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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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 songs 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.

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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 that 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.

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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.

 

 

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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.

 

 

 

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