Theatre 2026: Toronto Fringe Festival

This year, my husband Rich and I selected six shows to watch at the Toronto Fringe Festival—4 musicals and 2 comedies. It is always hit and miss when we choose which shows to watch based merely on several lines of descriptions. We don’t want to wait for reviews to see which are the hot shows since by then, the tickets might be sold out. So, we take our best guess and the results are usually mixed. Our first three shows ran back-to-back-to-back at the Factory Theatre Main Stage.

The first one was a musical called “1920s - Walking Around in a Dream” which takes an excerpt from the plot of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream”, focusing on the two sets of lovers while omitting the subplot involving fairies.  Now set in 1920s Chicago during prohibition, Hermie and Andy are in love and want to get married, but Hermie’s bootlegger/boxing promoter father Eggs wants her to marry up-and-coming boxing champ Dimitry instead. Dimitry was previously involved with Helen who still carries a torch for him but pursues Hermie to please Eggs and further his boxing career. When Hermie and Andy run off into the woods to elope, Helen and Dimitry pursue them. Instead of fairy magic, it is bootlegged moonshine that cause all the romantic chaos.

This was a clever take on the Bard’s classic comedy and the characters are dressed in cool period clothing but given names close enough to the original source that it was easy to figure out the parallels. Unfortunately, we found most of the cast very difficult to hear. At first, we thought that it was the acoustics in the theatre and lack of microphones, but when the actor playing Andy spoke and sang his songs, we heard him crystal-clear. The other actors did not project their voices or enunciate clearly. The situation was exasperated by the fact that the script was deliberately injected with 1920s slang, to the point where a glossary was added to the program to help us understand the lingo. All of this made it more difficult to catch what was being said or sung. Luckily, we were familiar with the plot of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream so we got the gist of it.

Olivia O is a powerful and heart wrenching musical that shines a light on the travesty that has been happening in the United States since 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first term. His government introduced an immigration policy that separated asylum seekers from their children if caught illegally trying to enter the United States. While the migrant parents were imprisoned or deported, any children under age 18 were handed over to the Department of Homeland Security, which in turn shipped them off to “resettlement shelters” and foster homes across the country. The trauma and angst caused by these inhumane separations is highlighted through the plight of a fictitious family.

When 14-year-old Olivia Ortiz and her mother try to cross the US/Mexico border to meet up with Olivia’s American aunt Isabel, the pair are captured by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and forcibly separated. The mother is presumably deported and Olivia is sent to a detention centre to await placement. While there, she meets Gloria, another detainee who has become hardened and jaded after giving up hope that her family will come for her. Olivia is assigned to be fostered by an abusive and corrupt televangelist and his meek wife. In the meantime, Isabel is desperate to find her niece and joins a humanitarian activist and aid group devoted to reuniting families.

This is a touching musical with an important story to tell but once again, we had audio issues. The voices of several actors were much too soft while the music was too loud, obscuring the words even of the singers with powerful voices. The fact that Spanish was intermixed in the dialogue and lyrics compounded the ability to recognize and grasp what was being conveyed. But the emotions rang through loud and clear and the performances by the two leads playing Olivia O and her aunt Isabel were outstanding.

There were very simple sets for this show, comprised mostly of a few wooden benches that were constantly rearranged into different formations. The show began with several rows of benches each with a clump of tin foil that represented thermal blankets given to the children in the detention centre who were awaiting reassignment.  Video was projected at the back of the stage, contrasting happy, colourful crayon drawings of family that Olivia initially sent to her aunt in correspondence prior to their attempted meeting, and then stark photographs of actual detention centres and court houses in El Paso, Texas where much of these atrocities actually took place. The show closed with an image of beaded bracelets like the one Olivia made for Isabel that became a symbol of the search for her.

Other than not being able to hear properly, my only other issue with the musical was with the character of the televangelist who was so evil and diabolical that you could almost see him twirl his metaphorical mustache. Added for dramatic effect to heighten the danger and horrors that Olivia faced, he came across as cartoonish, detracting from the real-life drama being represented, which was terrible enough without this additional plot device. 

Our final show of the day was “Minimum”, a comedic satire about Simon, the bumbling, narcissistic, newly elected Premier of Ontario who is trapped into fulfilling a campaign promise that he flippantly and foolishly made while high on drugs and partying with college girls. Literally caught with his pants down on camera, he declared that he would live on minimum wage while in office, just like many of his constituents. The video goes viral as voters from all age groups (Gen Z to Boomers and even Taylor Swift) all laud him for this pledge, labeling this #MinimumChallenge. Simon is urged to go through with it by his idealistic assistant Grace while his estranged wife Helen (who campaigned for him but now wants a divorce) demands that he renege on the promise.

Simon’s nemesis, “the Prime Minister” chimes in and “supports” Simon’s initiative by canceling all his credit cards, draining his bank accounts and selling his houses (go with it … this is a satire).  Now Simon can no longer afford his daily $9 Frappuccino drinks, can’t pay Toronto’s sky-high rents so must move all the way out to Hamilton, has to transit to work instead of driving his Porsche (which he lovingly calls Portia), and in a repeated sight gag, instead of drinking his expensive booze, he gets his alcohol fix from chugging bright blue Listerine mouthwash.

Throughout the play, not-so-thinly-veiled references take aim at many of the questionable policies of our actual sitting Premier Doug Ford. This includes Ford’s buck-a-beer in grocery stores pledge which Simon one-ups by offering “quarter-a-beer” made available in all schools. There are also jabs about Ford’s “white elephant” spa project, OSAP (which Ford cut funding to but Simon pledges on behalf of the PM to forgive all loans), eliminating the Freedom of Information Act which Simon fully supports in order to hide his many misdeeds (and coincidentally, Ford supports this too), and the private jet that became such a scandal for Ford. In the play, the premier’s jet has a gold toilet.

This play was extremely funny and clever for 60 minutes and best of all, unlike the other two shows, we could hear all the actors perfectly, again proving that there was nothing wrong with the acoustics in the theatre. The problem is that Minimum ran for 90 minutes and the last 30 minutes lost its way. The same jokes about drinking Listerine or selling Grace’s desk were repeated multiple times, and the central premise of living on minimum wage fell by the wayside and never had a proper resolution.  Then the plot just took a totally wacky turn that changed the tone of the play. We concluded that this was almost a very good comedy that went on too long and could not come up with a satisfying ending.

On our next Fringe day, we watched two plays back-to-back at Soulpepper in the Distillery District. We almost missed watching an original new Canadian musical called Camp! since we had purchased a 10-pack of tickets and this show did not make our initial short list of five shows. However, I had a good feeling about this musical so we bought two extra tickets. Good thing we did, because this turned out to be our favourite show of the festival.

Camp! is set in Camp Clover, where kids to stay each summer and participate in activities including canoeing, crafts, sing-a-longs, trivia, talent contests, sports, and the season ending capture the flag competition. Nova and August first came to the camp when they were nine and became BFFs as soon as they met, progressing to become camp councillors. But something has happened and when they arrive this summer, they are cold and even aggressive towards each other. The other campers including junior councillors-in-training Max and Grace, August’s little brother Leo, Nova’s little sister Frances, and fellow campers Vinny and Moira spend most of the show trying to figure out what caused the rift and how to get Nova and August to reconcile.

Camp! is a co-production between Mixtapes Projects, an indie theatre company run by Margo Greve and Ben Kopp who wrote the songs and book for the show, and Bravo Academy, a Toronto performing arts school that offers music/musical theatre training. The amazing cast of the musical are all teens with excellent acting and singing skills and since they were all equipped with headset microphones, there was no trouble hearing them (which has become a major factor in our rating the shows we watch at this Fringe Festival).  The songs were fun, even innovative and advanced the story, the kids were witty and charming and this was by far the most professional production that we had seen at the festival.

The second play that we watched at Soulpepper was in the tiny RBC Financials Studio space which seats only 50 people. The chairs in the front row sit on the floor inches away from the action on the stage. The three subsequent rows follow in stadium style but on a very slight rake. I could not see at all from our original seats in the third row so I grabbed the last seat in the front row while Rich stayed back. Wanting to keep our shows light and happy, we stuck to the comedy and musical genres when selecting which shows to watch. We chose Gratitude since it was in the Comedy section, albeit described as a “dark comedy of teenage angst, insecurities and foibles in a coming-of-age story”.  By the end of this show, Rich and I concurred that what we watched in this 60-minutes play was definitely dark, not the least bit funny and more than a little bit troubling.

Set almost entirely in the boys’ locker room of a private school in Montreal, 15-year-old Dariya’s crush on Drew, the most popular boy in class, starts off relatively innocently with her passing cheat notes for an upcoming test. But soon the interactions escalate into transactional acts of sexual manipulation, seduction, and exploitation involving the two of them as well as fellow students Josh and Ben, where the concept of “gratitude” takes on salacious meanings. Playing almost like a tense psychological thriller with slight comparisons to the movie Dangerous Liaisons, we were taken aback by the explicitness of the dialogue and the simulated sexual acts that were portrayed (some literally at my feet).

Despite this play being not at all what we expected, we found the story to be fascinating and the acting of the entire cast to be superb. Particularly complex is Dariya’s character arc as you come to understand the motivations for her actions once more of her backstory comes to light. The plot is well structured with foreshadowing at the beginning and a plot point that we recognized as a “Chekov’s gun” moment both paying off by the shocking end of the play. The minimal set also cleverly conveyed graffiti on the boys’ locker room with a set of three cloth curtains with lewd graffiti scribbled on they. Despite leaving the theatre a bit shell-shocked, Gratitude spurred lengthy discussions afterwards as we dissected what we just watched.

Our last show of this Fringe Festival was the musical comedy Unsung; Accidental Villains in History. A troupe of six actors reimagine seven important moments in history. Through the use of humorous songs, choreography, costumes and props, they tell each story of how a fictitious character inadvertently caused the momentous event to happen, becoming the accidental villain in that story. The concept was fun and irreverent with some stories working better than others.

One of the best skits involved teenaged Lottie, who was hired to create lifeboats for the Titanic but not given enough time to complete the job. This resulted in not enough lifeboats being available for all the people when the ship hit the iceberg. She is put on trial with a prosecutor and defense lawyer arguing against and for her and then she finally gets to plead her own case.  She points out that the job was too big for one person but it should not have mattered since the ship was supposed to be “unsinkable”. The song ended with a cheeky reference to Rose and Jack from the Titanic movie.  Two supporting characters came out in ridiculous wigs as Lottie declares that more people could have been saved if they had just allowed more than one person on the floating door.

Other skits used hilarious props such as a cardboard representation of the wooden Trojan Horse horse that Trojan guard Calvin allowed through the gates because he loved horses. The horse had two holes cut out around its belly where the “Greeks” smirkingly hid. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow was unfairly blamed for starting the Great Fire of Chicago when it was actually Elliot O’Leary having a tryst with Suzanne when they knocked over a lantern.  The expression on the face of the actor on all fours dressed in a cow suit was priceless and the only thing missing was the cow breaking out into song. The cleverest and most effective staging was used for a skit involving two students who tricked their hated teacher into going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. This feat was illustrated using a long blue sheet representing the Falls over which a tiny figure in a barrel was lowered by a string.

The stories that worked less well included Steven who caused the stock market crash of 1929 leading to the Great Depression, Guy whose “Guy-otine” which he invented to chop watermelons was seized by the leaders of the French Revolution, and Josie, who was not given credit for being part of the moon landing and gets revenge by spreading conspiracy rumours that it was faked. If you are in the mood for silliness, this show was for you.

All in all, we enjoyed our all of our Fringe shows to some degree and did not encounter more sound issues after the first two performances. In fact, in this last show, there was actually a “loud noises” warning and offer of earplugs which we found perplexing. Other than one skit where one of the actors yelled very loudly (for no particular reason that we could discern??), the show was quite audible.