notes from The Fringe

so, last friday i did something i’ve never done before.

i meant to blog about it sooner, but i wanted to make sure i would do it justice so i waited until i could sit down and properly reflect...

despite being something of a festival connoisseur – i go to TIFF, the WWSFF, hotdocs, inside/out, sprockets, the toronto street fest, the good food fest and the taste of the danforth, among others – i had never, ever tried my hand at attending The Fringe, toronto’s annual theatre festival.

oh sure, i’d heard of it before and had friends who would go regularly – i’ve even been known to read all the play reviews in NOW and EYE and wistfully imagine myself in the throes of Fringe-ing -- but i just never got it together enough to track down a fest program, peruse its contents and get my ass into a seat at one of the shows.

until friday.

under the expert tutelage of my rabid, theatre-loving friend laura (you remember laura, don’t you?), i lost my Fringe virginity. i was theatrically deflowered, and i’m delighted to say that laura was a very patient, supportive teacher. she has my eternal gratitude.

so, how was it, you ask?

familiar, yet new! many of the traditions my frequent-festing friends and i observe when spelunking through movie-related events can very easily be adapted to the world of the stage. spreadsheets of shows, detailed itineraries outlining dates/times/venues/buddies, a bag full of useful items (water, snacks, a sweater, sunscreen, mints), a love for standing in line and a reverent regard for punctuality – all are just as popular when racing from one Fringe show to the next as they are when sprinting from the Ryerson to the Paramount (now Scotiabank) in september.

armed with a head full of dreams and extremities bathed in SPF 30, i met up with my sensei at 2:30pm for the first of three back-to-back performances. SO exciting!

now, some of you may be thinking, “gee, i hope vickie saw some fantastic shows her first time out!”, and you’d be right. mostly. i’ll preface the next bit with the following disclaimer: seeing something really bad is often more fun than seeing something amazing, and starting off a day of theatre with a bad show means things can only improve.

with that, i regret to say that my inaugural Fringe show was pretty stinky. Looking After Eden was, for all intents and purposes, just two disconnected actors yelling at each other for ninety minutes straight. both had a handful of good moments whenever they stopped shouting and overacting long enough to get quiet and small, but otherwise it was tedious. my bum started to get sore about halfway through and, unfortunately, fleeing a venue before the final curtain is considered bad form. so, we stayed through to the end.

there were, i kid you not, 14 people in the audience. i counted. but, given what we watched, i can’t say i was surprised at the lacklustre turnout.

we didn’t have a lot of time between shows so we high-tailed it outta there PDQ once the bows were taken and the lights came up. next on the docket was An Inconvenient Musical, which is exactly what it sounds like: a musical-comedy take-off on al gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. now, THIS was fun. and packed to the rafters.

(an interesting Fringe note: evidently, at some venues, if you don’t like where the chairs have been placed or how they’ve been arranged, it’s perfectly acceptable to just pick yours up and move it to wherever you’d like to sit. wanna be on an aisle? super! just lift up your seat and drop it at the end of your preferred row, next to whomever thinks he or she has an aisle seat. can’t see the stage properly? no problem, just slide over six feet – and in front of the fire door – then settle in. presto! custom seating!)

filled with brilliant comedic performances (save for the host/narrator/al gore, who clearly hadn’t bothered to learn his lines beforehand) and ridiculously catchy tunes (including the soon-to-be-classic, Kick Him in the Nuts, And Punch Him in the Asshole), An Inconvenient Musical was a smartly written and wonderfully entertaining 85 minutes.

parched and hungry, we didn’t have time to refuel before the final show so we hustled ourselves over to Like Omigawd! The Sugar Pop ‘80s Musical and stood in the blob. not the line, because there was no line. if anything, there were, like, four or five lines, maybe a dotted line going in a circle, but not in any kind of organized manner. this is apparently a hazard one should expect when attending anything at a first-time venue. noted.

anyway, once inside, we were treated to an ‘80s-themed musical, set at a big-city high school in 1985 and complete with every cliché from just about every teen movie of that decade. the awkward new girl, the existing mean girls, the hot popular boy, the endearing geek in love with the awkward new girl....and a big, fat TV dance-off! despite some issues with the acoustics (holy hell, someone needed to adjust the levels on the radio mics and the speakers in such a small venue!) and laura's attempt to singlehandedly derail the proceedings by accidentally (and loudly) dropping her big metal bracelet onto the floor for all the world to hear (then it actually rolled away, which just made it that much more perfect a moment), the show was colourful, funny and boppy...but then it just ended. without a third act.

huh?

as my sensei and i agreed afterwards, if you’re going to spend an entire show talking about this all-important dance contest in which everyone wants to compete and at which the nerdy girl will finally challenge the popular girls...you can’t just NOT show it. you can’t end the show before the dance-off!

and yet, that’s exactly what happened.

(cue: a collective, disappointed awwwwwwwww.)

oh well.

a pit stop at the “Fringe Tent” (read: beer tent w/ BBQ) for a somewhat meh veggie burger capped off a very full day, and i was on my way home shortly before 9pm...basking in the afterglow and wondering if i’d hear the call of the Fringe before it ends next weekend.

perhaps. we had a good time, so maybe The Fringe and i will go out again.