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The Calgary Fringe Festival, the city’s annual independent theatre party, runs Aug. 2 to 10, featuring 20 in-person shows. This year’s venues include Festival Hall, the Fellowship Hall in the basement of the Lantern Church, a theatre at Wood’s Homes, the Rose Room in the Alexandra Centre, and the basement of the Next Page bookstore. You can find out more and get tickets at tickets.calgaryfringe.ca. To save you some work, theatre critic Louis B. Hobson has two picks every day of the festival.
MONDAY
CABARET OF MURDER
John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Dennis Rader, David Koresh and Charles Manson were heinous killers, but they were also painters, poets, musicians and playwrights.
Vancouver playwright Blair Moro has compiled songs, plays and poetry by these serial killers and has given them to Bella Ciccone, Pauline Pino-Rubio and Katie-Rose Connors to present as a song-and-dance cabaret. Moro promises it’s a mashup of humour and terror, and definitely for adults only.
Cabaret of Murder has already enjoyed sold-out runs at the Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton Fringe Festivals and plays in Festival Hall for six performances only. On Monday, it runs at 3:15 p.m.
ACTUALLY UNFACTUAL: FUNNY FICTIONS BY PAUL STRICKLAND
Kentucky native Paul Strickland is a fringe veteran and his storytelling, backed by guitar riffs and songs, have taken him to every major fringe festival in North America. Because he has such a winning way of telling stories, even the tallest of his tales sound true.
His last visit to Calgary with Ain’t True and Uncle False played to turn away crowds so it’s always advisable to book seats in advance for his seven shows. Strickland’s shows often involve audience participation so be prepared to learn the chorus of some of his songs so you can sing along.
This show runs at 4:45 p.m. in the Alexandra Centre’s Rose Room.
TUESDAY
ANOTHER MOTHER
Cassidy is about to give birth. The labour pains propel her through memories of her own childhood with a workaholic mother and the path that has led her to a life so different from her mom’s. Their relationship, now shattered by colliding views about the “right” way to impress upon the world as a woman, hurts almost as much as the contractions.
Another Mother explores what it means to sacrifice your life for the sake of your children, and what it means to sacrifice your children for the sake of your life.
Another Mother runs in the Wood’s Home Theatre at 7:15 p.m.
HAPPY GO LUCKY
Straight from Japan, earning standing ovations wherever she plays, Yanomi Shoshinz brings her puppets to the Calgary Fringe to help her tell simple, engaging stories. Shoshinz’s shows have been called animated cartoons come to life, and she has been a North American fringe favourite since 2007 because her shows enchant both young and old, while still exploring universal truths and themes.
A literal two-faced woman shows how honesty without tact can be harmful, while a modern-day Red Riding Hood glories in the fame she has achieved through her fairytales.
Happy Go Lucky plays in the Alexandra Centre’s Rose Room at 8:15 p.m.
WEDNESDAY
JIMMY HOGG: POTAYTO POTAHTO
For 60 minutes, British comedian Peter Stevens’ alter ego, Jimmy Hogg, is about to share his relationship blunders, and especially his adventures with online dating.
Being an accomplished storyteller, Hogg’s diversions from his own problems include explaining how his parents fell in love and his failed attempts to find a similar happy ending so he recalls a particularly painful breakup. He’ll share his worst online hook-up, and it’s a doozy, plus his unwise decision to attend a Sunday afternoon sex party. Those potatoes take centre stage in his imagined brawl over instant scalloped potatoes.
Spend an hour with Jimmy Hogg in the Alexandra Centre’s Rose Room at 8:15 p.m.
seaMAN
It takes two fringe veterans to concoct a one-man horror comedy, that’s being called the spawn of Gilligan’s Island and Robert Egger’s The Lighthouse. Amica Hunterfrom Oregon teamed up with Bruce Costella from Florida, to create this tale of a salty old sailor with a vendetta against the entire ocean itself.
Captain Sea Man’s 30-minute boat tour veers off course taking the audience along for the ride as he dodges everything from storms and maniacal seagulls to upside-down mermaids.
Hunter and Costella promise the Wood’s Homes Theatre will be besieged by an array of hand-designed props, sight gags, puns, mild expletives, physical comedy, and general oceanic hijinks.
seaMan runs at 9 p.m. at Wood’s Homes Theatre in Inglewood.
THURSDAY
FIRE IN THE METH LAB
It’s only the second time for Jon Bennett at the Calgary Fringe, but it’s his 143rd show in a 20-year career that has taken him from his native Australia to fringe and comedy festivals around the world.
In this show, Bennett takes a candid, but humorous, look at his older brother’s turbulent life. Like something out of a movie, it’s a story of drug dealers, bikers, high-speed car chases, crime, prison, exploding houses and even cancer.
In Fire in the Meth Lab, Bennett looks at how a pair of siblings with the same upbringing could have chosen such different lifestyles.
Fire in the Meth Lab runs at 5 p.m. in Festival Hall.
THE EXPIRTION DATE
Boston native Judah Leblang returns to the Calgary Fringe after having won the Best of Fest honour in 2019 with his autobiographical solo show, It’s Now or Never: My Life in the Late Middle Ages.
Leblang is back with a sequel called The Expiration Date which he promises is a poignant, and humorous look, at one gay, Jewish, hard-of-hearing man’s life as a ‘junior-senior’ facing his golden years and wondering what comes next. He bemoans the fact he has been forced to live with questions that have no easy answer, and he’d like to share and ponder them with his audiences.
Lebland performs in the Lantern Church’s Fellowship Hall at 5:15 p.m.