Current mood:	Fringey
Current music:	The Black Roses - Nunavut
Entry tags:	fringe

Fringe Notes To Date
So if anyone's been wondering where I am, or what I'm doing with all my time, the answer is one word: Fringe. Whoa boy, have I ever fallen into a time vortex.

Anyway, for posterity, and in case anyone is looking for some recommendations, here's the shows I've seen so far, and some brief notes. Since I don't like star-inflation, how about I go with the Michelin style: one star means it's noteworthy and definitely worth seeing if you have a chance. Two stars means to go out of your way to see it, it's very good. None of the shows I've seen have been bad, so no stars just means that it was decent, but not worth a special mention.

Drama

** Hourglass: Excellent. An extremely good script with extremely good performances. Go see this.
** Wonders of the World: Recite: Charming. Has an octopus dance, and cake. Go see this.
* Word Infirmia: The Criminal Perspectives Project: As joenotcharles said, it's very intense. It could have used a bit more context, or maybe we just missed it since we were a bit late.
* In The Beginning: A Short Piece on Life and Death: Slightly depressing, and quite different from what I expected from the preview. Still very well done.
40 Needles: A bit pointless. And I don't like needles.
In Jim's Image: The actor playing Jim was very stiff in the first half, and even when he warmed up, he didn't seem to fit the part all that well. Pretty decent all the same.
* dis+graced: Very powerful stuff. I wish I knew a bit more of the context surrounding Josephine.
** Real Time: Lots of fun, performed extremely well.
* Desperate Housepets: An animal-rights-based play that wasn't preachy, and was lots of fun. The goldfish were hilarious.
* Chandeleirva: An immensely talented Cirque du Soleil clown in a one-woman show. The character annoyed me a bit, but it was very impressive.

Comedy

* Pentecostal Wisconsin: A very honest account of growing up in a small religious community.
* Evil is the New Good: Good slightly-political standup.
** Jem Rolls: Rapid-fire poetry. With an English accent and excellent diction. Pure awesome.
** The Black Roses: A comedic-folk duo sing very naughty songs. Hilarious.
** The Sum of All Cheers: The Montreal All-Star Cheerleaders vs. Stephen Harper and David Suzuki. Cheesy and silly, but lots of fun. Much better than their show two years ago.
* Never Surrender in: Centaur! Centaur! Centaur!: Felt unpolished, and didn't quite stack up to their Greatest Adventure two years ago, but I still enjoyed myself.
** Uncalled For 4: For Forever: This year, they're doing all long-form improv, and it's excellent. They're doing a musical for their show on Saturday, which may well be incredible, and the show on Friday will have special Fringe guest stars.
Sunny Side Up: Sketch comedy, but the pacing felt kind of off. Some of it was very good, some was a bit less interesting.
* Fresh Meat: More sketch comedy. These guys really kept the pace up, and had some well-done videos too.
* Hanakengo: Insane Japanese performance-art duo. Really very insane. My brain came close to being sucked out of my ears. Very short.
** Teaching As You Like It: Keir Cutler's hapless Shakespeare professor returns, but more pathetic. And the lower he sinks, the funnier he is.

Music/Dance

My Little Rant: Someone sings showtunes to cheer themselves up. What can I say, I don't care much for showtunes. And it seemed a bit pointless.
* Journey the Transformation: Unlike most Fringe shows, this is mostly about the music, with a bit of dance and video. I'm not normally a fan of the style of music, but I still enjoyed it a lot.
I Love New York: A bit of dance, a bit of a play, a bit of video. The videos didn't really work for me, and the play felt a bit disjointed. There was something very good in there trying to get out though.
** This Fairytale Is Not Working Out: Wow. This was amazing. There were celery-stick fights on the sidelines, and bananaphones, and fruit and veggies everywhere, and all kinds of movement all over the place. By far the most fun dance show I've ever seen. Quite possibly the best dance show I've ever seen. Among the best Fringe shows I've ever seen. Go see this.

An honourable mention goes out to The Thirteenth Hour, the nightly Fringe talk show at 1am, with Fringe guests and the Money Wheel and dance parties. It's free, and often insane and awesome.

And yes, if you've been couting, that's 25 shows in 6 days (plus the Thirteenth Hours), i.e. more than I saw in all 10 days last year. Yes, I'm slightly crazy. Yes, that means I'll probably see around 40 shows. Yes, that's even crazier. This is indeed the best Fringe ever.