So how do you review a gazillion Fringe plays when you're a weekly that publishes the day after the festival opens and three days before it ends?

You put all your reviews on the web is how... and publish the best in the paper, which is exactly what we're doing.

After five days of Fringe action (before our publication deadline), the reviews you'll find in the July 24 issue of Uptown are of the best plays our reviewers had seen.

The rest of our reviews are being posted as they are written (OK, not quite) right here on our website at uptownmag.com. Our writers will be filing here until Monday, the day after the festival closes. Be sure to check back often, as this list will be updated daily.

Reviews by: Marlo Campbell, Liz Hover, Mike Sherby, Amanda Stefaniuk, Barb Stewart, John Towns

All reviews are presented in alphabetical order according to show title

Last updated: Wednesday, July 23

A
A Brief History of Petty Crime
The Roodie Pancake Experiment
Venue 5
Jimmy Hogg proves you don't need other actors, props, a set of any kind - or even shoes - to create great theatre. Crossing the pond from the U.K. for his first appearance in Winnipeg, Hogg is sharp as a whip and effortlessly charming as he recounts stories of his formative years spent as a juvenile delinquent with a penchant for shoplifting and a whole lot of bad karma. Hogg is instantly likable, and the rapport he's able to build with the audience allows him the luxury of flubbing his lines occasionally and getting away with it (although it could be argued that he's actually at his most endearing when he breaks character and simply interacts with the room). Oh yeah, he has a cool accent, too.
- MC

C
A Party None the Less
Poet Master Productions
Venue 6
I'll admit I was excited when this play started. Three interesting people board an elevator for a party; a crazy old man in a fright wig, an uptight guy, and a cute girl dressed in drag. This party was going to be a blast! Except. this play wasn't about them. The senior lived on another floor, and any hope for a Just One of the Guys scenario was dashed when I realized the girl (marvelously played by Ali Tataryn) dressed in the best B-boy style was actually portraying a male, because the creators cast for talent rather than settle for a mediocre actor. Still, the few shining moments - such as Thomas Allan's drunken toilet soliloquy - suggest that there are better things to come in the future from the writing/directing team of Anna Jarosz and Steve McBey.
- AS

B
Blade
Theatre Anywhere
Venue 13
After being murdered by a serial killer nicknamed "the Hooker Killer" by Winnipeg's media, Angela sticks around to watch as her death - and the life she led before it - are defined and judged by people who have never even met her. Blade tries hard to make a statement about the intrinsic value of all women's lives and the way stereotypes can inform - or misinform - perceptions. But, while well-intentioned, it doesn't quite work. Angela's friends naively expect the media to accurately report facts without bias or sensationalism (seriously?) and their subsequent disillusionment is a little hard to swallow for anyone with even an iota of media literacy. Furthermore, clocking in at a mere 45 minutes, there's not enough time to develop empathy for any of the characters, save for Angela's mom - brilliantly played by Cheryl Soluk - whose anguish over the loss of her daughter is heart-wrenching. Even this is problematic, however, as Soluk's powerful performance outshines those of the other actors.
- MC

B+
Boom
IL Productions
Venue 4
Boom writer and performer Andrew Connor has crafted a very interesting show. It's at times confusing, but if you can suspend your disbelief and get into it, it's a funny and rewarding experience. Part satire and part moral journey, the play follows a bomb maker living in a dystopian society. He's forced to make some ethical choices when a big company comes to town and starts building a new spaceport and taking over the city. Connor is smart enough to keep the bomb theme open-ended, yet still be able to tackle a number of issues. These range from the evils of privatizing public services to deciding how to use your talents. Connor excels at switching between the 10-odd characters in the show and keeps up a frantic pace. The only problem with the show was that a couple of Connor's characters voices sounded the same, and at times this caused confusion.
- MS

B-
Demons of the Mind
Theatre on TAP
Venue 4
With the dazzling physical work of Talia Pura at its core, Demons of the Mind is a haunting piece exploring one woman's horrendous struggle with madness and its tragic result.
Whether dangling from silks flowing from the ceiling or perched upon an aerial loop, Pura is captivating. Her steely strength is gorgeously counterbalanced by the graceful fluidity of her aerial dance, allowing her character Marie brief moments of liberation from the horrible weight of her mental demons, flying free from the nightmare of their grasp.
Given Pura's extraordinary physical abilities, it's disappointing the show's storytelling aspect, featuring Harry Nelken as a lawyer defending this lost soul who has murdered her own children, takes precedent over Pura's physical performance.
While the tale of Marie's descent into madness and her life-shattering crime are heartbreaking, there is little new ground being covered with a traditional narrative. What is exceptional is the beauty of implementing Pura's movements as part of the story, but this element seems woefully underused when its power is so singularly awe-inspiring.
- BS

A
Die Roten Punkte
Tobias & Bartholomew
Venue 1
Last year, I saw what was probably the funniest Fringe performance ever. And I'm not alone. Cue the woman behind me after this year's performance: "I think that's got to be the best fringe show of all time." Together Astrid Rot (Clare Bartholomew) and Otto Rot (Daniel Tobias) are Die Roten Punkte (The Red Dots, for those of you less familiar with German). They pretend they're from Berlin, but really they're an Australian comedy duo whose act is based around being in a rock band not unlike The White Stripes - except they tell more jokes. They sing, they play, they dance. And the audience loves them. I almost wet my pants last year. And I'm delighted to report they were pants-wettingly funny again. I implore you to see them. You will roar like a lion.
- LH

A
Evil Doers
TLS Theatre
Venue 5: Son of Warehouse
Exploring evil in 45 minutes is no easy task, given the thousands of forms the concept could take, real or imagined. Playwright Melanie Murray attempts to tackle the issue in an interesting way - by putting out a call for people to tell her their true stories of evils done to or by them, and distilling the stories into 13 vignettes, each exploring a different facet of what can be considered 'evil.' Evil Doers runs the gamut from murder to drug abuse to the depiction of evil in comic books, and it can be quite an intense and uncomfortable experience at times, although the heavier scenes are very wisely broken up by some comedic moments, presumably to keep the audience from feeling as if they need to go directly home and sit under a hot shower for hours. Daria Puttaert and Rob Vilar put forward very strong performances, seamlessly moving from evildoer to victim to innocent children and back again.
- JT

C
FREE-DUMB
Dog of Habit Productions
Venue 7
Dog of Habit describes its new sketch show production as a perfect post-beer-tent activity. It would be recommended to have a few beers before seeing this lukewarm comedy act. The actors were capable, but their Monty Python-esque skits were scattershot at best. The bits ranged from a pretty funny one about zombies to an unfunny bit about board games. The writing was solid, but the jokes tended to lean towards the predictable and the acting tended to be over the top when the jokes should have been left to stand for themselves. It wasn't terrible, but with so many great plays to see, why waste time on something that's merely adequate?
- MS

F
Guernica
Theatre Incarnate
Venue 20
The usually rock solid Theatre Incarnate makes a misstep with this free-form piece of physical theatre, in part inspired by Picasso's painting Guernica.
Such lofty inspiration falls completely flat in this wordless production. The cast, Delf Gravert, Brendan McLean and Mia Star van Leeuwen, writhe and grunt their way through a post-apocalyptic landscape littered with mannequin limbs and a woefully masked smoke machine. Feigning rape/sex, birth, violence and countless other "deep" subjects, the three's attempts at heartfelt artistic expression read more like a sketch comedy troupe's parody of such grandiose ideas - umbilical cord jump-rope anyone?
With all the subtlety of a teenage boy's wet dream, Guernica leaves the audience perplexed and uncomfortable with its amateurish attempt at art.
- BS

A
Hands Off
Hot Thespian Action
Venue 3
If Second City ever decided to set up shop in Winnipeg, it could hire Hot Thespian Action without tarnishing its good name. While this talented group works exceptionally well together, Jane Testar's Febreze-addicted housewife is one of the shining solo moments. Other highlights include running Reading Rainbow gags with books LeVar Burton would never recommend, and a scathing portrayal of a girls' night out at Applebee's. A visit to Hands Off is well worth your time - but you don't have to take my word for it.
- AS

B
How to Fake Clinical Depression
Daydream Productions
Venue 9
This autobiographical one-man show follows tanning salon employee and aspiring actor Steven Marrocco as he bluffs his way into being a test subject for a GlaxoSmithKline drug research trial in order to receive the $1,500 honorarium that comes with it. Along the way, Marrocco introduces us to an assortment of characters, including the Beverly Hills clinic staff who ply him with increasingly larger doses of anti-depressant and anti-psychotic medications, and several members of his family - all of whom are doped up on prescription cocktails of their own. Alas, How to Fake Clinical Depression falls short of being a provocative hard-hitting exposé of Big Pharma (a shame, really, given Marrocco's first-hand experience with it), but it's still a charming story with enough comedic zingers to make it worth your time.
- MC

B-
Jem Rolls: How I Stopped Worrying and Learnt to Love the Mall
Big Word Performance Poetry
Venue 14
There's no doubt Jem Rolls is blessed with keen talents as a poet and performer, obliterating any thoughts of the poet as a dewy-eyed sensitive soul who barely speaks above a whisper. And this philosophy-degree wielding Scotsman has a magnetic energy that keeps his audiences engaged and entertained. But one gets the feeling that with How I Stopped Worrying. Jem Rolls could do better. His angry and eloquent bursts about consumerism and the blind mania shopping can induce are intriguing, but Rolls tries to impose a narrative arc on the proceedings which is both unnecessary and unsuccessful and leaves the power of his words diluted.
At its best, Rolls' poetry gathers a hypnotic momentum which draws the audience into his philosophic excavation of the mall, but when he inexplicably careens into less poetic and more narrative structures, that momentum comes to a screeching halt. What we're left with feels like a flimsy attempt to make the show an appropriate length, which betrays the heart of his poetry.
- BS

C
Lester Gets KISSED
Magic Toaster Productions
Venue 6
Lester gets KISSED is about a family that's brought back together by the music of KISS. On paper it sounds like a great idea, but the presentation of the play is highly uneven. The musical bits are hilarious, but too often the jokes are cheap or fall flat. Dan Baker-Moor as Lester and Dorothy Carroll as the KISS-loving Beth were particularly good. Unfortunately, some of the other characters were fairly flat and at times insulting. Of particular note is the play's presentation of the mother as a militant feminist lesbian. It presents her as such an ugly, thoughtless stereotype that it borders on homophobia. Ultimately, Lester Gets KISSED raises some interesting issues but doesn't put enough thought into solving them. Sure, it's a comedy and supposed to be fun, but it's too one-dimensional to be a rewarding experience.
- MS

B+
Letters at Large
R.S.T.L.N.E. Productions
Venue 10
Less of a play and more of a lecture with accompanying PowerPoint presentation, Letters at Large is nonetheless entertaining as hell. Winnipeg native Jeff Sinclair has taken a simple premise - write ridiculous letters to an assortment of companies and organizations and see what they send back in response - and mined it for all it's worth for the last 10 years. The formula works. Highlights include the responses from mattress companies concerning an eight-year-old's problem with monsters under the bed, and the letter that prompted the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra to issue a security bulletin. Refreshingly, Sinclair's literary pranks are never malicious; instead, they're creative, playful - and, at times, absolutely hilarious. Just ignore his distracting hand signals.
- MC

A+
Outside Joke Plays Their Hits
Outside Joke
Venue 3
Improv is a tricky business. If you pull it off, it can be hilarious; if not, it's a disaster. Every night is different, but Outside Joke has been building a reputation around the city for delivering consistently quality improv. For this fringe performance, the troupe has added the challenge of musical accompaniment to its show. The cast-members prove themselves fully capable of staying in character while improvising skits and songs that left this audience in stitches. The Outsiders started by asking the audience for a theme and from there, the troupe offered up an hour full of quality, high-energy skits that didn't once fall flat.
- MS

B-
Queens of Rome
Peg City Kitty Prod.
Venue 7
If you ever wondered what an episode of The Hills set in 8th century Italy would look like, buy a ticket for the Queens of Rome. A clever take on a Roman myth with solid performances by Libby Lea and Theresa Fawcett as party girls with too much time and drugs on their hands, the play has plenty of raunchy dialogue that would make even Paris and Nicole blush. Eventually, the pair is tempted by the enemy warriors camped outside the city gates, and contemplate treason for the promise of shiny jewelry. Entertaining for the most part, the story suffers with the numerous blackouts between scenes, and the airhead quality of the two characters does begin to grate after a while.
- AS

A-
Remember the Night
Moving Target Theatre Company
Venue 22
A deftly-executed, bare-bones production of local playwright Daniel Thau-Eleff's engaging tale of love, loneliness and murder in which Winnipeg looms large. Thau-Eleff manages to make a trite premise - lonely man whose father committed suicide, whose mother has Alzheimer's and who falls in love with a prostitute - a funny, sweet and emotionally complex affair. While a sub-plot with ultra-verbose hitmen isn't really necessary and the tone gets a bit heavy-handed by the end, the excellent performances, clever staging and sly jabs at malathion make Remember the Night a treat and render Thau-Eleff a Winnipeg talent to watch.
- BS

B
Shadows in Bloom
Gemma Wilcox
Venue 1
This sweetly entertaining one-woman show, whose name seems much darker than its content, finds Gemma Wilcox demonstrating her acting talents by portraying everything from a rare French sunflower to a sultry nightclub singer to a brave toy lion. At the heart of the show is Sandra, a woman who has left her husband and moved to London to rekindle a romance with her saxophone-playing high school sweetheart. The move has not exactly resulted in the idyllic romance she had envisioned, as her lover's child and her own jealous tendencies burst the bubble of romantic splendour. Wilcox is an agile performer who easily slips from character to character with little confusion for the audience. The characterizations are entertaining, although sometimes it feels like characters are included simply to showcase Wilcox's abilities.
- BS

B+
Sherlock Holmes and the Speckled Band
Space Warrior Players
Venue 5
Sherlock Holmes and the Speckled Band takes the classic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story and turns it on it's head, making it a comedy. The actors play with the conventions of the mystery genre as well as those of the theatre to great effect. This troupe from Pinawa, Man., has produced a great play that both pays homage to and roasts the original story. The only thing stopping this play from getting a higher rating is that there were a few too many mistakes. Both actors forgot their lines or tripped over words several times and there is a scene in the third act that just goes on for far too long. The problems may have been elementary, but they were distracting nonetheless.
- MS

B
Sucker
Sugar & Spice Productions
Venue 2
After chatting online for a whole three weeks, 14-year-old Haley and 32-year-old Jeff finally meet in person and decide to go back to his place to 'listen to music.' Jeff is a professional photographer whose portfolio just happens to include a lot of pictures of naked underage 'models,' but Haley is smarter than she looks - and has a few dark secrets of her own. (Without giving too much away, the play was adapted from the film Hard Candy.) The problem with Sucker is not the script or the acting - both Gislina Patterson and Karl Thordarson give decent performances, even though at times it feels like they're reciting lines instead of having a conversation - it's that the sinister elements are not nearly dark enough. Case in point: the play's climactic scene, which should be horrifying, hardly even made me squirm.
- MC

B+
Teaching the Fringe
Dr. Keir Co.
Venue 10
In this TJ Dawe-directed play performed and written by Keir Cutler, we learn about Cutler's extrordinary neuroses, about past Fringe audiences and about his inner-child. Teaching the Fringe begins awkardly but once Cutler gets going things improve. A lot. The present fringe audience perpetually errupedt into guffaws as it delighted in Cutler's Fringe insights and personal experiences. The show is essentially built around a real letter Cutler received from a disgruntled Fringe-goer. Although Cutler is bursting with quips, anecdotes and intelligent asides, the pace is rather slow and, at times, unnatural. Despite the over-egged intro and Cutler's tendency to take a long time to get. to. the. point, this is an otherwise first-class performance.
- LH

B
The B-List
The B-Girlz
Venue 1
The B-Girlz are desperate to become famous, and know the only way to do this is to follow in the bad-girl footsteps of Britney and Lindsay. The show's loose structure doesn't work all the time - the ladies stumble onto celebrity notoriety at David Suzuki's charity lunch but can't leave for a world tour because one member isn't a Canadian citizen - but the live songs, such as a cheeky parody of Chicago's Cell Block Tango, hit their mark nearly every time. Like a celebrity gossip website put to music, The B-List is a fast-paced hour of songs, glitter and audience participation.
- AS

B+
The Bush Ladies
Theatre by The River
Venue 8
If any of the real-life women portrayed in The Bush Ladies heard our modern day grumblings about bad cell phone plans, high gas prices and long lines at Tim Hortons, they would have every right to call us crybabies. Playwright Molly Thom uses the journals four English immigrants kept during their years spent in the harsh Ontario wilderness in the 1830s to show us how far our country has progressed. The play may have the content of a Canadian Heritage commercial, but the performances are so good that you won't even realize you're learning. With so much complaining by the women - they endured illness, hard work, and little rest, among other tribulations - the show does drag at times, but it's inspiring to know they helped create the great country we live in today.
- AS

A
The Tragedy of Dr. Faustus
The Little Theatre of the Gray Goose
Venue 19
A wild and hilarious reworking of Christopher Marlowe's take on the Faust legend, in which God and Lucifer have civilized chats over coffee and body parts are forever flung to their eternal damnation - doll ones, that is. Brought to us by the people behind Adhere + Deny theatre, this production employs a cast of sublimely simple (Helen of Troy as a dollar store doll) to outrageously ornate (a terrifying Lucifer cloaked in roast-in-hell reds) puppets to tell the Faustian story with pleasing panache. Clocking in at under an hour, the pace allows nary a dull moment and takes audiences on the rollercoaster ride that is Dr. Faustus' downward spiral into hell. Breathing life into puppets is never an easy task, but in the expert hands of Graham Ashmore, Eric Blais and Carolyn Gray, the puppets come alive in a wave of glorious technicolour, both physically and emotionally. Burning in hell never seemed so damned fun.
- BS

B-
The Overnight
Mur-Folk Productions
Venue 1
If a heartfelt lip-synch to Phil Collins' Against All Odds seems like it could be the emotional heart of a show or maybe just the best thing ever, The Overnight is for you.
This tale of a late-night radio DJ at an '80s station attempting to connect with a Dutch pizza delivery girl offers plenty of opportunity to hear clips of '80s hits and jokes about "going Dutch."
Writer/star Matt Alden is a likable sort for whom audiences can't help but root. And while the story isn't going to win any awards for novelty - sex-crazed married morning-show hosts, crazy late-night callers - and a needless back story about radio school makes the show too long, Alden and his cohorts Jamie Cavanagh (who plays, among others, an aspiring radio announcer with Tourette's Syndrome) and Kirsten Harvey (who also plays multiple roles, including the love interest) are an appealing bunch who make it work to the best of their ample abilities.
- BS

B+
The Vajayjay Monologues
Pot of Jam Productions
Venue 4
Ten years after the release of the wildly successful and now-iconic female-genital love-fest, The Vagina Monologues, Calgarian Lindsay Burns picks up where Eve Ensler left off. Taking aim at all things vaginal, this one-woman show explores everything from Britney Spears' paparazzi crotch shots to cosmetic labial-reconstruction surgery to period mishaps to the word 'cunt' and what it means to be called one in 2008. Burns clearly has highly developed observational skills and a wicked sense of humour, showcased particularly well when she deftly skewers youth Internet culture (she must have a daughter) but don't let the jokes fool you - there's equal amounts of tragedy and biting social commentary to be found here, too. A clever slice of feminism that balances approachability with attitude.
- MC

D
The Wrong Hole
The Rep Company
Venue 18
Judging by the inane and often lowest-common-denominator 'jokes' scattered throughout what was billed as a "dirty sketch comedy show" - such as the non sequitur walk-through scene in which it's suggested that a dry vagina can be lubricated by picking open one's Herpes scabs - it would appear that writer Merry Lang does not understand the difference between 'dirty' and 'gross.' The only thing that saves The Wrong Hole from being a complete debacle is a series of well-delivered monologues about ill-fated hook-ups with monsters and an up-the-skirt eyeful (which actually made me rather uncomfortable but which the men I was with enjoyed immensely). Ironically, Fringers under the age of 18 are not allowed to attend this one - a pity, since the humour here seems exclusively tailored to junior high boys.
- MC

A-
Trojan Women
Eyewitness Theatre
Venue 8
This skilful adaptation of Euripides' Trojan Women removes some classic elements of the Greek tragedy - scaling it down to three characters, making it a decidedly more modern in structure - while losing none of its classic tragic appeal. This Trojan Women finds Andromache (wife of Hector, played by Laura Daneille Sharp), Cassandra (sister of Hector, daughter of King Priam, Nell Corrin) and Helen (the one whom all the fuss was about, Carly Tarett) held captive after the fall of Troy, awaiting their fates at the hands of the Greeks. By placing the three characters together, the play is redefined by the relationships among these women, all of whom have intriguing histories together. The tension between characters is razor-sharp, highlighted by the finely-honed performances (despite the sometime-distraction of Corrin's mannerisms as the mad Cassandra). A challenging yet satisfying production.
- BS

A-
What Happened Was...
RMLSTC
Venue 1
This is a slightly surreal romantic comedy (in the broadest sense of there being romance and comedy in the same play) in which an awkward first date unfolds between lonely coworkers at a New York law firm. Written by Tom Noonan (who might be most famous for his portrayal of serial killer Francis Dolarhyde in Michael Mann's Manhunter), What Happened Was... finds administrative assistant Jackie (a slightly too-young Jane Walker) entertaining paralegal Michael (Ross McMillan) at her apartment in Manhattan. Conversation does not quite flow as freely outside of work as in, so we're left with uncomfrotable pauses and strained conversation punctuated by bursts of honest, or so we think, emotional confession. Odd, hilarious and heartbreaking, What Happened Was. is a perfect microcosm of the Fringe.
- BS

B
Wonderbar!
Sansregret Productions
Venue 1
Katrina seems to excel at two things: lusting after "the good life" and getting the rug pulled from under her while in pursuit of that life. Wonderbar! is the story of a German woman, born into the poverty and shame of post-war Germany, who, as a young girl, lusts after the luxury of life in North America. When she finally achieves this as a banker in Canada, her dream existence is stripped away by a series of tragedies that leave her divorced, childless, and working a dead-end job as a shopgirl. Her jealousy of the wealthy is palpable, and when a seemingly wealthy, suave real estate mogul steps into the picture, Katrina sees her chance to grab a piece of the action. Naturally, she gets kicked in the teeth while blindly pursuing the lavish lifestyle for which she's so desparate. Writer/performer Celeste Sansregret does very well in a one-woman retelling of Katrina's tragic tale, weaving a fairly interesting story with little more than a couple of outfits and a blanket to aid her. But, even with Sansregret's performance, it's difficult to feel any empathy for Katrina, who consistently ignores warning signs about her new beau, and ends up being burned for it.
- JT

C+
You Will Write, Won't You?
RGI International
Venue 8

Specifically written for the the tween set, You Will Write, Won't You? is an earnest attempt to tell a story of a small town girl's decision to become a writer. In the half hour before she boards the bus to Banff to attend a writing summer camp, Melissa (Megan Wilson) must decide if working at her boyfriend's (Kevin Carruthers) family farm if more important than following her dream. What makes things difficult for Melissa is that everyone but her English teacher is against her leaving Saskatchewan for two months. A parent wanting their kid to stay at home on the farm is a topic better suited for thirty years ago, but sincere performances from the young cast makes up for the irrelevancy.
- AS