Dave Breakenridge

Ghost Quartet is at times a confounding bit of theatre. There are several interwoven storylines crossing centuries and styles, all played by the same performers, so there were moments I wasn’t clear where we were.

However, they do manage to resurface often enough and weave back together at the end that all of them feel resolved.

That said, the Brave Spaces production of Dave Malloy’s 2014 chamber musical is such a beguiling, captivating 90 minutes, divided into four parts like a record, weaving stories of love, death, heartbreak, and, everyone’s favourite, whiskey. And whisky.

Susan Sneath, who was a founding performer at the Edmonton Fringe Festival over four decades ago, returns to the stage as Siobhan, a Seanchaí who lives alone in a care home, missing her family, lamenting the stories she can’t remember. Mark Guerrero plays Fionn, a Gen-Z writer (read: content creator) who is attempting to glean what he can from Siobhan’s teachings. Wanting to carry on the traditions.

Sneath gives her character such heartbreaking vulnerability. She really is the core the emotional core of the show. And Guerrero, on the other hand, imbues Fionn with youthful curiosity and exuberance. The intergenerational connection between the two is heartfelt and endearing. I won’t say I shed a tear, but it was awfully dusty in the theatre for some reason.

The script by Gavin Bradley tugs at the heartstrings even more.

Confirmed Bachelor is a two-handed farce of the highest order, the kind of whip-smart comedy that would give Jack Tripper whiplash, as you move from schemes to assumed identities to mistaken identities to confusion about one’s identity. The arc of Gabriel and Eliza is a jolly bit of fun, in this play from writer/performers Clayton James-Plamondon and Erin Leflar.

What we have here is a deft comedy of manners, in which “confirmed bachelor” Gabriel Ringley‘s father is trying to have him married off to an eligible bachelorette (he really wants none of it), whereas Eliza Bates’s aunt is trying to help her convince Gabriel that Eliza’s the one for him.

I’m just going to get my biggest criticism out of the way off the top: I don’t particularly care for the concept of 35MM. It’s novel, but didn’t land for me.

So it’s a good thing the performers — Matthew Gregg, Corben Kushneryk, Layne Labbe, Damon Pitcher and Mackenzie Tennessen — are such strong, dynamic singers. They navigated the various styles of the production with ease.

Labbe, especially, brought the angst of young love to life during On Monday, and Kushneryk hilariously depicted the horrors of nannying for a terror child named Caralee.

What happens when you move to a country to learn, in part, about that country and your attempts to learn about that country only reveal much more about other countries and, in fact, the way that your new adopted home has treated other countries through the years?

Much has been made over the years of institutions in Britain and ill-gotten exhibits, and whether the right thing to do is to return those exhibits to their countries of origin.

Kiana Wu puts a human face on this discussion in a well-crafted solo performance that traces her experience moving to the UK from Calgary and hoping to answer for herself some questions about her new home. Unfortunately, the places she looked are more chock full of artefacts from countries like Benin and Egypt and elsewhere.

Two things can be true.

Shrute and Tungsta, as played by Harper Oud and Aidan Collins, respectively, are a hilariously odd duo. The pair had the Saturday night audience laughing riotously.

And their show, also called Shrute and Tungsta feels like a series of wild comedic segments held together by a thin narrative.

But all along the way there will be laughs. And head-scratching. But mostly laughs.

Mark this the second show I’ve seen at the 2026 Fringe that tries to directly address the dread we’re all feeling because (gestures hands) of everything.

Come to think of it, this is the second musical show I’ve seen at the 2026 Fringe that tries to directly address the dread we’re all feeling because (gestures hands) of everything.

What are the odds?

In the case of Bremner Fletcher’s Onwards!, he tries to look on the bright side, while also having us laugh at the dark, making the decision to move onward in life with joy and defiance.

It’s a tale as old as time, really. Sailor meets siren, they fall in love, transform each other, get tied up in a couple of deaths, live happily ever after.

You know, that old chestnut.

This is silly and saucy stuff, and our two performers take on four characters with ease.

Is The Taint Brothers a series of penis and butt jokes? Yes. Is it a playful skewering of hyper-masculine stereotypes, while also trying to address the stigma of talking about men’s health and mental health? Also yes.

Is it hilarious? You betcha

A show like The Taint Brothers is hard to review. In part, this is because a lot of the humour works on the novelty or the unexpectedness of any given segment and describing it in too much detail would defeat the purpose. And you want to go into this fresh.

There were several moments during Backcombed, the delightfully unhinged return of physical comedy duo The Merkin Sisters, that a theatre-goer in front of me audibly uttered to the man next to her, “This is so weird.”

Indeed it is. Indeed they are. But The Merkin Sisters have built a reputation on mining that weirdness for laughs, and this latest outing does not disappoint.

Ingrid Hansen and Stéphanie Morin-Robert have been fixtures at this and other fringe festivals for a number of years now, bringing their talents as puppeteers, storytellers and physical comedians to sell-out crowds.