I’ll have what she’s having (or not): Queens of Romance, a 12thnight Fringe review

Posted on August 17, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Queens of Romance (Stage 11, Varscona Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

In Trevor Schmidt’s latest play for 100% More Girls, we’re in a pink-hued world (designer: Schmidt), at the finale event of the Hopeless Romantics’ seventh annual Love and Romance conference. The Queens of Romance panel gathers onstage three celebrity writers, stars of the romance novel, to discuss their craft, their writing history, their aspirations, their works-in-progress.

As introduced by the nervous moderator and fangirl Missy short for Melissa (Schmidt, in a sparkly pink tiered dress and pink runners), they are a high-contrast trio, and their costumes (by Schmidt) are a shorthand character sketch in themselves.

The elderly Nausea Wildenheart (Jason Hardwick), the grande dame of the genre, encrusted with rhinestones, has 723 titles (so far) in her archive, including In His Arms, Her Heart’s Wild Journey, and Tender is the Dusk. She’s (very) old-school: in her best-sellers beautiful people — one well-heeled man, one dewy young woman in the 16 to 21 bracket, find each other, fall in love, get married, make love, live happily ever after.

Janet van Herpen (Michelle Todd), in a flashy silk jumpsuit and draped in gold accessories, has ‘liberated’ female characters who have lots of sex with lots of men, and freewheeling commitment-free sex-in-the-city lives. Her work includes Trophy Wives of Minor Astronauts.

Karin Cutler (Jake Tkaczyk with amusingly corporate hair) is a PhD in gender studies, whose romance output, as she briskly describes, includes queer, gender-fluid, and polyamorous characters. There is a difference, as she points out in exasperation to her stage companions, between dominatrixes and sex workers.

There are witty lines in the script’s delineation of these stereotypes (no Schmidt script is without them). The novel titles are funny, and Dame Nausea’s intermittent deafness occasions some amusing misunderstandings. And top-drawer actors commit to drawing, convincingly, the cartoon portraits. But nothing really happens onstage — either between the characters or their pre-cast, unbridgeable points of view. Arguments among stereotypes tend to be setups; the antagonisms are pre-ordained and hard to animate.

There’s no arguing with Missy’s conciliatory, and worthy, position that there’s room in every genre (including the so-called romance novel), for all kinds of writing and points of view. But there’s a theatrical shortfall when entrenched positions are just set forth onstage.  

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Match-making at the Fringe: the hummable hilarity of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ROBOCOP The Musical. A Fringe review

Posted on August 17, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ROBOCOP The Musical, Cousins in Law Productions. Photo supplied.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ROBOCOP: The Musical (Stage 11, Varscona Theatre

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Here’s weird. If Rodgers and Hammerstein were such musical theatre big shots, with clout, how come “their most ambitious show ever” never made it to opening night? Till now.

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When a cop in a crime-ridden city (Andrew Boyd, who has startlingly big, lustrous musical theatre pipes) bursts onto the stage, and into song, stealing Curly’s euphoric anthem — “Oh what a fine Detroit morning, Oh what a great Detroit day!” — you know you’re in the presence of the showbiz premise you never knew you were waiting for.

It is the mind-cracking inspiration of Cousins-In-Law Productions (whose last outing, SPEED: a 1940s radio drama was a Sterling winner this year) to hook up musical theatre royalty, purveyors of a sacred canon of indelible melodies, memorable characters, lush orchestrations, with the 1987 cyberpunk action film.

And in the course of this lunatic first (and only) date, co-created by Boyd and director Lauren Boyd), you’ll hear songs from nearly every corner of the R&H archive, The Sound of Music, South Pacifc, Oklahoma! … with lyrics re-worked for the occasion. There is no way this should be a fit, which is the whole Fringe-y point of it. But, somehow, amusingly, it does, more than you’d predict. Police HQ is a convent, the cops are nuns, and Murphy, the Maria of the piece till he’s, like, brutally murdered (“so long, farewell…”) reports to Chief Mother Superior.

The ingenious team of Boyd and Boyd even make room for some contemporary satire. “How do you solve a problem like the crime rate?” (work with me here, dear reader; imagine the tune). Law enforcement has been handed over to a big global corporation. Where could that ever happen?

There’s even a dream ballet, for heaven’s sake, and since Jason Hardwick is part of the 11-actor cast of strong singers and dancers that Lauren Boyd sets in motion, I’m assuming he did the choreography, full of DeMille allusions.

You know the musical references with altered lyrics — even if you don’t think you do, and hate musicals. And for musical theatre junkies this is comedy cocaine. In fact there’s a big production number ode to that elixir, from a drug gang in sailor get-up: “There is nothing like cocaine…” pilfered from the South Pacific stash.

Bonkers, and as the red velvet Varscona curtains open, it’s on a production scale rarely found at the Fringe. As the song, with its new lyrics, goes, “everythin’s up to date in Detroit city; we’ll take about as much as we can get.”

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Backstage at the underground: Shrute and Tungsta, a Fringe review

Posted on August 17, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Shrute and Tungsta, Dirty Fish Theatre. Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

Shrute and Tungsta (Stage 3, Nordic Studio Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Since the ‘80s, the underground’s kinda gone … underground. Wanna know where the diehard denizens have been been holding out?

In the bathroom of a big Berlin techno club that’s shaking from the pounding reverb. That’s where Shrute and Tungsta, German ‘performance artistes’ slightly frayed around the edges, are rattling around, crouched over a speaker.

How long have they been there? The duo seem starved for company, eager to impress us, shock us maybe with their avant-garde groove. Shrute (Harper Oud) is the bigger, talkier, more extroverted one, doing close-ups selfies of themself eating (OK, that is pretty gross) and being punk sexy. They’re the one that ventures into the audience. Tungsta (Aidan Collins) is small and expressionless, silent and surly till they’re doing show-and-tell with tiny prize ‘objets’. And there’s even a masked third party, a burly dancer (and go-fer) who enters, and gets shoo-ed off the stage from time to time. I’ll leave the plastic wrap sequence with you to discover.

When the pair gets gets offered a recording contract a big underground label, ah, the seduction of money and fame — there’s dissension. Shrute is pro; Tungsta is against selling out. “They don’t even know what art is.” Will this spell the end of their relationship (and German accents)?

Collins and Oud are a couple of this town’s up-and-coming artists (watch for them), and their show is inventive, deadpan fun, and unlike anything you could possibly see anywhere else. It’s risky by being playful about risky-ness. And doesn’t your Fringe need something weird like that?

    

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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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