A whale of a good time: the very last of the Fringe festival play reviews

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This article was published 23/07/2024 (410 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NOT QUITE SHERLOCK: THE TUNNEL OF TERROR

Chris Gibbs 2

MTYP Mainstage (Venue 21), to Sunday

🐟🐟🐟 ½

The Tunnel of Terror, the bottom half of Torontonian (by way of England) Chris Gibbs’ Not Quite Sherlock double bill at this year’s fringe runs 75 minutes, as usual. (His opening performance Monday ran five minutes overtime.) The Tunnel of Terror is suspiciously close in plot to last year’s outing, The Case of the Mysterious Mystery. It too involves a missing man, a distraught wife, and a fiendish act of Victorian-era terrorism.

Certainly, the relationship remains the same between gullible twit Barnaby Gibbs (channelling the spirit of Nigel Bruce’s Watson in the Basil Rathbone Holmes movies) and master sleuth/jewel thief Antoine Feval, who this time matches with with Gibbs’ old school bully – Flashman to Gibbs’ Tom Brown — as well as a brutish Canadian henchman. (Gibbs knows full well how Canadians love to see their collective character besmirched on stage.)

A dab hand at voicing sundry ridiculous characters, Gibbs loves to incorporate his own issues into the narrative, thus having Barnaby blaming a split in his costume seam on an overindulgence of the smokies purchased by RMTC. It’s all in good fun, throwing a little itching powder down the back of the Holmes legacy, even as it pays cockeyed tribute at the same time.

— Randall King

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