Generic Male: Just What We Need, Another Show About Men

PUSH Physical Theatre—The Rachel Browne Theatre

Intensely physical and intensely emotional. Exploring the male experience from the inside, the fundamental fear and inability to convey it, the toxic standards imposed upon it by society, the suffering it causes both within and without, are not generally things one would consider to be “light fringe fair”. But paired with exceptionally good comedy and a deep personal earnestness the show earns every single one of its beats, from laughter to tears.

Josh Fidelak

Tomatoes Tried To Kill Me But Banjos Saved My Life

Quivering Dendrites—PTE – Colin Jackson Studio

It’s always a pleasure to spend time with the charming, self-effacing Keith Alessi. While engagingly unfolding his true tale of a fatal prognosis and his narrow escape, you will be treated to his wonderful and hard-earned mastery of the banjo, along with rib-tickling jokes. I never imagined there were so many banjo gags. I particularly loved his tales of his original home of Virginia, where possum is a food staple. We cracked up over his song about a drooling driver anticipating knocking down a five pound critter for a delicious change of fare. Keith even brought a can of possum!

This show is unique, extremely enjoyable and well worth your time. You also get some valuable info about the importance of the theme to ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’; and some history of bluegrass.

The messages he wishes to impart: express your appreciation of those around you while you are still able to do so, and the healing powers of art and music. He says he’s working on a banjo opera; so let’s see what he comes up with next year. When you have have story so nice, we don’t mind it twice. But just.

Lisa Campbell

As It Turns Out…

TBA Productions—The Clock Tower – Portage Place

This play ran 75 minutes; it should have stopped at 60. The formula of any good tale includes an intro, development, a climax, then resolution. The climax came at 55 minutes and the resolution went another 15. The last 15 minutes were completely irrelevant and offered nothing more to the story.

As for the story, it’s a soap opera—that’s all. If you habitually follow The Young and the Restless, this is for you. Otherwise, meh.

Ray Yuen

Bat Brains or let’s explore mental illness with vampires

Scantily Glad Theatre—MTC Up the Alley

Deeply personal and spectacularly physical comedy. Despite being extremely funny and sure to satisfy anyone looking for a laugh, the show manages to address the serious mental health struggles of both the real life performer and character with the gravity and care the topic deserves. Take all those elements, add some great fourth wall breaks and unexpected freshness, and you’ve got the quintessential fringe show.

Josh Fidelak

Se’ed

jurasco—The Cinematheque

This one man show by a 4th generation farmer, starts with some reflections on language and how it affects our perceptions as well as the magic of seeds. He then goes into some of the history of pesticides, insecticides, and other supposedly “safe” chemicals and how they were pushed by corporations in the 60’s to improve agriculture. Other topics include GMOs, gene modification using CRISPR, the influence of money on agriculture and society.

He is very passionate about all these topics and hopes to help people realize the dangers these issues pose to society and how we need to restore our connection with the Earth and respect nature.

Murray Hunter

Dark Horse Theatre

The Beginner’s Guide To Suicide—Cre8ery

Feeling sad? Depressed? Seriously down in the dumps? So is the main character in “The Beginner’s Guide To Suicide”, playing now at Venue #11 (The Cre8ery). See the show that sold out it’s opening night and got a thunderous ovation from the delighted crowd. Trust me, it’s not as dark as its title might lead you to believe. One viewer even called it “life-affirming”. Come and find out why. We’d love to have you there.

Art by Dave Pruden

It is Saturday morning and I’ve finally found some time to write a quick update. It has been a hectic few first days at the Winnipeg Fringe. Trying to see and review shows, upload the reviews from the public and our team of reviewers to the website, and shake out some of the rust and bugs has put me a bit behind schedule. So this will be a pretty short update. Thankfully Dave Pruden is back with his wonderful cartoons to make this website more visually appealing. Amazingly we have over 30 reviews already posted.

Apostrophes, Ampersands, Commas and other shady characters—Another side effect of being away for a couple years was remembering how all the back end of the website worked. I had set up the website last Fringe to include the convenient list of shows that were reviewed and those which had Shameless Self-Promotions. I had made those links go to a summary page that included the details from our online program guide to make it easy to see all the details of the show. Unfortunately, our content management system seems to not handle the aforementioned characters very well when they appear in show titles. By some stroke of bad luck a large number of the first set of reviews all had one of those troublemakers in the titles, so there may be a few bugs when you click those links. I hope to have that sorted out in the next day or so.

Tiny Screens, a Little Different—We had also tried to improve the look of the website for those viewing the site on mobile devices. The navigation still isn’t ideal and it appears I need to limit the search to this year’s content, but it should be more functional than the last Fringe.

Other Observations—The new venues on the 2nd Floor of Portage Place (The Fountain and The Clock Tower) are pretty good, the Fringe did a fine job of setting up risers for seating. With all the changes to Old Market Square, one beef I have heard about is the lack of the “Big Show Board” at Info Tent. It was nice to have a central location for people walking through Old Market Square to see what shows were next on the schedule and if there were still seats available for them. It would be good to bring this back.

A big thanks to those who have sent in reviews, please keep them coming. If you thought one of our reviews missed the mark on a show you have seen, please send us in your thoughts. Also we are still accepting Shameless Self-Promotion from any company that hasn’t sent one in yet. Happy Fringing!

Murray Hunter

Courtship

Snakeskin Jacket—John Hirsch Mainstage

Early twentieth century charm and well-to-do affect suffuses the deep personal relationships forming the bedrock of the show, with charming conversations to demonstrate them. The romantic aspirations of our lead are perfectly presented, and the contrasting stuffy, oppressive standards of her father and mother are equally well articulated. Well written and directed, with strong acting backing everything up, the only real question is if you’re looking for a period piece romantic semi-comedy.

Josh Fidelak

Chris Gibbs, Old is the New New

Kelly Finnegan Productions—The King’s Head Pub

Chris Gibbs returns to the stage for a fun visit showcasing his story based stand up act. While he based it on some of his old sets, he often wanders into an aside, and sometimes his asides have asides. No matter how off track he might seem, he always manages to find the funny side of things, and bring it all back to the story he was tellng.

He touched on his acting career, child birth and camping among many other subjects. It is just like a visit with a very funny old friend when you see one of his shows. Welcome back!

Murray Hunter

Ask Me Anything

Keep It Movin’ Productions—The Cinematheque

Part absurdist skit comedy, part unhinged sexual education lesson and part earnest call for social justice and political progressivism, this hour long storytelling performance has a strong heart with a perhaps confused intended audience. Touching lightly on all it’s constituent elements, for anyone lacking knowledge and context for the sexual education and political themes would likely be left in the dust, but for anyone already interested and informed it could serve as a good comedic exploration.

Josh Fidelak