Kieran Smith

This was a really fun and lighthearted performance with a bit of everything, from great musical covers to dancing and burlesque. I thought the song choices were generally excellent, although at times Tymisha’s strong voice drowned out Chase’s. It may have been a volume issue, as the balance seemed better later in the show, but initially it was a little distracting.

I also found that some of the songs felt a bit less rehearsed than others. That said, the performance as a whole was thoroughly enjoyable, and both Chase and Tymisha did a phenomenal job. It was a lively, entertaining show with plenty of variety, and I had a great time watching it.

Hallelujah! Brother Love is a parody of televangelists and tent-revival shows, and he does an exemplary job of playing with the hypocrisy and often barely repressed “desires” of these pay-as-you-go preachers. The songs are hilarious and the crowd work is excellent as well.

I think this may have been the funniest show of the year for me. The entire performance felt surreal and all too real at the same time. For the right audience, this is likely going to be a favourite.

If you’re at all offended by religious parody, don’t just steer clear—you may want to leave town until Brother Love packs up and heads for his next group of "Christians" to exploit.

I’m starting to think I’m just not the biggest Dockery fan. That said, I went to this performance with friends and figured I’d give him another shot, since this couldn’t possibly be as disjointed as his other work at the Fringe this year.

The Review was certainly better—easier to follow and funnier in places—than The Forbidden City. However, I still felt that some of the jokes didn’t quite land. The ending, in particular, felt a bit like “boomer” humour about technology rather than genuinely well-crafted comedy.

Ultimately, I’m not sure I’m Dockery’s audience, and I’ll probably leave his performances to a different generation in the future.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this performance, but I’ve always felt that the mythological Thor was a bit of a dick, so the title certainly grabbed me. What I got was some remarkably entertaining storytelling, delivered with a liveliness and clarity that deserves to be commended.

There was one moment where I felt the wheels came off briefly, when the storyteller made reference to something that didn’t seem to get entirely worked out. Otherwise, I found the show well constructed, easy to follow, and thoroughly enjoyable.

Telling the story of the first vampire novel(la), I found this work to be not only superbly acted and superbly written, but also remarkably intelligent and fun. Both actors deserve the highest praise for their work in this play. If I have any criticism, it’s simply that it felt a little long. However, that’s peanuts all things considered—go see this one.

I wasn’t entirely sure what this was going to be going in….and I was honestly disappointed. Mostly because this could have been something really cool, but instead felt like a strange mashup of Shakespeare references and a dramatic reading of Linda Hamilton’s IMDb page. The writing was fairly good, but it was a bit over-acted and too hard to follow.

It’s so difficult to assign a rating to this show because it is absolutely wild. It’s basically an abstract theology lesson set to industrial beats, with paper-mâché “objects” standing in for characters.

I would highly, highly, highly recommend doing two things before seeing this show: 1) go online and figure out which objects represent which characters (the playwrights have details on Instagram), and 2) read up extensively on the history of the Public Universal Friend. The show offers little to no overview of the Friend’s life, so if you’re unfamiliar with the story, you’re in for one of the strangest experiences of your life. I enjoyed it personally, even as I felt myself lost through much of it.

I hadn’t previously seen Colin outside of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, so I was pretty excited about this one. I wasn’t let down by Colin—whenever he was doing improv, he was amazing.

Unfortunately, I saw a performance where he was working with Scratch, and the result was a show where Colin felt a little more in the background while the Scratch guys largely ran the show, dictating the direction and structure and, at times, shutting down Colin’s jokes. I’d love to see Colin again next year with a different group, because he’s a legend.

An incredible performance from the entire cast. The script was fantastic, the music and singing were a delight, the jokes were hilarious, and the cast looked like they were loving every second of it. I highly recommend seeing this if you’re able. So far, it’s the best show I’ve seen at the Fringe this year.

An absurdist comedy about the healthcare system should probably have some jokes, right? Instead, this show stumbles over itself, repeating the same "jokes" again and again: we get it, the doctor is egotistical and VERY LOUD; yes, the nurse is hyper-competent; yes, the resident is eager. They’re uninteresting and unhelpful medical stereotypes we've all seen before.

But the bigger problem is that the show falls completely off the map in its final act, shifting from a “comedy” into roughly fifteen minutes of preaching to the audience about the challenges facing the healthcare system. While I appreciated the sentiment of the final act (I personally support a public healthcare system), I found it at odds with the rest of the performance, which did little to highlight systemic issues and instead largely pointed the finger at individual staff competency. That tension left me feeling uneasy and uncomfortable rather than entertained.

Unfortunately, I think the writer needs to go back to the drawing board with this one and consult with some healthcare workers in different areas so as to not miss the mark this egregiously.