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Theatre Reviews

Blog Thurs­day July 27 — My Per­son­al Top Ten List

This has been a real­ly good Fringe. For me, it’s been the best in recent mem­o­ry. Of the 43 shows I’ve seen so far, there have been 3 ter­rif­ic shows, 19 real­ly good shows, 12 aver­age shows and 9 poor shows.
Which makes pick­ing a top ten list real­ly dif­fi­cult. But here goes…

1. The House of Yes (Venue 6 — Tom Hendry Ware­house) — The ulti­mate dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly com­e­dy. You won’t believe what the char­ac­ters say and do.

2. Catal­pa (Venue 13 — School of Con­tem­po­rary Dancers) — A visu­al feast with an ener­getic per­for­mance by Sharon Bajer, plus live sound effects and all props cre­at­ed using cur­tains.

3. A Sol­dier’s War (Venue 12 — Asper Cen­tre for The­atre & Film — U of W) — A look at how sol­diers are affect­ed by war. I was hooked from the open­ing scene.

4. Leash Your Poten­tial (Venue 7 — The Cin­e­math­eque) — A fun­ny satire on how office work­ers should do as lit­tle work as pos­si­ble, because com­plet­ing work only needs to more work. If you don’t like your job, you’ll love this show.

5. How to Starve an Artist (Venue 22 — MTYP Richard­son Hall) — Smart yet very fun­ny spo­ken word poet­ry from for­mer Win­nipeg­ger Rose Con­do.

6. Mac­beth (Venue 16 — PTE Main­stage) — An inno­v­a­tive take on a Shake­speare­an clas­sic. This fast mov­ing show is lit using flash­lights held by the actors.

7. The Pre­his­to­ry of Moses P (Venue 10 — Plan­e­tar­i­um Audi­to­ri­um) — Erik de Waal con­nects two seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed sto­ries that will make you angry about the injus­tice in apartheid era South Africa.

8. The Places We Go (Venue 3 — Pan­tages Stu­dio) — Using a com­bi­na­tion of mov­ing images, pro­ject­ed shad­ows and sound effects, this group mag­i­cal­ly tells the sto­ry of a young girl try­ing to buy a birth­day gift for her moth­er.

9. Olive Cop­per­bot­tom: A New Musi­cal by Charles Dick­ens and Pen­ny Ash­ton (Venue 24 — West End Cul­tur­al Cen­tre Ven­tu­ra Hall) — Ash­ton cap­tures the inno­cence and mean­ness of Dick­ens’ work in this sur­pris­ing­ly fun­ny one-woman show.

10. Stones + Bones (Venue 6 — Tom Hendry Ware­house) — A love­ly sto­ry about a girl who meets a play­ful dev­il in a mys­te­ri­ous place.
Quote of the Day
It’s like Thel­ma and Louise, the Cana­di­an way — with­out the guns and road rage.”
From Resilient: An Adoptee’s Fight for her Iden­ti­ty (Venue 4).
Good­bye
That pret­ty well ends our cov­er­age of the Win­nipeg Fringe Fes­ti­val. Hope you enjoyed it. Of course, the Fringe runs until Sun­day night. Enjoy the rest of the fes­ti­val and we’ll see you next year.