If you spot me around the festival, exhausted and bewildered, like a famished Harlequin chasing a fly for dinner, don’t worry. That is simply the lazzo-like rhythm a critic must surrender to in order to keep up with Fringe: moving from venue to venue, day after day, like an itinerant Italian troupe crossing 17th-century Europe. Before the next frantic stretch begins, let me hand you a canovaccio for your route.
Covered in this article, in order of recommendation: CAMP!, Ex-Change of Words, By Popular Demand, Spiritual Bob Is Trapped in Paradise!, Above the Hospital, Hang in There!, and Our Lady of Wayward Sissies.
CAMP! (Effervescent.) No wonder Margot Greve’s new musical is sold out at Fringe. From its frolicsome opening number, as teenagers tumble into summer camp in a rush of excitement, the young ensemble radiates infectious energy. The choral work is crisp, the choreography fluid, and Ben Kopp’s songs have humour and drive, even if they occasionally lean into repetition. And beneath all that zip lies a poignant narrative frame. At its centre are Nova and August, who have spent every summer together since they were nine. Now, in their final summer at camp, they can barely stand each other. What happened? The show unfolds as a kind of investigation, with the ensemble exuberantly searching for clues and trying to fix what has broken.
Greve turns a familiar coming-of-age premise into something less obvious: a tender study of how two people can love each other deeply yet still drift apart. The canoe song catches in the throat: finally alone, Nova and August try to retrace what their friendship has meant, but cannot quite form a complete thought. Kopp’s lyrics are built from interrupted and unfinished lines. It is the wordlessness of affection.
EX-CHANGE OF WORDS. (Intimate.) Can two exes really be friends? That question animates Danny Sylvan’s play, though the script soon delves into thornier territory, including power dynamics and generational differences in understanding intimacy. At a small dinner, former partners Curtis (Ryan Kelly) and Derrick (Sylvan) reunite a year after their relationship ended. Curtis is white, in his early 40s, comfortably employed, and allergic to difficult conversations. Derrick is Black, finishing university, and fluent in the vocabulary of therapy. Their clash is not simply romantic fallout but a collision between two models of care.
Kelly delivers a highly theatrical performance, with an exuberance that occasionally feels oversized for the intimacy of the RBC Studio, yet it also makes the character immediately charming. Sylvan, with his high, sing-song delivery, operates in an entirely different register, making their scenes feel like two emotional vocabularies struggling to translate each other. The piece is fascinating, and a promising second-act twist opens up interesting dramatic possibilities, though its impact is diluted by hurried writing and uneven progression. Still, in its post-happily-ever-after terrain, the play lands on a resonant question: what does it mean to remain in someone’s life after love has changed shape?
BY POPULAR DEMAND. (Bubbly.) Oh, our Roaring Twenties: economic dread, impossible Air Canada fares and a Great Depression just around the corner. In Janelle McGuinness’s solo cabaret, the 2020s become their own age of anxiety – and a surprisingly buoyant one. From TTC f**kboy to classroom dread, the performer turns contemporary panic into fizzy entertainment, sliding between self-aware satire and direct audience play. She does not so much break the fourth wall as pulverize it, building the show around blanks the audience fills in each night. Under Carly Heffernan’s nimble direction, the show gathers the absurd pressures of now and lets us laugh at the collapse.
SPIRITUAL BOB IS TRAPPED IN PARADISE! (Revelatory.) The premise of two sister missionaries magically locked in a room might scare off the well-intentioned theatregoer. A moralistic clash seems to lurk just around the corner. And yet, nothing could be further from the truth. Caspian Keys’ play is an absurdist comedy that examines faith with surprising sincerity. The writing is intelligent, and Claire Rice and Nicky Nasrallah perform it with care. Some deliberately cringe-worthy moments might not land as intended. Each time the phone rings, for instance, the two missionaries break into a corny dance routine. This recurring gag helps establish the show’s ludicrous idiom but leaves the audience somewhat lukewarm.
Yet, among alien-like messengers of God in chroma-key suits and stones that reveal the future, the piece moves through suggestive themes, including the relationship between happiness and faith amid institutional hypocrisy. What is perhaps most unexpected in a dramaturgy so rooted in religion is its refusal to preach. The two women will have to choose between life in or outside the church, but neither option is entirely positive. Life with religion offers structure but also confinement; life without it offers freedom but with sharper edges.
ABOVE THE HOSPITAL. (Pining.) A toilet breaking down in the middle of a dinner party: that alone sets the mood. Lauren (Cydney Watson) and Cam (Hassan Babar) live in a cramped Vancouver apartment and in an even tighter emotional space. Like the toilet, they are stuck. She once dreamed of becoming a filmmaker and is now considering nursing school; he still hopes to quit Randy’s and make it as a musician. Beau Han Bridge’s play offers a delicate portrait of a relationship that has quietly stopped functioning. Lauren seems irritated by Cam’s every move, while Cam appears permanently checked out, his vacant expression suggesting someone trying to detach from a life that has become emotionally inert.
Their paralysis is thrown into sharper relief by the exuberance of the friends who arrive for dinner. From the increasingly successful actress Abby (Eman Ayaz) to the visual artist Bo (Kenneth Seto Tynan) to the socially awkward Mikey (Ritisha Jhamb), the guests bring energy and panache to the stage. The contrast is clearly intentional, though at times overstated, as if the actors were performing in different dramatic registers. As for the script, the idea is ambitious but lacks discipline. A tighter structure would allow its compelling emotional material to emerge more forcefully, rather than remain diffuse. At its best, the show finds its strength in the fragility of Lauren and Cam’s crisis: amid artistic and financial disappointment, they confront the painful possibility that, after love, belief, and years of trying, letting go may be the only honest choice left.
HANG IN THERE! (Probing.) Before the show begins, an actor steps forward to acknowledge suicide as one of the script’s central themes and to list organizations that offer help and support. That gesture alone speaks to the production’s human ambition. Michael Madore’s piece centres on John, a retired boxing champion who has decided to end his life through assisted dying. “You can’t even die without asking permission,” his replacement stunt double, Silas (Abdul-Shakur Alawi), tells him. John’s decision draws those around him in: his partner, Wanda (Jaden Jackson); his agent, Sam (Darius Zee); and Sharon (Rachelle Mazzilli), the state auditor assigned to assess his eligibility.
The subject is anything but straightforward, and the text’s strongest quality is its refusal of easy moralism. It genuinely tries to think through the dilemma of what it means to keep living when someone has carefully considered that choice and no longer wants to. But the project still feels rushed and in need of further development. For now, everything moves too quickly, and the conflicts are only sketched. John remains closed off, which may be the point, but the play never quite lets us enter his logic deeply enough to grasp the full weight of his choice.
OUR LADY OF WAYWARD SISSIES. (Eye-popping.) In a grim cell, prisoner 0172 (Chris Behnisch) undergoes a series of sessions meant to restore them to some notion of “decency.” This aging crossdresser wanders the stage in a short skirt and an open shirt, revealing only three of the four letters on their “..LUT” crop top. A distorted offstage voice instructs them on how to speak, stand and move in a more virile way, revealing shame as the violence of enforced norms. The projections of old cartoons behind the actor often blur the argument, while their clown makeup, including an electric-blue wig and red nose, intriguingly places the prisoner somewhere between ridicule and self-defence. The piece has a clear appetite for visual provocation. Still, the show lacks both tension and evolution. It leaves us with a poignant fracture of identity, but not enough to keep us fully invested.
