Begin Again. Martin Dockery: Forbidden City! returns to solo-storytelling form, a guest Fringe review by Fawnda Mithrush 

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Martin Dockery: Forbidden City, Concrete Drops Theatre, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied.

Martin Dockery: Forbidden City! (Stage 1, ATB Westbury Theatre)

By Fawnda Mithrush

Couched in a story about a family trip to China is the kernel of Martin Dockery’s greatest hangup: Endings.

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Beginnings are easy enough: Starting over is less painful when you haven’t spent a lot of time investing in the path. The “begin again” premise demonstrated in the show’s repeated opening sequence and ever-looping return to the instructions for the Forbidden City audio guide does start to grate on your psyche—in a good way.

It’s this cyclical stuckness that Dockery admits is the essence of all his storytelling shows; they’re just “a long series of introductions,”albeit seeded with purpose in each iterative segment. Those seeds eventually sprout into the satisfying realizations that while the path may have seemed like a strange loop, it really was taking you somewhere insightful after all.

Without unravelling the smartly-wound sweater that’s knitted here, know that any audience impatience is matched by Dockery’s own vein-pulsing exasperation; the physical and vocal effort literally scrape through each return, ramping in a way that must, you hope, eventually end in relief.

What is lovely about the ending is that it’s actually the biggest beginning of Dockery’s life, one for which he’s brilliantly unready. You don’t learn anything about the Forbidden City, after all. No one does if they stay stuck in the entry.

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F*ck off, we’re STEEPING: Erika MacDonald: Tea TIME, a guest 12thnight Fringe review by Fawnda Mithrush

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Erika MacDonald: Tea TIME, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

ERIKA MACDONALD: Tea TIME (Stage 28, Roots on Whyte)

By Fawnda Mithrush

One of life’s great comforts, tea is truly front and centre in this piece. It’s a good thing, too, because it’s a keen assurance of safety and comfort that allows Erika MacDonald to expertly cover some Very. Tough. Subjects. She does so with a wit and soft candour that is remarkable.

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Tea TIME lays down a series of ritualistic adages that at first describe the routine making of tea; “it doesn’t take forever, but it does take time” takes on deeper meaning each time MacDonald utters it. Once the disclosures of mental health challenges emerge, you’re fully aware that while tea is indeed being brewed onstage, there’s also something else happening, something warm and assuring and entirely steeped with love.

MacDonald’s demeanour is of a tender auntie; her bonafide grin and sincerity buffer any sort of unease that might come up when talking about depression, and it’s easy to trust her fully as she guides the audience through a “felt three minutes,” which you absolutely must do once in your life in a room full of strangers. Each procedural step to arrive at a well-made cup is a shelter and an affirmation that each moment is to be savoured, even if only in its simplicity or quietness.

It won’t have the same impact on everyone, but no one could walk away from Tea TIME without a genuine appreciation for MacDonald’s vulnerable and endearing way with her audience. Buckle up and enjoy the cup.

 

 

 

 

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God is Sexy: Brother Love’s Good Time Gospel Hour sends up Jesus, Satan and Timothee Chalamet, a guest 12thnight Fringe review

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Brother Love’s Good-Time Gospel Hour, Lester W. Productions. Fringe 2026. Photo by Nick Olson

Brother Love’s Good Time Gospel Hour (Stage 20, Mile Zero Dance Stage)

By Fawnda Mithrush

Playwright and frontman Noam Osband leads his congregation through an evangelical hot mess and singalong hour — we say ‘hot’ here because of the persistent metaphor for spiritual thirst as sexual desire, not because the show is on fire.

The songs are catchy and Brother Love lets his distaste (or attraction) for society’s hyper-sexed obsessions to permeate the songbook. Once you bind the penetration angle with religion, the innuendos come easy: The trinity as a gangbang, only god can fill your spiritual hole, Jesus is a power bottom — you get the shrift.

A mid-week afternoon house may not be quite enough pints in to appreciate the fevered silliness and intentionally overwrought puns, but any Fringer could acknowledge Osband’s comparison to Timothee Chalamet as Satan as fitting. I mean, he’s just too good looking, right?

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Beyond books: Witch with Her Skirt on Fire brings a universe of story, a guest 12thnight Fringe review by Fawnda Mithrush

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Megan Markham in Witch With Her Skirts On Fire. Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

Witch With Her Skirt on Fire (Stage 28, Roots on Whyte)

By Fawnda Mithrush

An engaging storyteller from Orlando, Florida, Megan Markham is making her Edmonton Fringe debut with a series of tales that magically weave their way through time, space, and myriad incarnations of women as witches.

It starts with a library at the centre of the universe, cared for by librarians with a penchant for learning. It provides a cautionary lens to inform the rest of the show: Be careful of what appears in books.

Her subsequent stories are full of rich imagery and metaphor—a girl with hair of starlight, a clockmaker who chases fire, a child’s lungs as an hourglass, an ageless statue planted in sand—it’s a visceral and poetic world that Markham shapes for her grandmother, a Catholic who asks Megan for stories so she can come to understand witches better. The arc covers phases of the maiden, mother, and crone (as any good witch would ensure), and Markham’s delivery is confident and compelling.

As she circles back to the beginning and to her grandmother’s query, Markham recalls finding her own agency through storytelling, and that’s far more valuable than what any book could teach.

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Do we need to talk about it? Candy Roberts embodies Big Crone Energy in QUEENAGE WASTELAND, a guest Fringe Review by Fawnda Mithrush

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Candy Roberts in QUEENAGE WASTELAND, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

QUEENAGE WASTELAND (Stage 17, Grindstone Comedy Theatre and Bistro)

By Fawnda Mithrush

Known best to Fringe audiences from her much-lauded turn as LARRY, award-winning comedy artist, musician and writer Candy Roberts brings high personal stakes to this solo piece, which expounds on her childhood growing up in Campbell River, her awkward teenage years, and her impending Crone-hood (that is, the phase of life where a woman embraces her cat-loving ways and becomes the “ugly, crazy, unmarried” spinster that society chalks her up to be).

Roberts is officially done with dating; relationships are off the table due to “nonethical nonmonogamy” ruining her taste for them. We come to realize that her current status is more complex; her parents’ influence impacts her desire to mother only cats, not kids. And her youthful insecurities led to “little t” traumas that she glosses over with winks and nudges.

You might be stunned by Roberts’ glib takes at times, but it’s part of the charm in her humour, and why clowning is her strong suit — everything feels a little safer coming from a ridiculous character. Clowning saved her life, she says, and it’s assuring to see her hick-with-a-heart clown Larry return ever so briefly to protect Candy’s vulnerabilities. “Gear down, big rig,” he reminds us, when the inclination to judge arises.

It’s a little unkempt around the edges as a new performance piece, but with some polish (and perhaps more cats?) Roberts will surely settle into her Queenage Cronedom comfortably.

 

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Reviewing The Review and other modern meta conundrums, a guest Fringe Review by Fawnda Mithrush

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

The Review, with Martin Dockery and Andrew Broaddus. Photo supplied.

The Review by Martin Dockery (Stage 18, FOH Pro Stage at the Luther Centre)

By Fawnda Mithrush

Two lawyers spar over a performance review and a questionable photo shared with one of their wives. Straightforward enough. Add a sprinkling of possibly autonomous AI and familial stakes in the firm and, well, let the entrapment themes fly.

Martin Dockery’s two-hander here is a little Philip Glass, a little Beckett, a lot of what the hell is actually happening, and why is it so frustrating and fascinating at the same time?

Dockery plays the elder lawyer being unflatteringly reviewed by a younger partner, the  deadpanning Andrew Broaddus. It’s the elder who is not keeping up with client trends, who calls out to a generic “supercomputer” instead of the updated AI Sapphire referenced by the younger  (recall the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” campaign — there are flavours of that throughout).

The genius in the banter is not so much in the spoken words but in the tensive build: Directed by Vanessa Quesnelle, the pair’s initially rhythmic volleying spirals into an unrelenting verbal cage match. When the in-your-face dressing down of each other isn’t hurtful enough, the lawyers turn to the internet for objective verification. The smart-room AI keeps swapping the lights to match the mood, while also listening to the men lambaste each other in the most personal of ways, gathering intel for its own review of their work, their lives, their worth.

The meta magic of The Review is the calling out of review culture itself, and any industry’s reliance on it. “Not everything should be reviewed” but also “only the people in charge should do the reviews” is not how the internet works, and perhaps that’s a tricky logic to present for a crowd that’s increasingly accustomed to aggregated opinions and information.

Performance reviews can be uncomfortable. So much so that one wonders why anyone would put themselves up to be reviewed on the regular, as Fringe artists often do. Who else builds a career parsing pull-quotes and star ratings? There’s doubt that reviews should be needed, or heeded, at all. In truth, a crafty veteran’s experience outweighs whatever the shiny new LLMs are spewing; even if you haven’t read a review of Dockery’s shows in years, you can trust that the sticker price is a reliably good investment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A love story by land and by sea, and quality time in the tub! The Shape of Seamen, a 12thnight Fringe review

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

The Shape of Seamen: a new comic opera, with Nicole Maloney and Michael Watt. Photo supplied

The Shape of Seamen: a new comic opera (Stage 25, Spotlight Cabaret)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The strangest visions come your way when you go to the Fringe. I dreamed I saw a sailor, still in his slicker and sou’wester hat, in a bathtub with a beautiful size-large mermaid.

The sailor has fallen madly in love with this salt-water siren,  and he’s carried her home. And, accompanied by the live band (two fish, one on guitar, one on accordian), they are singing together— jaunty sea shanties, patter songs, love ballads, all original.

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The Shape of Seamen is through-sung, and the songs are, impressively, all in rhymed couplets, an achievement in itself: Gilbert and Sullivan on acid, with the voluptuous mermaid as the Little Buttercup stand-in (lie-in really, since there’a this matter of the tail). The exposition, such as it is, unrolls in recitative.

This kooky, seductively nutty “new comic opera” for two, from the endlessly inventive indie duo Walters & Watt (Let’s Not Turn On Each Other), is written, composed, and directed by Jacquelin Walters. And Michael Watt stars opposite their frequent director Nicole Maloney.

This love affair pretty much skews the sailor’s work/life balance when it comes time for him to leave his “briny beloved,” even temporarily, for his day job. And there are, as you might imagine, other potential relationship challenges with this sea-land duality — the sailor’s jilted -ex Shelley (Maloney), for one, a cautionary, fierce old salt (Watt) for another, not to mention the whole cross-species compatibility thing. Sirens, as you may recall, are a handful, and have a tendency to drown men, especially when they’re crossed.

Walter’s music is clever and odd. And her production, that starts in the tub, really occupies the Spotlight cabaret space, with do-it-yourself ingenuity assisted from time to time by the audience. And the performers are quick on the uptake with improvised asides. Watt has a kind of blithe, Peter Pan-esque quality, and when Calliope the mermaid sprouts toes and fingers and loses the tail, he launches himself out of the bathtub and into the crowd with gusto. “Let me rise above my nature….”

Maloney has one of those trilling G&S soprano voices at her disposal, and switches amusingly between the love-struck seaman and the outraged Other Woman (“am I not hot enough to be victimized?”).

This is a uniquely idiosyncratic kind of rom-com — silly and smart — from renegade talents you should be following.

  

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Birds of Affirmation: an unabashed splash in A Sexy Pigeon Show, a guest Fringe review by Fawnda Mithrush

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Sarah Ivanco in A Sexy Pigeon Show, The Lighter Touch Art Collective at Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

A Sexy Pigeon Show (Stage 7, Chianti Yardbird Suite)

By Fawnda Mithrush

While Edmontonians may take pride in identifying with the scrappy magpie, another oft-maligned avian visitor comes to us all the way from the nation’s capital this Fringe, and it seems they’ve already made friends with the locals. Ottawa-based The Lighter Touch Art Collective landed for their first-ever appearance in river city to a sold-out house at the Yardbird Suite.

Colum (short for Columba Livia Domestica, naturally) kicks off A Sexy Pigeon Show with the brief nesting of a newly laid egg, followed by a “pigeon burlesque,” which is as absurd and silly as it sounds.

Sarah Ivanco plays our winged protagonist with an effusive self-awareness, which lends to the bird’s endearing plight to convert the audience to a “pro-pigeon” mindset. Colum, see, has understandable confidence issues: It’s not difficult to recognize that the pigeon’s sense of self-worth has been permeated by humanity’s unfair classification of the species as an “unproductive” urban pest.

Although once appreciated as messengers or pets, pigeons are now relegated to dim alleys and garbage routes to avoid rooftop spikes and worse. Colum even hesitates to visit the city fountain, intimidated by the very thought of displaying her plume to a wider public.

It’s an hour crafted with great care and effacing humour, with Colum admitting that the premise is meant to hold the audience “emotionally hostage.” There are well-tendered invitations to audience participation (the Lighter Touch crew are extra sensitive to neurodivergence), and tee-ups for gags that tilt toward cliché then veer off to places wholly unexpected. A cigarette becomes a unique punchline, and a familiar Broadway tune takes a hilarious turn as birdsong.

At heart, Colum’s monologue emphasizes that self-esteem and resilience come from the inside, not from verification by the outside world. “You don’t need to be useful to be loved” is a sentiment that lingers long after the show.

It’s a surprise that this troupe hasn’t graced our magpie Fringe before, but we’re sure glad they made the trip.

 

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Reclaiming cultural roots, via food: The Butter Chicken Odyssey, a Fringe review

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Ramneek Singh, creator and star of The Butter Chicken Odyssey, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied.

The Butter Chicken Odyssey (Stage 5, Acacia Hall)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

If this captivating solo show were just a chronicle of Ramneek Singh’s epic two-year odyssey through some 50 (!) of the city’s butter chicken joints, and what happens to a signature Punjabi dish at their hands, it would still be a lot (and educational as hell).

As Singh explains, butter chicken is exotic, subtle, complicated, universally loved in theory but colonized and blandified for (white) North American appetites.  And he’s great company — funny, with a gift of the gab, and great comic timing.

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Ramneek Singh’s The Butter Chicken Odyssey, at Springboards New Play Festival. Graphic supplied.

As instigated and directed by the award-winning Edmonton-based playwright Collin Doyle, The Butter Chicken Odyssey is more than that. It’s a real live play, artfully shaped, not a culinary documentary. It’s a diary of self-discovery, cultural re-discovery really, triggered by having a little daughter who knows neither Punjabi nor her grandparents. His odyssey returns him to memories of growing up in multicultural Mill Woods, a first-generation immigrant kid who learned English by watching horror movies with his mom, then a teen steeped in pop-culture and fast food food (“unhealthy shit, that’s my thing”).

The price of assimilation is part of the story: a man who wants “to find the way back in” —  to his cultural roots, a sense of self. There are family arguments along the way; at 39, he’s still living in his parents’ basement, and he’s fed up with that life and reminders that they’d have preferred a doctor or engineer son than a food writer with thousands of followers. But he renews his appreciation for the “working-class heroes” of Mill Woods, immigrants like his folks, who put their own dreams on hold so their kids would prosper.    

The play is punctuated, episodically, by his accounts, built on a tower of pop-culture similes, of visits to butter chicken establishments (and their bathrooms) that he assesses, on a scale of zero (gruesome) to five (“the real deal”). Many things can go wrong with butter chicken: the gravy could have been sitting there “since before the Partition,” the sauce could be Campbell’s tomato soup, the chicken could have “the consistency of a Michelin tire.” Or worse.

He doesn’t spare himself humiliating moments —  boyhood bullying, or the “university dark years,” or episodes when butter chicken triumphs over his digestion. There’s overt racism in the gross online abuse he gets, and more subtle kinds when, as a brown guy “who grew up cheering for the Oilers,” he’s nonetheless persistently asked “where are you from? No, I mean originally!” by Canucks never satisfied with the answer Mill Woods.

We leave feeling we’ve had a chance to hang out with an inspired raconteur, with first-hand insights into the immigrant experience and a culture, on a quest to reclaim the past.

My favourite solo show at the Fringe so far, funny and heartwarming too.

   

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Grocery shopping with clowns: Jeff and Grungled KNOW FRILLS. A Fringe review

Posted on August 15, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Rainier Pearl-Styles and Nicholas Chieffo in Jeff and Grungled KNOW FRILLS, Holy Scoundrels Theatre. Photo supplied

Jeff and Grungled KNOW FRILLS (Stage 20, Mile Zero Dance Stage)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The two perky, apple-cheeked characters we meet in this light, bright, playful diversion of a clown show, by and starring Rainier Pearl-Styles and Nicholas Chieffo of Holy Scoundrels Theatre, are wonderstruck by the possibilities of grocery shopping: a shopping cart! produce! special offers! coupons!  Their daily mantra: “You can’t spell duo without me and you-o.”

Jeff (Pearl-Styles) has a certain practical streak. Put the cupcake back, they tell their pal Grungled (Nicholas Chieffo), the impulsive one. “Do we look like we’re made of money for snacks?” Grungled, who has a beam like a lighthouse beacon, pouts.

They’re attracted by the possibilities of a new No Frills initiative, a “men’s macho market” from which female shoppers are to be excluded. They’re strapped for cash, apparently, and there will be discounts on frozen dinners, sausages, and there’s the holy grail of free stuff, cupcakes. So they’re taken aback, and then dismayed, by the discovery of the store enforcer that they’re not really men (or ladies, for that matter). Gender isn’t really their thing, as clowns. Even their moustaches, the one painted on and the other actual hair, won’t pass muster. Really, no one wants to hear “you look like dildos, and smell like my grandmother.”

So they set about learning manliness — the smell, the stance, the gait, the attitude. So they enlist an expert from the audience, i.e. a man, to assist with this education. At the performance I saw, they really lucked out with the genial volunteer Chris, who gave them a crash course onstage on how to stomp around assertively.   

The strong suit of the show isn’t really an examination of the patriarchy or a defence of non-binary inclusivity. It’s charm. Both Pearl-Styles and Chieffo, skilled clowns, have a lot of it. And their interactions with the audience are amusing, as they scramble through the crowd, improvising at every turn. But, assaulted by their continuing failure to pass the man test, they are reduced to fighting with sausage swords, to the very death, a sure proof since forever of masculinity.

It’s fun, in an easy-going, untaxing way, to hang with a couple of clowns for an hour at the Fringe, and see a cartoon caricature of macho culture, assisted by amusing props.

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