music legend John Gold have been milking his legacy for years. But when the family fortune dwindled, all hopes were pinned on grandson Jimmy (local playwright Thomas McLeod) to keep the cash flowing.

Now, Jimmy isn’t really Gold’s grandson — but he’s close enough. And when he doesn’t develop into the musical talent John Gold was, the desperate family pushes him along, resorting to exhaustive musical training, followed by drugs, psychological conditioning, and sabotaging his attempts at making outside friends.

Jimmy’s gentle surrogate mother Mary (Maggie Koreen) begs the family to let Jimmy live a normal life, but she is rebuffed chillingly: “You are a womb. Nothing more.” Now the family has one last extreme measure left to try…what could possibly go wrong?

McLeod wrote this darkly comedic thriller in only four months, citing The Twilight Zone and Succession as inspirations, along with input from the cast. Call it 50 minutes of fringe gold.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Janice Sawka

---

INGIE’S FINGIES

Snafu

PTE — Cherry Karpyshin Mainstage (Venue 16), to July 28

In this new hour-long family-friendly show, debuting in Winnipeg, Victoria, B.C., puppeteer Ingrid Hansen again lets her fingers do the walking to stunning effect.

Fans of Snafu’s recent raunchy fringe hit Epidermis Circus will be pleased to know the mischievous Baby Tyler — an old-timey baby-doll head sat atop Hansen’s bare hand, which acts as the body — is back, along with household items turned puppets, including a pair of mischievous gummi bears, a hunk of Play-Doh and more. A long set of tables is the stage for Hansen’s pint-sized “puppets,” some nothing more Hansen’s fingers (hence the title).

The hilarious five-ish minute miniature vignettes are projected onto a large overhead screen, where Hansen’s dazzling puppetry skills come to life, all delivered with little discernible dialogue (beyond incredibly cute gurgles) and occasional background music.

Letting the audience see how it’s all done heightens the magic of how Hansen transports the audience into her strange and endearing world, as the micro storylines, ever more visually dazzling, converge. She’s dynamic onstage, a perfect companion to the breathtaking, immersive and beautiful scenes she creates on the screen.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Ben Sigurdson

---

KICKED IN THE END

Shawn DeSouza-Coelho

Son of Warehouse (Venue 5), to Sunday, July 28

Gaining the audience’s trust from the outset with a charismatic, rapid-fire delivery (and a literal exercise in trust), Toronto’s Shawn DeSouza-Coelho delivers a lot more than a magic show.

After drawing people in with a riddle that he then repeats after giving a key word — illuminating the same clues in a new context — DeSouza-Coelho moves from self-deprecating patter about show biz conventions to often-moving autobiographical anecdotes.

Amplifying the comedic notes with expressive physicality, he moves deftly through emotional shifts to illuminate more than a simple magic effect — he takes the audience on a personal journey through Canada’s racism and xenophobia. He learned growing up that being “brown means: intruder,” and later observes, “The Canadian theatre… has always positioned my body as a problem.”

Fortunately for theatregoers, it didn’t stop him from performing. He delivers a tour-de-force one-man show with a stage magician’s charm and a spoken-word poet’s cadence and power.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— David Jón Fuller

---

SPANK BANK TIME MACHINE

John Michael Plays

Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 3), to Sunday

The title might scare off some punters but it’s apt, since the 60-minute show is not for the easily offended. But Chicago’s John Michael is a performance artist of a classical kind, the type who holds a mirror up to society, takes what is shameful and hidden and exposes it in all its ragged glory.

Here are the roots of queer theatre, full of blood and guts and bodies that leak and ooze in needle-strewn hovels. Here too is the celebration of life. Here is the Dantean journey through hell, the ferry across the river of no return. Here is the urban jungle. Here is the scream.

Here is a disciplined actor and writer who sees where the border of risk lies and runs headlong toward it with one tongue firmly in his cheek. Here is a man who does not play characters but instead shapeshifts before your eyes. Here is where you laugh at the unexpected. Here is where you want to crawl under your seat, ache to rush outside to gulp air, but instead sit frozen and wide-eyed.

Here is where salvation is in the big belly laughs and in the sanctifying message that art never dies.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Lara Rae

---

TANGO, IT TAKES TWO

PointeTango

John Hirsch Mainstage (Venue 1), to Saturday, July 27

Classical ballet smoulders with the slow burn of Argentine tango when PointeTango, hailing from Buenos Aires and Montreal, returns to the fringe after a two-year absence. This all-new, slickly paced one-hour dance show features the breathtaking artistry of choreographer/dancer Alexander Richardson and Erin Scott-Kafadar in intimate solos and duets, with the latter seemingly on tiptoe for the entire 50 minutes as she tosses off razor-sharp footwork en pointe (and later, stilettos) when not being lifted sky-high by Richardson, eliciting loud gasps from the audience.

Highlights include duet Mi viego Piazzolla — performed to a poem penned for the legendary tango composer — and La Capilla Blanca, a lushly romantic pas de deux in which Richardson sweeps Scott-Kafadar across the floor with sublime grace.

Evocative digital projections and archival film footage provide further steam, including several scenes in which the “live” couple is juxtaposed with their onscreen images performing in the bustling streets of the Argentine capital, creating many delicious “trompe l’oeil” effects.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Holly Harris

---

THE MAILROOM

JHG Creative

The Gargoyle Theatre (Venue 25), to July 28

A wacky, khaki musical about blue-collar employees clocking into a robotic company with an inhuman name, The Mailroom is an absurdist blend of ergonomics and economics, Avenue Q and Occupy Wall Street.

A wittily written missive delivered with corporate synergy, ruthless efficiency and more LPMs (laughs-per-minute) than any bureaucratic jargon could obscure, The Mailroom is further proof that neither rain, nor sleet nor automation can prevent the Harry S. Rintoul-winning JHG Creative team from doing what it does best.

Directed with chaotic energy and tight command by Ben Krawchuk, The Mailroom shoots its employees — Tom (a conspiring Connor Joseph), Lloyd (an ornery, scene-stealing Cuinn Joseph), Darcy (a steady-as-always Ian Ingram) and Marion (Monique Gauthier, hilariously refusing to be strung along) — through the pneumatic tubes of collective bargaining and protest, its characters learning to never, ever cower, even under threat of a brutal sacking.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Ben Waldman

---

THE ETHAN IN THE ROOM

Stark Raving Productions

Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 3), to Sunday

Ethan Stark knows how to throw a fascinating, unforgettable dinner party.

As the audience enters the theatre, the 23-year-old Stark — a Harry S. Rintoul-nominated playwright — sits in waiting, his wrists tied to the arms of a chair, his mouth restricted by a rag. It’s an invitation — for anxious audacity, for startling intimacy and for a deeply felt sketch rich in precise definitions.

The soirée is hosted by George (Sam Hodge), a manager of others who strives for self-actualization, along with his wife Marigold (Madyson Richard), who’s been led to believe she has only one role to play.

Hodge has a ball pulling the threads out of George’s buttoned-up persona, while Richard revels in needling domestic stereotypes.

The guests (Sadie Kornovski and Mari Padeanu) are well-cast and well-portrayed. As their conversation dances between inanity and revelation, Stark sits, bound to say something so potent, so clear, and so raw that it would be a disservice to describe it in such a brief space. There’s only one way to hear these actors, and their director, roar.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

— Ben Waldman

---

COLIN MOCHRIE LIVE AT THE WINNIPEG FRINGE

SMR Performance Society

PTE Cherry Karpashian Mainstage (Venue 16), to Thursday

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

If the humble realm of improv has an aristocracy, then the Scottish-born Canadian Colin Mochrie ranks high in the charts out of sheer boots-on-the-ground experience, including decades working both the British and American iterations of Whose Line Is It Anyway? He is simultaneously the Lord of Deadpan and the Baron of the Outrageous. Small wonder the opening night of his four-night fringe run at PTE was decidedly sold out.

Yet he cuts a modest figure on stage, opposite his chosen partner Edmonton-born Kevin Gillese (appearing elsewhere at the fringe in 7 Minutes in Kevin) and local musician/improviser Leif Ingebrigtsen.

It’s an improv show that blessedly minimizes audience involvement (save for one very funny scene that puts volunteers centre-stage). Monday night’s games, drawn from a pack of suggestions, ended up heavy on movie genres including western, noir and horror.

It’s familiar turf for any WLIIA fans, but the unassuming-looking Mochrie proves adept as ever at working his stealth magic, reliably supplying zingers with stunning frequency, while Gillese is a very effective manic foil to Mochrie’s cool. What a treat!

— Randall King