Fringe reviews #14: The actors identify you as the playwright after the show
Saucy Gal Productions
Planetarium (Venue 9), to Sunday
⭐⭐⭐ ½
Just like us, and just like her father, Leigh-Anne Kehler was born into an imperfect body, but the Winnipeg storyteller uses every page of this 45-minute medical history to heal the fractures of repetitive trauma.
What begins as a play-by-play of her dad's ongoing tug-of-war with the afterlife becomes the performer's meditation on her own impermanence. Well-layered and engaging, Kehler's story is told with considerable empathy and a refreshing paucity of shame, shading in the contours of invisible disabilities to encourage understanding.
Affected for over a decade by a rare brainstem disorder that flares up in unpredictable and debilitating fashion, Kehler reflects on her own perseverance while examining religion, science and the inconsiderate fate of epigenetics.
— Ben Waldman
BUGJUICE: A BEETLEJUICE PARODY
Meraki Theatre
CCFM — Antoine Garborieau Hall (Venue 19) to Sunday
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Performed by three rotating 12-member teenage casts, this 50-minute musical was created by co-directors Taylor Gregory and Kennedy Huckerby as a vehicle for students of Winnipeg's Meraki Theatre school.
Inspired by both the 1988 movie and 2019 Broadway musical ('minus the adult jokes' stresses Huckerby), the show is lively and zany, with fun local references such as Ms. Fringe (Madelin Somers), a ghost who sings sadly about missing her times onstage at the Winnipeg fringe while alive. The song was written by Meraki's student music director Micah Buenafe.
July 18 performer kudos go to Calum Goetzke, 15, who channelled Michael Keaton's craziness as Beetlejuice/Bugjuice so well it was spooky.
There are typical student productions issues: some players are far stronger than others, and some are running out of voice by the end. The show is further hampered by a venue and stage that's simply too small for the production, with poor sightlines owing to the seating style. But none of that should scare you away.
– Janice Sawka
CLIQYOU
Here's Hoping Theatre Co.
MTYP — Mainstage (Venue 21), to Sunday
⭐⭐⭐ ½
Tension … and anticipation … are currently typing in local playwright Maia Woods' CliqYou, a paean to the supportive, anxiety-inducing and frequently antagonistic universe of the long-distance groupchat.
After bonding two years earlier via an online role-playing game, seven perfectly likable friends (Katie Welham, Lainey Grueneklee, Reynaldo Gomez, Mike Swain, Sid Fiola, Brandon Case and Woods) who've never met in person approach a tipping point, questioning what — aside from routine, guilt, GIFs and would-you-rathers — is holding them together.
Directed by Anika Binding, CliqYou is a cautionary tale of FOMO, selective friendship and the fraught nature of digital togetherness. 'Is it self-reflection time?' one character asks. Isn't it always when the GC is ready to read you for filth and keep your ego in check?
— Ben Waldman
GENDER PLAY, OR WHAT YOU WILL
Will Wilhelm and Brandon Bowers
Tom Hendry Warehouse (Venue 6), to Sunday
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The runtime is accurate, but don't think of this show as 105 minutes long. It's about 35 minutes short, in this reviewer's opinion. You could listen to the marvellous Chicagoan Will Wilhelm recite the Bard for days.
The premise: Shakespeare messed with the roles and labels and allowed his era and ours to see past the duty and the doldrums and walls and barriers and chains that were so much a part of Elizabethan times and our own. So we are all invited to explore gender in real time, including the lucky patron who gets to spend time on stage with this blazing, joyful soul.
So much of the best work this year has been from queer artists reclaiming ancestors from dominant and false histories that hide their full personhood and glory.
No mic, no great panoply. A trained voice, a dagger-sharp wit, the vulnerability of Hamlet, the reformed wisdom of young Henry, Lady Macbeth and of course, Romeo and Juliet. For the cost of a cocktail, you can open a trunk full of treats: full of gasps, tears, guffaws, all revealed in an atmosphere of lightness and love. Unmissable!
— Lara Rae
THE GET LAID* SHOW (*OR A DATE? DEFINITELY A HIGH FIVE.)
TheOtherVNameProductions
Duke of Kent Legion (Venue 13), to Sunday
⭐⭐⭐
Veronica Ternopolski wants people to connect. She wants people to have interesting conversations. She wants people to date. She wants people to get laid.
And if she can't, she'll settle for a round of high-fives.
The local performer, who goes by V, is an energetic bundle of positivity who longs for the good old days of face-to-face communication and wants people to follow the four rules of good relationships: participation, risk, vulnerability and honesty.
During the 60-minute interactive show, she invites audience members to follow those guidelines while offloading their emotional baggage, talking about their worst rejections and disclosing a series of personal beliefs via a show of hands. She opens up about her past using numbered eggs to recall good and bad long- and short-term relationships.
V takes a poll of available singles, so there is a chance of meeting someone new. But if not, audience members are guaranteed at least one high five. With consent, of course.
— Rob Williams
IMPROVISION: ANTI PASTA
ImproVision
Duke of Kent Legion (Venue 13), to Sunday
⭐⭐⭐⭐
ImproVision's Alan MacKenzie and George McRobb are local short-form improv veterans who can always be counted on by comedy fans looking to fill their laughs-per-minute quota, and this year's offering is no exception, judging by Saturday's fast-paced 50-minute set.
The duo plays a variety of improv games and uses suggestions from the audience to incorporate into scenes. The pair knows how to wrap segments up quickly and never let things drag on too long, whether they are acting out a man's day using puppets, reading an audience member's phone texts to create a new scenario or having the crowd 'direct' a scene by calling for an increase of various emotions, leading to what could be the first instance anywhere of people randomly shouting, 'More ennui!'
And, if you somehow aren't having a good time, the legion's bar stays open during the show.
— Rob Williams
SEANCE SISTERS
Wickert & Arbogast
Son of Warehouse (Venue 5), to Sunday
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Try these mediums on for size. Spirited into Winnipeg from Minneapolis, the Seance Sisters are Sara Miller, Anya Naylor and Vivian Kampschroer. This trio summons the ghosts of the real-life Fox sisters, who astonished 19th-century audiences by purportedly communicating with the dead during nationwide spiritualist roadshows. Even sceptics stand to be converted into believers in one hour by this trio, whose dictions and physicalities are always precise, calculated and co-ordinated, just as any classic hoax should be.
Eerie sound, set and lighting design enable this production to float like a coffee table, giving the Son of Warehouse the feel of an ectoplasmic revival at Winnipeg's historically haunted Hamilton House.
– Ben Waldman
THIRD PARTY
Brighter Dark Theatre
MTYP — Mainstage (Venue 21), to Sunday
⭐⭐⭐⭐ ½
Brett and Julie (Alanna McPherson and Dane Bjornson, both terrific), whose two-year-old relationship is already cracking under the pressure of cohabitation, confronts its most stressful episode yet: an intense collision with Marty Fink (Thomas McLeod), an intrusive investigator from Manitoba Public Insurance.
In the playwright McLeod's followup to last year's lauded House of Gold, he reunites with director Teresa Thomson for a 45-minute phone call that gives its talented cast every opportunity to get their story straight after a roundabout crash.
McLeod's wisest move as a writer is to keep the conversation mostly confined to telephone lines, loading each of Julie and Brett's responses with duplicitous winks of dishonesty and misdirection — of each other, of themselves, and of course, of the fanny-packed Fink, whose commitment to the Crown corporation as he paces through the theatre spills into insanity. 'I go the extra mile,' he says in this new work, which, with a less abrupt ending, could easily find a home on any of the city's major professional stages.
— Ben Waldman
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Winnipeg Free Press
21-07-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Heart-stopping drama
It took a near-death experience for one local theatre artist to understand her father's remarkable capacity to persist. Menno Kehler seemed invincible, as evidenced by the title of his daughter Leigh-Anne's latest production at the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. 'You know what the first line is? 'My father's heart exploded in the surgeon's hands,'' the playwright- performer says. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Leigh-Anne Kehler's latest show is a deeply personal story about medical scares and close conversations with death. That's only one harrowing medical episode recounted by Kehler in The Man Who Couldn't Die, a solo performance that marks the Neubergthal-raised artist's first original fringe play since 2015. A veteran of 17 festivals whose previous shows include the well-received Fire Women, Die Shakespeare Die and the FemMennonite series, Kehler says the story of her father's artful, stubborn evasion of death, which foretold her own medical challenges, simply wouldn't leave her alone. The new performance, which runs to July 27 at Venue 9 (Planetarium Auditorium), originated in 2013, when the artistic director of a storytelling festival in Toronto asked Kehler if she had anything she could perform in hospitals centred on the topic of death, dying and the emerging concept of MAID (medical assistance in dying). The result was a show, performed with and for medical practitioners, called The Final Hour. An invitation to perform at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa soon followed, as did a personal experience that added new layers to what already felt like a finished story inspired by her father's time in palliative care. 'I had the first symptoms of what would eventually (be diagnosed) as my father's illness,' she says about a rare brainstem disorder that can lead to bouts of acute head pain, seizures and even paralysis. Doubled vision, dizziness and general unsteadiness gave way to such severe pain that Kehler nearly cancelled her Ottawa show. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Winnipeg storyteller and playwright Leigh-Anne Kehler returnst to the Fringe Festival with The Man Who Couldn't Die, which blends bittersweet comedy with painful observations on loss and memory. 'After that performance, one of the matriarchs of our storytelling community told me the show was beautiful to watch and listen to, but that something was missing, and that she knew I was going to find it, and the thing that was missing was that I had to go through years and years of pain and struggle,' Kehler says. 'I won't get into it much right now, but I died and I chose to fight my way back to this body.' The Man Who Couldn't Die is for Kehler 'a culmination of 12 years of lived experience.' 'It's the story that won't leave me alone because I live it every day, but I also want to share it very deeply.' Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. Despite the heaviness of the stories recounted, Kehler says the show is flecked with humour and warm memories of her upbringing, drinking cherry Coke through a licorice straw and listening to her father's inappropriate jokes and epic stories as recounted to a captive audience of rural Manitoban coffeeshop hoppers. 'My dad was usually the MC, always a storyteller. At an event celebrating the centennial of our village, he told a very funny story about his teacher at the one-bedroom schoolhouse and he didn't know she was in the audience, in her 90s. After he was done, she slowly made her way up to the stage with a stick in her hand and said, 'Menno, I should have done this to you years ago,' and she whacked his butt,' Kehler says. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Leigh-Anne Kehler's latest show is a deeply personal story about medical scares and close conversations with death. 'My dad just went for it. He was such a great comedian.' The Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival runs to Sunday. Tickets and information available at If you value coverage of Manitoba's arts scene, help us do more. Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project. Ben WaldmanReporter Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University's) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben. Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Winnipeg Free Press
20-07-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Fringe reviews #14: The actors identify you as the playwright after the show
THE MAN WHO COULDN'T DIE Saucy Gal Productions Planetarium (Venue 9), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐ ½ Just like us, and just like her father, Leigh-Anne Kehler was born into an imperfect body, but the Winnipeg storyteller uses every page of this 45-minute medical history to heal the fractures of repetitive trauma. What begins as a play-by-play of her dad's ongoing tug-of-war with the afterlife becomes the performer's meditation on her own impermanence. Well-layered and engaging, Kehler's story is told with considerable empathy and a refreshing paucity of shame, shading in the contours of invisible disabilities to encourage understanding. Affected for over a decade by a rare brainstem disorder that flares up in unpredictable and debilitating fashion, Kehler reflects on her own perseverance while examining religion, science and the inconsiderate fate of epigenetics. — Ben Waldman BUGJUICE: A BEETLEJUICE PARODY Meraki Theatre CCFM — Antoine Garborieau Hall (Venue 19) to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Performed by three rotating 12-member teenage casts, this 50-minute musical was created by co-directors Taylor Gregory and Kennedy Huckerby as a vehicle for students of Winnipeg's Meraki Theatre school. Inspired by both the 1988 movie and 2019 Broadway musical ('minus the adult jokes' stresses Huckerby), the show is lively and zany, with fun local references such as Ms. Fringe (Madelin Somers), a ghost who sings sadly about missing her times onstage at the Winnipeg fringe while alive. The song was written by Meraki's student music director Micah Buenafe. July 18 performer kudos go to Calum Goetzke, 15, who channelled Michael Keaton's craziness as Beetlejuice/Bugjuice so well it was spooky. There are typical student productions issues: some players are far stronger than others, and some are running out of voice by the end. The show is further hampered by a venue and stage that's simply too small for the production, with poor sightlines owing to the seating style. But none of that should scare you away. – Janice Sawka CLIQYOU Here's Hoping Theatre Co. MTYP — Mainstage (Venue 21), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐ ½ Tension … and anticipation … are currently typing in local playwright Maia Woods' CliqYou, a paean to the supportive, anxiety-inducing and frequently antagonistic universe of the long-distance groupchat. After bonding two years earlier via an online role-playing game, seven perfectly likable friends (Katie Welham, Lainey Grueneklee, Reynaldo Gomez, Mike Swain, Sid Fiola, Brandon Case and Woods) who've never met in person approach a tipping point, questioning what — aside from routine, guilt, GIFs and would-you-rathers — is holding them together. Directed by Anika Binding, CliqYou is a cautionary tale of FOMO, selective friendship and the fraught nature of digital togetherness. 'Is it self-reflection time?' one character asks. Isn't it always when the GC is ready to read you for filth and keep your ego in check? — Ben Waldman GENDER PLAY, OR WHAT YOU WILL Will Wilhelm and Brandon Bowers Tom Hendry Warehouse (Venue 6), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The runtime is accurate, but don't think of this show as 105 minutes long. It's about 35 minutes short, in this reviewer's opinion. You could listen to the marvellous Chicagoan Will Wilhelm recite the Bard for days. The premise: Shakespeare messed with the roles and labels and allowed his era and ours to see past the duty and the doldrums and walls and barriers and chains that were so much a part of Elizabethan times and our own. So we are all invited to explore gender in real time, including the lucky patron who gets to spend time on stage with this blazing, joyful soul. So much of the best work this year has been from queer artists reclaiming ancestors from dominant and false histories that hide their full personhood and glory. No mic, no great panoply. A trained voice, a dagger-sharp wit, the vulnerability of Hamlet, the reformed wisdom of young Henry, Lady Macbeth and of course, Romeo and Juliet. For the cost of a cocktail, you can open a trunk full of treats: full of gasps, tears, guffaws, all revealed in an atmosphere of lightness and love. Unmissable! — Lara Rae THE GET LAID* SHOW (*OR A DATE? DEFINITELY A HIGH FIVE.) TheOtherVNameProductions Duke of Kent Legion (Venue 13), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐ Veronica Ternopolski wants people to connect. She wants people to have interesting conversations. She wants people to date. She wants people to get laid. And if she can't, she'll settle for a round of high-fives. The local performer, who goes by V, is an energetic bundle of positivity who longs for the good old days of face-to-face communication and wants people to follow the four rules of good relationships: participation, risk, vulnerability and honesty. During the 60-minute interactive show, she invites audience members to follow those guidelines while offloading their emotional baggage, talking about their worst rejections and disclosing a series of personal beliefs via a show of hands. She opens up about her past using numbered eggs to recall good and bad long- and short-term relationships. V takes a poll of available singles, so there is a chance of meeting someone new. But if not, audience members are guaranteed at least one high five. With consent, of course. — Rob Williams IMPROVISION: ANTI PASTA ImproVision Duke of Kent Legion (Venue 13), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ImproVision's Alan MacKenzie and George McRobb are local short-form improv veterans who can always be counted on by comedy fans looking to fill their laughs-per-minute quota, and this year's offering is no exception, judging by Saturday's fast-paced 50-minute set. The duo plays a variety of improv games and uses suggestions from the audience to incorporate into scenes. The pair knows how to wrap segments up quickly and never let things drag on too long, whether they are acting out a man's day using puppets, reading an audience member's phone texts to create a new scenario or having the crowd 'direct' a scene by calling for an increase of various emotions, leading to what could be the first instance anywhere of people randomly shouting, 'More ennui!' And, if you somehow aren't having a good time, the legion's bar stays open during the show. — Rob Williams SEANCE SISTERS Wickert & Arbogast Son of Warehouse (Venue 5), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Try these mediums on for size. Spirited into Winnipeg from Minneapolis, the Seance Sisters are Sara Miller, Anya Naylor and Vivian Kampschroer. This trio summons the ghosts of the real-life Fox sisters, who astonished 19th-century audiences by purportedly communicating with the dead during nationwide spiritualist roadshows. Even sceptics stand to be converted into believers in one hour by this trio, whose dictions and physicalities are always precise, calculated and co-ordinated, just as any classic hoax should be. Eerie sound, set and lighting design enable this production to float like a coffee table, giving the Son of Warehouse the feel of an ectoplasmic revival at Winnipeg's historically haunted Hamilton House. – Ben Waldman THIRD PARTY Brighter Dark Theatre MTYP — Mainstage (Venue 21), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ½ Brett and Julie (Alanna McPherson and Dane Bjornson, both terrific), whose two-year-old relationship is already cracking under the pressure of cohabitation, confronts its most stressful episode yet: an intense collision with Marty Fink (Thomas McLeod), an intrusive investigator from Manitoba Public Insurance. In the playwright McLeod's followup to last year's lauded House of Gold, he reunites with director Teresa Thomson for a 45-minute phone call that gives its talented cast every opportunity to get their story straight after a roundabout crash. McLeod's wisest move as a writer is to keep the conversation mostly confined to telephone lines, loading each of Julie and Brett's responses with duplicitous winks of dishonesty and misdirection — of each other, of themselves, and of course, of the fanny-packed Fink, whose commitment to the Crown corporation as he paces through the theatre spills into insanity. 'I go the extra mile,' he says in this new work, which, with a less abrupt ending, could easily find a home on any of the city's major professional stages. — Ben Waldman
Winnipeg Free Press
17-07-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Fringe reviews #2: Your destiny awaits in a warehouse basement
ADAM BAILEY: MY THREE DEATHS Still Your Friend Le Studio at Theâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 20), to July 27 'Rumours of my death have been wildly exaggerated … by me,' says Adam Bailey at the top of his latest hour of well-woven storytelling at the fringe. Since his first solo show (Adam Bailey is on Fire) in 2015, the Toronto performer, who was raised against his will in Belleville, Ont., has alternated between deeply personal tales of coming of age as the gay son of an evangelical minister and richly detailed histories of notable figures both well-known (Henri Rousseau) and obscure (19th-century suffragette Victoria Woodhull). In My Three Deaths, Bailey returns to the character he knows best. The result? A well-composed, smartly lit and intermittently moving story about losing and becoming lost after the blackout. ⭐⭐⭐ ½ — Ben Waldman CONTROL Jurasco Le Studio at Theâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 20), to July 27 When Wayne James was 16 years old, he declared at the dinner table that nothing surprised him anymore. Raised on a farm in Lydiatt, in the R.M. of Brokenhead, James saw by 1966 that while his world revolved around the sun, the moon, the water and the soil, the rest of society instead sought to strike paydirt. Throughout this civic-minded, hour-long treatise on chemical warfare, inherited wealth, corn silage and intergenerational responsibility, this hippie Sam Elliott gets on the audience's level, frequently proving his teenage self wrong by making unpredictable choices. 'In show business, this is what we call a change of pace,' he says before plucking an original folk tune in the vein of Pete Seeger. A similar warning might have been recommended before James is cast in a red light to recite a version of Chief Seattle's 1854 address to 'the Great White Chief in Washington.' ⭐⭐ ½ — Ben Waldman EMERGENCY OPS Illustrium Creations RRC Polytech (Venue 11), to July 26 This 45-minute one-man workplace comedy about institutional incompetence in the civil service will surely resonate with anyone who's quietly fumed as supervisors make bad decisions, suck up to management or scream at subordinates. Local playwright/performer Hayden Maines dons a rainbow of different coloured safety vests to play five members of an Emergency Operations Centre team dealing with a train derailment. Maines has nailed the office archetypes — including Jamie, the new operations chief whom no one has time to train and Kelly, the reluctant HR person-turned-logistics chief who can't handle pressure — and he's an appealing actor. However, the writing here needs to be much sharper and tighter (there's a lot of filler dialogue and unnecessary yelling), with more care taken to delineate the characters. While the pace is manic, the potential for madcap farce isn't quite attained. It's far from a disaster, though; with some tweaking, it could get the job done. ⭐⭐ ½ — Jill Wilson HOOP AND HAT: VAUDEVILLE SHOWDOWN Hoop and Hat John Hirsch Mainstage (Venue 1), to July 26 Winnipeg acrobats Chris Without the Hat and Carla Cerceau are apparently more accustomed to working outside as street performers, where the spectacle of, say, Chris juggling machetes feels a little more immediate and dangerous. Deprived of that direct contact with the audience in the hardtop venue of RMTC, the pair contrive to deliver something like a plot, playing the two vaudeville performers drawn into a competition to see whose act is more dangerous. 'Contrive' is the operative word here. Both performers have talents in their fields, Chris as a juggler/magician and Cerceau as an aerialist, performing a perilous routine from a hoop dangling a few metres above the stage. But attempts to flesh out the proceedings just seem random, including Chris singing the song Mr. Cellophane from the musical Chicago, expressing a sentiment that should feel alien to any self-respecting vaudevillian. The promised hour-long run was closer to 45 minutes. ⭐⭐ ½ — Randall King AN IMPROVISED JOHN HUGHES MOVIE Tectonic Improv Centre culturel franco-manitobain (Venue 4), to July 27 The goal of newly formed improv troupe Tectonic's first fringe offering is to pay entertaining homage to the lasting style of John Hughes, the director of such classic fare as Uncle Buck and The Breakfast Club. But while the local performers — Kristen Einarson, Dewey Parker, Kim Laberinto and Scott Angus — are likeably silly and committed as improv artists, it was clear on opening night that this hour-long feature could stand to refer more directly to its sources: a deeper development of archetypes, a greater sense of geography and a few choice props would work wonders. The pieces, suggested by an audience member, were all there for a lively coming-of-age tale: a naive teenage girl who's never been on an airplane headed to a friend's wedding in Wales. There are cheesy, sappy and snappy beats to keep in any Hughesian tale and Tectonic struggled to keep the rhythm, especially when overloud, obtrusive '80s music was piped in sporadically. Still, the audience laughed loudly and often, pleased by the wacky performance if not by the adherence to the form mastered by the great cinematic poet of suburban Chicago. Hughes got better with time: one assumes the same will be true from show to show for Tectonic. ⭐⭐ ½ — Ben Waldman LIFE, LOVE, AND LACK THEREOF Hiljames movement Asper Centre for Theatre and Film (Venue 10), to July 25 Winnipeg's Hilary James, Brooke Hess, Emma Beech and Naomi Wiebe peel back the existential layers of the human condition with all its foibles and frailties in this 60-minute (billed as 75) contemporary dance show featuring three solo world premières. These Things Take Time begins with choreographer Hess preparing a meal in a steaming rice cooker as an ode to mundane routines of day-to-day life. Note, created by Beech and Wiebe, features the latter performing angular, highly gestural movement vocabulary as she explores connection through repetitive motion. However in the abstract program's strongest offering, Solitude Salsa, show producer/choreographer James truly dances like no one's watching during her kaleidoscopic mash-up of styles that further showcases her versatile artistry. It's impossible to take your eyes off her as she wrestles with the gnawing ache of loneliness and its flipside, freedom, her final expansive leaps and spins across the stage ringing as true as a late-night phone call from a desperate, yearning soul. ⭐⭐⭐ ½ — Holly Harris NO DIE! Fedor Comedy Pyramid Cabaret (Venue 15), to July 26 Written and performed by Dutch comedian Fedor Ikelaar, this hour-long standup/storytelling show is a madcap travelogue detailing his hilarious (and harrowing) misadventures in Sierra Leone and Thailand. You know what they say: what doesn't kill you makes you funnier. Ikelaar is a bit slow to get going (there's quite a bit of filler in the beginning), but once he does, he's on fire. The Sierra Leone story is so full of twists and turns and mistaken identity — and so well written and well told — that it could likely hold this show on its own; the story from Thailand that gives the show its title isn't quite ready for prime time. Still, Ikelaar is a likable stage presence and knows how to spin a yarn. With some editing and a tighter ending, No Die! could really kill. ⭐⭐⭐ — Jen Zoratti PLAN V: THE RISE OF REVERENCE Dance Naked Creative Asper Centre for Theatre & Film (Venue 10), to July 27 What's soft, pink and shimmers in the light? Mama V (Eleanor O'Brien) at her latest Plan V meeting, focusing on the celebration and power of the canal we all came from. Clad in a hot-pink, bedazzled velour track suit, the Portland, Ore.-based actor reflects on the #MeToo movement, the reversal of Roe v. Wade and historical shame surrounding women's sexual satisfaction — calling on attendees to 'come together,' listen to their inner goddesses and reclaim their power through pleasure. The 60-minute sermon-style delivery is reminiscent of church (including some moments where one looks at one's watch). Amid the heavy topics, the sex-positive comedy is filled with witty dialogue and complemented with pre-recorded video featuring other meeting attendees (brilliantly played by O'Brien) on 'Zype.' Plan V brings levity and humour to the timely issue of bodily autonomy and is unapologetically feminist. It's brazen and bold with room for laughter, reflection and rebellion, although its message may resonate more deeply with audiences in need of reminders about self-empowerment. Despite its slower start, Plan V leaves you wishing this was your high school sex education class experience. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ — Nadya Pankiw THE ROYAL SPEAKEASY All About Theatre Adults Pyramid Cabaret (Venue 15), to July 26 While there's certainly talent to be found in Winnipeg's All About Theatre crew, this 60-minute cabaret-comedy about the goings-on at a Prohibition-era speakeasy never rises to their level. It starts with a bang. Molly Helmer's sultry, operatic version of Florence Desmond's wistful 1933 song Cigarettes, Cigars as club performer Rose is absolutely stunning. Anika Price, playing club owner Flo, also turns in a pair of showstoppers in the form of jazz-inspired covers of Britney Spears' Toxic and Tove Lo's Habits (Stay High). But an incoherent plot with too many characters sucks the life out of this show. The vocal performances are often too quiet (likely a venue issue, not a capability issue) and the choreography is frequently lacklustre. Remembering the steps is important, but the backup dancers need to remember their faces: some of them look as if they are being forced to perform at gunpoint. ⭐⭐ — Jen Zoratti TOMATOES TRIED TO KILL ME BUT BANJOS SAVED MY LIFE Quivering Dendrites PTE — Colin Jackson Studio (Venue 17), to July 20 Keith Alessi returns for his third run at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, following successful, mostly sold-out runs in 2019 and 2022. It's the same show he's brought twice before and it's just as endearing and funny (and banjo-filled) as previous appearances. In the hour-long performance, the Virginia-based Alessi, onstage with a bowl of fake tomatoes and four banjos, details the way he went from a successful CEO to pursuing his love of the banjo before an esophageal cancer diagnosis (from eating too many tomatoes as the child of Italians) and a seven-hour surgery, which changed his take on life. Alessi recounts his journey through cancer (and learning the banjo) with humility, endearingly corny humour and a whole lot of pickin'. His competent banjo playing comes through crisp and clear, but his voice suffered slightly on opening night from a slightly muddy, too-low vocal mix. Still, the sincerity and charm of his moving story roused the sold-out crowd to a standing ovation by show's end. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ — Ben Sigurdson
