$20 Sandwich Ruins Your Childhood
Cup of Hemlock Theatre Podcast reviewed $20 Sandwich Ruins Your Childhood in PART 1 of our 3-part post-festival Review Roundup.
Click link for YouTube, or search for the audio-only version wherever you get your podcasts. TIMESTAMP: 1:48:59
TL;DL: The sandwich crew are pros, but Mack had the misfortune of seeing them chafe against the world's least interesting audience participant. Worth seeing again, hopefully with better raw material to work with.
This was just so fun. I loved how the troupe mined for gold by interviewing one audience member in depth and then improvised their way through all the best interpretations of their life's moments. This group works exceptionally well together, have great ideas and genuinely find each other funny. I'm looking forward to checking them out sometime soon at the Comedy Bar in TO!
They definitely are a vibe, individually and all together. Relaxing, fun, silly and on point. Cool concept, executed beautifully.
I saw this show last night and it was a fun time. They begin by interviewing an audience member to mine some personal memories for the show. The interview process was funny enough. The performers are on top of their game and never hesitate to get into a scene. There’s no jumping on top of one another to get a word in, they all work really well together. The story felt fully realized and they incorporated a lot of the material they were given into the scenes. Very impressed. Improv can be pretty hit or miss but this was definitely a hit!
On top of that, they even had a nostalgic set, which is such a treat for an improv show. Loved it!
Easygoing start to my #FringeTO, with afternoon improv based on life stories from a feisty front row senior/volunteer. Mostly competent, but I was a bit surprised at some dropped "offers," and a few slow scene starts—an "off show," maybe.
I saw $20 Sandwich Ruins Your Childhood, and this time I hit the improv lottery, I was the chosen audience volunteer!
The premise is brilliantly simple: they pull someone from the audience, ask a handful of questions about their childhood, family, teachers, hobbies, and all those wonderfully awkward formative years... then they build an entirely improvised show from the answers.
I'd actually seen them before and escaped being picked, but this time there was nowhere to hide.
What they managed to create from my stories was absolute comedic chaos. They took innocent little memories and spun them into something so outrageously funny that I was full-on snort laughing. Not the cute little chuckle either—the kind where you're making noises you didn't know your body could produce.
That's the magic of this show. You could see it ten times and never watch the same performance twice because every audience volunteer brings a completely different story. It's fast, clever, wildly creative, and proof that some of the funniest moments happen when nobody knows what's coming next.
10/10. My abs got a better workout than I have all week, and my sides are still filing a formal complaint.
Savvy Fringe-goers will recognize several names associated with this production and should hurry to book tickets to a show that's sure to sell-out . The 75 minute runtime is slightly longer than the typical Fringe sketch show. This allows the interview portion at the top to meander a bit to help the performers uncover gems to work into the sketches. Those sketches are given time to develop fully and usually pay off. The cast does a good job of subverting expectations and warping the subject matter for comedic impact. One gets the feeling we are seeing performers coalesce into the stars they will one day become. Stand-out performance from Brennan Ashbridge, who is surely on the verge of fame.