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.

 

Posted in Fringe 2026, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Birds of Affirmation: an unabashed splash in A Sexy Pigeon Show, a guest Fringe review by Fawnda Mithrush

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.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

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.

   

Posted in Fringe 2026, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Reclaiming cultural roots, via food: The Butter Chicken Odyssey, a Fringe review

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.

Posted in Fringe 2026, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Grocery shopping with clowns: Jeff and Grungled KNOW FRILLS. A Fringe review

Capturing the moment, and leaving the story to you: the fascinating strangeness of ’35mm: a musical exhibition’. A Fringe review

Posted on August 15, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

35mm: A Musical Exhibition (Stage 36, ArtsHub Ortona)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

In “Stop Time,” the opening number in 35mm: a musical exhibition, the five-member Uniform Theatre ensemble directed by Jim Guedo sings of the capture of a moment in a photograph. “There. Life (still focus. More life…. life stopped in pose.”

It’s the kind of show — a play? a musical? a concert? a song cycle on its feet — you never get to see at the Fringe. Especially since it marries, song by song, to photographs that are full of narrative possibilities, both before and after the click. The music and lyrics, both complex, are by New York composer Ryan Scott Oliver. And the eloquently dramatic photographs that pair with them are by the well-known NYC theatre photographer Matthew Murphy.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

You can’t help wondering how the songs fit together in a contemporary urban landscape. I’m not sure. It’s not that the through-sung musical score and the visuals-scape of this highly unusual 2012 piece interpret each other. Not exactly. It’s more that both have a foothold on contemporary urban life at precarious moments when everything is about to change, or fall apart, or move forward: joy snatched from despair, ecstasy that feels fleeting, desperation, dawning realizations, or seconds of fractured solitude from people whose lives we glimpse.

Both music and photographs are an invitation to imagine: a moment of spiritual awakening (or nostalgia), marriages poised on a knife edge where they could go either way, when a woman realizes she loves more than she is loved and a partner is about to move on. Or moments when a man realizes that’s what he’ll do, not today but one day soon. In Carilee, a harried parent is struck by the appalling thought that babies are for life. A man on an industrial pedestrian bridge with his back to us is caught as he moves towards an unidentifiable light. Why Must We Tell Them Why, is accompanied by a multi-angled sequence of gymnastic leaps caught mid-air.

35mm: a musical exhibition, Uniform Theatre at Fringe 2026. Photo by Brianne Jang

Guedo’s production fully occupies the airy, brick and wood chamber of the ArtsHub Ortona. And it’s a shame that the acoustical reverb in the place continues to be problematic for lyrics. He sets his singer-actors in motion on a gangway — between the past and the future? — with big screens on either end. We’re on either side, as the cast circle each other and engage with us close-up. And the expert live band directed by Steven Greenfield at the keyboard occupies a dark space behind a screen.

The cast — Matthew Gregg, Corben Kushneryk, Layne Labbe, Damon Pitcher, Mackenzie Tennessee — are all powerful singers. They negotiate a difficult score with dramatically jagged rhythms and dissonances, as well as gorgeous melodies seem to dissolve sometimes before they can resolve. Or not resolve.

A unique experience, the theatre of the imagined moment. Don’t miss your chance.

Posted in Fringe 2026, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Capturing the moment, and leaving the story to you: the fascinating strangeness of ’35mm: a musical exhibition’. A Fringe review

Two Persian poets walk into a bar: a legendary friendship reimagined in ‘Shams by Rumi’, a guest Fringe review by Fawnda Mithrush

Posted on August 15, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Shams by Rumi (Stage 1, ATB Westbury Theatre)

By Fawnda Mithrush 

Galal and his bestie Husam—a playwright and director respectively—arrive in Cairo to meet with producers. As Husam prepares for what he hopes is their big break, Galal gets distracted by pings from his phone and the prospect of a date with a mysterious “SH.”

The resulting meet-cute is set in an upscale Egyptian café, and on arrival SH turnsout to be Shams (the delightfully pragmatic Fatemeh Jelveh-Garan), a young woman visiting Cairo from Iran. Galal, played with lofty romanticism by Brijesh Nagarathinam, is initially challenged by Shams’ straightforwardness; he is surprised at his own ease in communicating with her in English, and she prods him to take poetic license with their story. The two decide to flee the café and embark on a journey that quickly churns into a surrealistic dervish through Tehran, Alexandria, and even Edmonton.

Playwright Moemen Gaafar’s reimagining of the historical relationship between Rumi and the wandering mystic Shams of Tabrizi is not quite a rom com; the contemporary Galal and Shams nod to the “two old Persian dudes” (who may or may not have been in love) as inspiration for their own wanderings across time and space. The pair here have a winsome chemistry, and their mutual spark is palpable as they gaze at whirling Sufi dancers and explore the scenery of eastern cities in classical verse.

At its core, the story examines intense friendships, and how their endings provoke a particular kind of grief. Rumi famously mourned Shams Tabrizi’s passing, and Galal falls prey to a similar sadness as he anticipates his separation from Shams. It’s the eventual remembering of his old friend Husam that shakes Galal out of his romantic stupor — and it’s in that essence of kindred connection that the two men finally find comfort.

 

 

Posted in Fringe 2026, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Two Persian poets walk into a bar: a legendary friendship reimagined in ‘Shams by Rumi’, a guest Fringe review by Fawnda Mithrush

Goose and Consequences: Jack Becomes the Giant in The Beanstalk Market Crash, a guest Fringe Review from Fawnda Mithrush

Posted on August 15, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

The Beanstalk Market Crash, Mind of a Snail Puppet Co. at Fringe 2026. Photo supplied.

The Beanstalk Market Crash (Stage 13, SERVUS Credit Union Théatre at La Cité Francophone)

By Fawnda Mithrush, for 12thnight.ca

It begins with violence, remember? As the long-worn tale of Jack and his proverbial beanstalk famously ends  — with Jack kidnapping the goose and her golden egg, then chopping down the stalk to slay the sky-bound Giant — Jack handily gets away with his loot, and that’s where the seeds are planted for Mind of a Snail Puppet Co.’s brilliantly executed production of The Beanstalk Market Crash.

One hundred years after Jack’s initial plunder, his grandson Jack VonBeansprott III (Chloe Ziner) enjoys the lavish wealth built from generations of exploiting the still-captive goose and her sparkling progeny. He pitches to investors from a dining table that doubles as a miniature film set, which helps illustrate the environmental vastness of the BeanCorp legacy through real-time screen and camcorder choreography.

Fringe audiences may remember this award-winning duo from their 2018 holdover hit, Caws & Effect, which also employed strikingly simple yet emotive shadow puppetry and overhead projectors to tell another bird-y story. We won’t attempt to re-paint the ingenious scenery of flights and falls from the sky here; suffice to say that the images are as DIY and charming as they are impactful.

The result is stark, funny, and devastating all at once; as the Goose (Jessica Gabriel) evolves from a softly garbling cardboard figure into a real live person pleading with Jack for her freedom, Jack becomes so large that you could almost reach out and pick the plaque between his teeth.

The technical feats of the production are irresistibly clever; you get caught up marveling in their craft while being reminded that this old fairytale was criminally flawed from the start—Jack sprouted the stalk itself from stolen beans, after all.

It’s one of the most rewarding hours you could spend in a Fringe venue. If there are any tickets left, you’d best snag them up tout de suite.

 

 

 

Posted in Fringe 2026, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Goose and Consequences: Jack Becomes the Giant in The Beanstalk Market Crash, a guest Fringe Review from Fawnda Mithrush

Ah, what to do with the family curse: gore (i want to disappear) from Tiny Bear Jaws. A Fringe review

Posted on August 15, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Geoffrey Simon Brown, Autumn Strom, Sarah Emslie, Kristen Padayas in gore (i want to disappear), Tiny Bear Jaws at Fringe 2026. Photo by Brianne Jang

gore (i want to disappear), Stage 3, Nordic Studio Theatre

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The opening gambit of Elena Belyea’s stunningly theatrical gore (i want to disappear) is happening when you enter the theatre. Four actors are marking out a light-up grid onstage in abrupt right angles: sudden rushes and sudden stops. The quartet, who never make eye contact, are together a kind of human perpetual motion machine, choreographed by the gods. Then their limbs begin to quiver, as if they’re standing on electrified ground.

Is that the curse that hangs over the House of Atreus in the Tiny Bear Jaws compelling account of Aeschylus’s The Oresteia? Is it the inheritance of the ancient Greece ground zero of grief, grudge, fury, and vengeance where gods and human generations mingle, and have at ‘er, on an un-level playing field?

What follows is a 75-minute version of The Oresteia which feels amazingly expansive not compressed, and the smallness of the superb cast counts, dramatically. All four actors are meaningfully double-cast. And they step forward together as the Chorus — in front of a bank of red-coloured energy drink bottles that are the blood supply for a story soaked in violence. “We’re the Furies, don’t fuck with us.”

Sarah Emslie, Autumn Strom, Geoffrey Simon Brown, Kristen Padayas in ‘gore (i just want to disappear), Tiny Bear Jaws. Photo by Brianne Jang

What follows — thanks to powerful performances by Sarah Emslie, Geoffrey Simon Brown, Autumn Strom, and Kristen Padayas — is a group portrait of a close but violently fractious modern “family.” And the non-binary kids  look for comfort and self-fulfilment in “chosen families” as they struggle to find themselves, in a frame that’s too tight. The House of Atreus makes your own dysfunctional family look like a sitcom picnic.

In a particularly fascinating double-assignment Padayas, who’s terrific in both roles, is both the matriarch Clytemnestra, a widow in a no-win situation with troublesome kids,  and the gay lover of her son Orestes (Brown). Orestes inherited the kingdom, and he feels cornered by expectation. “But what if I want to be a hockey player, or a farmer … or a bride?”

Brown also plays the family’s unwelcome lodger Cassandra the oracle, whose gift of prophecy is also a curse, since she’s doomed to never be believed, “gaslit for all eternity.” And Electra, the neglected trans daughter, is played in the formative stages of being a real force of nature, is played by Strom as a moody teenager. “Hey, Calliope is hosting an open-mic night in a cave. Wanna come?” Emslie has the tricky assignment of speaking for both parental and offspring generations simultaneously, as dad Agamemnon and the daughter the gods demand he kill. “A family is a group of people who love each other till it’s no longer convenient.” And then what do you do with your inheritance? That’s the question.

So, yes, gore (i want to disappear) grows outward, in a particularly contemporary non-binary way. And one of Belyea’s most impressive achievements — they’re a witty writer — is finding a language, and a cadence, that are both modern and somehow don’t lose the sense of ancient roots. And the fun — yup, it’s fun, too — is that the party continues in the afterlife. “I’m taking drum lessons….”

With lighting, music, and stagecraft to match. Highly recommended!

Posted in Fringe 2026, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ah, what to do with the family curse: gore (i want to disappear) from Tiny Bear Jaws. A Fringe review

Skit night in the court: PORK & BEANS: Attorneys at Law. a Fringe review

Posted on August 14, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

PORK & BEANS: Attorneys at Law (Stage 18, FOH Pro Stage at the Luther Centre

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

PORK & BEANS: Attorneys at Law isn’t the first time the Edmonton musical theatre indie Top Bunk Theatre has gravitated to food as a setting and running gag for their original Fringe comedies — witness Soup & Hogan’s 16th Annual Hotdog Eating Contest in 2025, and  Sam’s Clam & Oyster Bar the Fringe before that.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

Here’s one to add to that oddball archive. The title characters in this scrambly musical by Sam Daly and Ethan Lang are two high-powered lawyers in ‘70s Chicago, city of encased meats. Augustus Pork (Daly) and Lucius Beans (Lang) were law school classmates at Harvard, and best friends bonded in that pork and beans mutual-need way. But by the time they’re facing off in “the trial of the century” — a star soft-ball celebrity (Aidan Laudersmith) has murdered his wife Chartreuse, or not — they’re had a falling out.

In between, the 10-actor production directed by Lauren Boyd assisted by Elizabeth Janzen) is a long flashback that reviews their ever more fractious relationship, and how they met when Beans was a legal beagle student in the Harvard debating society and Port was a Harvard janitor. And it’s crammed with deliberately bad accents, goofball jokes about the best wurst hotdogs, throw-away lines about food courts, food (as opposed to legal) courts , a veritable barrage of  puns. Pork gives the judge, straight out of G&S, a hand (yup, the  very one she somehow lost); there are trial recesses so she can get a shrimp taco.

If this is sounding to you like a satire of the law, forget it. It plays more like an over-extended SNL skit, or something dreamed up at law school skit night after the end of year kegger. The likeable and energetic cast throw themselves into the comedy slammer. But they’re up against sketchy sound. And the singing is variable too. The premise is promising. But at 60 minutes, time feels like it’s being served. That’s a verdict that was decisively not shared with the rest of the cheering jury in the house seats at the performance I saw.

  

Posted in Reviews | Comments Off on Skit night in the court: PORK & BEANS: Attorneys at Law. a Fringe review

Back to Edmonton’s chaotic accidental riviera: Beach to the Future is the finale of the trilogy. A Fringe review.

Posted on August 14, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Beach To The Future: The Accidental Beach End Game (Stage 18, FOH Pro Stage at the Luther Centre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

There’s a kind of lunatic dumb-smart dumbass-smartass genius at work in Grindstone’s new Accidental Beach sequel, the final instalment of a trilogy of musicals inspired by the possibly toxic sludge of E-town’s ever-shifting river beach.

Bonkers and high-spirited, in a way that “manic” doesn’t even begin to describe, the Accidental Beach musicals are all about local. And as this team has discovered with the first two instalments in the  trilogy we do love local, in all its absurdities, potholes, miscellaneous corruptions, crackpot authorities, an LRT that goes nowhere anyone wants to go, its victory-averse hockey team, etc. Nobody gets a bigger kick (or more double-entendres) out of civic low-esteem than this ridiculously agile, multi-tasking bunch of musical comedy-soaked artists. And they’re nothing if not breezy about being scathing.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

After the inaugural instalment in 2024,  a verbatim account of something made up on the spot from audience cues as part of Grindstone’s weekly improvised musical The 11 O-clock Number, and last year’s GUMS: An Accidental Prequel, written down in advance, Beaches … has returned the characters to us, including public-spirited Sandy the lifeguard (Abby Vandenberghe) — who can’t swim, as I recall — her dimbulb boyfriend (Dallas Friesen) who cruises the Saskatchewan River murk in his SeaDoo. And the Mayor (Malachi Wilkins), a doctor/drug dealer with an office on the Walterdale Bridge.

This  sequel, directed by Donna Leny-Hansen and written collectively by a four-member cast, gleefully rips off the crucial narrative arc of that movie you’re thinking of. Via Sandy’s lifeguard chair that the multi-talented Doc Rogers-Place (Wilkins with his dander up is an amazingly electrified sight), now ex-mayor, doctor, inventor with a PhD in astro-physics, has transformed into a time machine. There’s a clever catchy song (the accomplished score is by Abbott and Erik Mortimer) with an ode to “the lifeguard time machine that takes you any-when you want to go.”    

Sandy (Vandenberghe) in the future is a single mom, working shifts at the Water Factory that turns Saskatchewan River poison into … well, something. Like most of the younger generation in River City her son Harry (Ethan Snowden) is a mutant lizard with a tail. He wants his late dad Razor (Friesen), back to a time before that fatal SeaDoo explosion…. Why do I find myself explaining the plot? Too much River water?

Anyhow, the nostalgia for a city where stuff worked and the Oilers win the Cup, takes them back, back to the time when Accidental Beach was On-Purpose Beach. The opening song and dance number is classic musical theatre, “we’re going back to the beach.”

Very funny make-shift props, a non-stop tickletrunk of flammable wigs, Speedos, and a folk-rock/ full-rock/ jazzy,pop musical, with love ballads, and, voilà, everything, is before you. With a cast of dexterous comic actors who commit fully, and then some. Crazy, frantic, and fun.   

Posted in Fringe 2026, Reviews | Comments Off on Back to Edmonton’s chaotic accidental riviera: Beach to the Future is the finale of the trilogy. A Fringe review.

Under the covers, away from the outside world: In My Room, a Fringe review

Posted on August 14, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matkin in In My Room, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

In My Room (Stage 17, Grindstone Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

In My Room, by a pair of this town’s hottest young triple-threats Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matkin, is, in a quirky, comically literal way, a chamber musical. There is an actual chamber: it’s Eli’s bedroom, specifically his bed, which he has been unable, or unwilling, or a bit of both, to leave in three weeks.

Eli is not alone, however (what musical theatre artist ever is, in truth?). His best friend/ personal assistant Rain is there. And so is Elaine (Elaine Dunbar), his live-in personal accompanist at the keyboard. And we are there, too, as guests invited to his “three-week-iversary” as arranged by the obliging Rain (with festive streamers from Party City).

Is this a retreat from the horribly screwed-up world? A protest? A time-out? A tantrum? A dream pyjama party? Hmm. There’s a worldly mystery attached to Eli’s pj-clad living arrangements, to be untucked from the duvet in the course of In My Room. Eli lets his phone ring through to voice mail; on opening night the two rats from Rat Academy (Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Katie) left him a message, with an invitation to play pickleball.

Meanwhile, though, the situation lends itself to … performance. Eli produces a microphone; Rain has one too. Elaine, who’s a top-drawer piano player, springs into action with complex and appealing arrangements. So In My Room is an eccentric free-associative cabaret of sorts, with a bouncy mattress stage. And it’s directed by bossy Eli (what musical theatre artist doesn’t, secretly, want to direct, and stage manage?).

It starts with the dreamy Brian Wilson song from which this new piece borrows its title. And it moves on to songs from another Eli’s “super-pepper-upper” place, movie musicals. Nuns figure prominently, then improvised puppets (provided by the resourceful Rain), with Eli in his dream role as Maria.

Well, how do you solve a problem like Maria? This is a show that doesn’t fret about seques, to say the least. There’s a kind of weirdness to Eli blithely repurposing I Am Unworthy of Your Love with Jesus as the hot poster boy (what musical theatre artist doesn’t want to sing Sondheim?). There’s a lovely version of Joni Mitchell’s Blue that’ll get under your skin, too.

Anyhow, Yaschuk and Matkin are charming performers, with Dunbar as an amusingly wry, skeptical third. Rosy-cheeked chipper Eli is not exactly a classic case of depression, but escapism is an urge we all understand, at our moment in time. And this show, in its oddball way, is a response to our shared feeling that the outside world, toxic in every way, has become a public enemy. Bring on the music.

Posted in Fringe 2026, Reviews | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Under the covers, away from the outside world: In My Room, a Fringe review