So how do you review a gazillion Fringe plays when you're a weekly that publishes the day after the festival opens and three days before it ends?

You put all your reviews on the web is how... and publish the best in the paper, which is exactly what we're doing.
After five days of Fringe action (before our publication deadline), the reviews you'll find in the July 23 issue of Uptown are of the best plays our reviewers had seen.

The rest of our reviews are being posted as they are written (OK, not quite) right here on our website at uptownmag.com. Be sure to check back often, as this list will be updated daily.

All reviews are posted in alphabetical order, according to show title.

B+
Schools
TNR Productions
Venue 4, Onstage and the Playhouse
Review posted: Friday, July 17

Set to the fine live percussion of Evans Coffie, this simple yet savvy political allegory by Kenyan-born playwright Troy Martin Howe places teenagers at the centre of startling unrest. Anna and Ben (Grace Bowness and Joshua Ranville) are students forced to flee their school when the principal turns dictator. Not only has he rid the school of all its books and wants to change the alphabet to his own design, he is also destroying it all with a bulldozer. The two students escape this madness and eventually arrive at another school, faced with ridiculous and petty bureaucracy enforced by a young man (Zan Klein) who LOVES rules and the iron fist they give him. Bowness and Ranville are lovely as the two lost students trying to find safe haven and Klein is wickedly straight-laced as the man who decides their fates. Schools offers a small but affecting peek into the horrors of life as a refugee.
- Barb Stewart

A
The Secret Love Life of Ophelia
Theatre ABC
Venue 4 - Onstage at the Playhouse
Review posted: Monday, July 20
As its title suggests, British actor/playwright Steven Berkoff's script is an examination of the passion of Hamlet and Ophelia from Shakespeare's classic tale. Composed entirely of letters written between the two unfortunate lovers, The Secret Love Life. is at once earthy, lusty, sexy, anxious, tense, fraught and tragic as ominous events in Elsinore move along in the background. Written in blank verse that evokes Shakespeare's tone, the script is rife with lush, pastoral imagery and double entendres and actors Darren Boquist and Alicia Novak revel in the language as they recite the letters their characters have penned. Just as with Shakespeare's play, the source of Ophelia's madness isn't explicitly revealed in this script, but Novak's tremendous performance suggests a young woman overwhelmed by the incredible intensity of first love, first loss and first betrayal (perceived though it may be).
- John Kendle

A+
The Seven Lives of Louis Riel
PKF Productions
Venue 14, The King's Head Pub
Review posted: Monday, July 20

Ryan Gladstone gives Fringe audiences another tour-de-force with this very funny, multifaceted, highly-fictionalized telling of Manitoba's favourite hero/traitor/madman, a one-man-show with seven versions of the life of Louis Riel in seven different genres. Gladstone cheerfully admits whatever you know about Riel, after the play is done, you'll know even less. It's just too much fun. Plus, he name-checks great Canadian cartoonist (and Riel graphic biographer) Chester Brown in a hilariously unforgettable way. It's a deliciously loose presentation with cheeky interaction with the audience (When a woman yelled out "You're really good," Gladstone replied, "Thanks, Mom.") And, the venue's licensed. Vivid, imaginative, smart - this is everything a Fringe show should be.
- Quentin Mills-Fenn

B+
She's Not There
InTrouble Productions
Venue 2, MTC Up the Alley
Review posted: Thursday, July 16

Art imitates life as real life couple Alix Sobler and Jason Neufeld, portray fictional couple Casey and Scott in this amusing take on the seven-year itch. Penned by Sobler, the script is comical and sharp, even if the premise is a bit predictable. As the thirtysomething Scott deals with his feelings about aging and commitment, twentysomething hipster neighbour Rain (Jennifer Hupe) offers some winsome distraction. In the meantime, the steadfast Casey, albeit sometimes looped on sleeping pills, waits for Scott to wake up and realize just how good he has it. Laugh-out-loud funny moments and honest portrayals by the cast make She's Not There a solidly entertaining romcom.
- Barb Stewart

C+
Stop Kiss
Pocket Frock Productions
Venue 8, The Rachel Browne Theatre
Review posted: Monday, July 20
 
From local company Pocket Frock Productions, Stop Kiss is a solid, yet slow-moving adaptation of New York playwright Diana Son's script. A tale of two young women, Callie (Samantha Walters) is a Big Apple traffic reporter and Sara (Tatiana Carnevale) is a teacher in the Bronx. The pair's partnership begins because Sarah is a New York newbie, who at the advice of a mutual friend enlists Callie to show her around. Their relationship slowly develops (and at 90 minutes, I mean slowly), from acquaintances to friends to best friends to... well, it is titled Stop Kiss. The young cast is a bit stiff to start, but loosens up along the way, putting on an amateurish yet admirable performance. Still, the text is tedious and the plot is so predictable that at about 60 minutes in you'll want to scream "Stop and kiss already!"
- Jared Story 

B
Straight. From That Side of Town.
Catherine Montgomery
Venue 11, Red River College
Review posted: Tuesday, July 21

It seems somehow apt that I badly cut my leg on my way to watch this show. Catherine Montgomery gives what can best be described as an epileptic fit of a performance in this one-woman/two-character experimental speedchase. She's brash, ballsy, searching for love and dealing with the death of her mother. Catherine delivers her dialogue with atomic gusto which is something of a small miracle considering she didn't once falter during her 60 minute piece. The B grade is entirely for Catherine's performance because I'm still questioning what the psychotic script was really about.
- Liz Hover

D+
Suddenly Mommy!
Perfectly Norma Productions
Venue 10, Planetarium Auditorium
Review posted: Tuesday, July 21

Being a mother is the toughest job in the world, and Anne Marie Scheffler does her best to convey this fact in this 45 minute show. The problem with this one-woman performance is that the material may as well have been written by Erma Bombeck. With no new insight on the subject other than the importance of remembering the names of Disney characters, the old clichés of being unappreciated and giving up sleep is only recommended for fans of the mundane. The sole highlight of the show is Scheffler's pitch-perfect Celine Dion impersonation.
- Amanda Stefaniuk

A+
Take You With Me
Aspen Switzer
Venue 2, MTC Up the Alley
Review posted: Friday, July 17
The admittedly unprepared Aspen Switzer takes the Fringe to a whole new place in her 60-minute show, but somewhere not entirely foreign to Winnipeggers. In fact, the Nelson, B.C. native rides a fine line between a Fringe act and a Folk Fest act. Switzer admits to the crowd that she got drawn for the Fringe in several cities before she had an act prepared. Then, she attempted to script a bunch of plays and realized she was "just" a singer/ songwriter. As soon as she assumes her singing voice, however, the audience forgives and forgets. Switzer has an eerily sweet voice comparable to Björk or even recent Folk Fest phenom Neko Case, but it's all her own. Expect to participate and be charmed by her bubbly presence.
- Brenlee Coates

D
TIME BOOM
Time Boom Productions
Venue 23, Actors Training Centre Manitoba
Review posted: Tuesday, July 21
 
TIME BOOM is an attempt by a group of baby boomers to tell everyone about the mid- to late-'60s, from the cars and music to the politics and change. And they succeed in telling us this, it just all sounds like it came from a textbook. For this reason, TIME BOOM is not a play. Sure, there's a set, there's music, there's dancing and of course some acting, but it's not a play. It begins like a play with old friends meeting at a high school reunion, but that's where it stays, no rising action, no climax, no real resolution. Simply, there's no plot, all you have here is a history lesson. OK, this feels a bit like punching my grandma (which I've never done!). I should point out that this is the first production from a group of 55+ theatre students. Inexperienced, but enthusiastic and genuine in their performance, there's potential here if this cast gets a better grip on story structure.
- Jared Story 

B
Tough!
Scopophobia
Venue 5, Son of Warehouse
Review posted: Sunday, July 19

This inventive presentation of George F. Walker's Tough! offers a gritty exploration of teen pregnancy. Featuring nine talented young actors in three different roles, this version of the play seeks to explore the many facets and facts of teen pregnancy, even within the same character. Tina and Bobby are the parents-to-be in question and Jill is Tina's best friend, and lifelong hater of Bobby. The three's explosive and enlightening meeting in a needle-strewn park casts a harsh but realistic light into the heart of their worlds. The cast (Jodie Christensen, Leah Borchert, Zena Mackay, Seamus Pattison, Keegan Steele, Adam Fuhr, Andrew Vineberg, Gislina Patterson and Katerina Teft) and director Chris Johnson do a superb job of juggling the intricacies of timing and staging with nine people on-stage playing three roles. And although the play's language is very adult, the topic and its treatment are very much geared towards a teen audience. Faint-hearted parents beware!
- Barb Stewart

B
Trans Canada '69
attunement productions
Venue 5, Son of Warehouse
Review posted: Tuesday, July 21

Was that Classical Gas I heard when entering Son of Warehouse? Vancouver's Colin Godbout brings back the Summer of Love with a cabaret of nostalgia for the baby boomer crowd, featuring acoustic guitar and some gentle-voiced crooning. Wearing a psychedelic print shirt, Godbout dexterously plucks and picks through chestnuts from Leonard, Joni, Gordon, Burton and two songs by Lenny Breau, along with some original stuff too.The afternoon I went, the audience was appreciative but curiously passive: if you go and Godbout asks you which was your favourite song so far, for heaven's sake, answer something. Still, I swear I heard one woman humming to herself when Four Strong Winds started up. And Heart of Gold can still brings tears to your eyes.
- Quentin Mills-Fenn

A
Trashcan Duet
If You Can't Beat Em Productions
Venue 3, The Playhouse Studio
Review posted: Tuesday, July 21

It's always ways fun to watch other people's misery. From the prolific Jayson McDonald comes a play about a series of dates from hell. Stella is a very angry spoken-word poet. Billy is a serial drinker with an appetite for punishment and malapropisms. It's love at first sight - for Billy anyway. What could they have in common? Very little, actually, besides alcohol, but is it enough? And how far can stalking take you? Two fine actors make the most of this very funny, barbed pas-de-deux. Adrienne McGrath gives some biting renditions of Stella's hard-tack poetry. And Michael Showler demonstrates terrific comic timing. His performance is a gem. Thankfully, there are no big denouements or revelations that explain everything, just suggestions of past troubles. In the end, it's a sweet, ordinary, little love story. With sarcasm and bitterness and hostility. And court appearances.
- Quentin Mills-Fenn

A
Treading Water
Scott Douglas
Venue 10, Planetarum Auditorium
Review posted: Monday, July 20

A deconstruction of a one-man show that's at once funny, moving and thought provoking, Scott Douglas' Treading Water is a unique experience that shouldn't be missed. Realising that the first five minutes are the most critical in an autobiographical play, Douglas rewrites his opening monologue several times, including borrowing stories from Spalding Gray, before his one man show is hijacked by his enigmatic grandfather. Balancing tales of depression-era Winnipeg, and Douglas' own life as a playwright, a unified story of two very different men and their struggles begins to emerge, resulting in a touching drama.
- Amanda Stefaniuk

D
TYJ
Ziro
Venue 11, Red River College
Review posted: Monday, July 20

TYJ is the story of a young man - Travis Yuki Jackson - who, whether writer and performer Philip Nozuka intends him to or not, comes across as a dangerous psychotic. "Jilted" by a woman he saw on the street, Travis decides to become famous in the hope that she will finally realize that she and this man who she has never met were actually destined to be together. Nozuka winds up oscillating between a portrayal of a low-rent Jim Morrison clone and a rather pretentious interpretation of Ted "Theodore" Logan, taking a "Bogus Journey" of his very own to the depths of drug addiction and what appears to be pretty severe mental problems. If Nozuka intended to portray Travis as the incredibly annoying flake he comes across as, then he has doubtlessly succeeded. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this production actually seems to take itself seriously.
- John Towns

B
Under the Glacier
Snakeskin Jacket Productions
Venue 1, MTC Backstage at the Mainstage
Review posted: Sunday, July 19

"Let's munch on shark meat," says one of the characters in this adaption by George Toles of a comic novel by Nobel Prize laureate Halldor Laxness. A curious place, Iceland. Darcy Fehr is excellent as a naive episcopal emissary sent to investigate the odd goings on in a rural parish. He encounters a decades-old rivalry, a wayward wife, a reluctant pastor, as well as some alluring Icelandic Graces. Oh, and maybe some miracles. I suspect the resulting imaginative transmogrification is more Toles than Laxness. Absurd humour abounds, along with some abrupt, even confusing, turns in the narrative. Ross MacMillan has fun as an Icelandic magus and master angler, and even though his accent mysteriously vanished a few minutes into the play, he did display remarkably complete control in a revealing scene on a cake trolley.
- Quentin Mills-Fenn

C+
The Valiant
Merlyn Productions
Venue 2, MTC Up the Alley
Review posted: Monday, July 20

James Dyke (portrayed by the show's director, John Chase) is scheduled to be hanged. His crime - murder - is real enough, but his identity is
not, and no amount of prodding by the prison warden or priest will get him to reveal anything about his past, or even his name. Throw in a 11th hour visit by the naïve Josephine Paris to determine if the condemned man is her long-lost brother, and you have all the elements for the "suspense drama" that The Valiant is billed as. The problem is that the play never really achieves the suspense or drama that it aspires to, thanks to rather flat acting, and the distracting tendency for the actors to deliver most of their lines directly facing the audience. While the material may be classic, having endured since 1921, the delivery leaves a great deal to be desired.
- John Towns

A+
Veritas Tassle and the Lie Detector
Rapid Fire Theatre
Venue 13, Ragpickers Theatre
Review posted: Tuesday, July 21

Improv that begins with a group dressed as greasers and channeling Bowser from Sha Na Na is always a good sign. Add to that a gifted cellist who accompanies the scenes with his own music inventions and you have a fresh kind of sketch comedy. The usual suggestions from the audience launch the foursome into sharing funny and sometimes poignant stories from their life. In one show, Amy Shostak laments the death of her grade school crush soon after she threw out a box of dried rose petals he gave her one Valentine's Day. The cast then builds sketches from these stories - which usually end in absurdist ideas such as having Santa Claus burst through a kid's room à la the Kool-Aid Man. The show changes from performance to performance and it'd be well worth the time to visit this gang more than once.
- Amanda Stefaniuk

A
Weaverville Waltz
Randy Rutherford Presents
Venue 16, PTE-Mainstage
Review posted: Monday, July 20

San Francisco's Randy Rutherford reaches back into his own life for Weaverville Waltz, chronicling his school boy days in the late' 50s and early '60s living in the Trinity Mountains of northern California. A storyteller, Rutherford doesn't act out as much as he describes a situation, his words bringing life to a cast of characters. Along the way we meet his loving mother Lorraine-Jane and his cheerleader sweetheart Cheryl. But every tale needs an antagonist. Lou, Rutherford's drunken step-father, creates many a crisis for the family. In fact, this story deals in a whole lot of sorrow, complete with Rutherford crooning many an old country number. But for every bit of grief, there's a light-hearted balance, whether it's kisses from his mother or foibles on the football field. All in all, Rutherford's dry wit and tender delivery makes one happy feeling sad.
- Jared Story

B-
Wisdom Teeth
Cradock Family Productions
Venue 9, Canwest Performing Arts Centre (MTYP)
Review posted: Monday, July 20

According to performer Kevin Gillese, Wisdom Teeth is a "true story obscured by poetry." Obscured is right. The parts with the story are fantastic - Gillese has the stage presence to make any monologue worth listening to, and the fact that they're well written and poignant makes it all the better. And then we come to the poetry. It's distracting at the best of times, with the music played under his intermittent slam poetry performances being
almost overbearing and at times running the risk of drowning him out completely. The poetry itself (what could be made out over the music, at least) is not exactly going to be in the running for any literary awards (what, exactly, is "a diaper full of vipers?") Gillese's spoken reflections on life and love are interesting and engaging. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for his rapped reflections.
- John Towns

B+
Zombie Prom
Chi Chi Manfred Productions
Venue 6, Tom Hendry Theatre (MTC Warehouse)
Review posted: Sunday, July 19

This high-energy musical is a subversive and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny take on Grease's classic good girl/bad boy '50s love story, with Connie Manfredi and Colin Peterson taking on the roles of teen sweethearts Toffie and Jonny (the "rebel without an H" who returns from the dead after committing suicide by driving his motorcycle into the town's nuclear waste dump). For the most part, Zombie Prom works - the upbeat dance numbers are well-choreographed, the jokes are appropriately ghoulish and Nikki Duval shines as authoritarian high-school principal Delilah Strict, a character she plays so over-the-top, it becomes a campy cartoon. Where it suffers is in the details: several numbers were sung so quietly it was impossible to make out any of the words, and more than one ended up cringingly out of tune.
- Marlo Campbell

B
The Zoo Story
Professional Liars
Venue 11 - Red River College
Review posted: Monday, July 20
Two men meet at a Central Park bench on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Peter (Keegan Steele) is a married publishing executive with two kids. Down-at-heel Jerry (Andrew Vineberg) is a rooming-house resident who tells Peter he's just walked in a 'northerly' direction from the Central Park Zoo. Jerry engages Peter, challenging him to talk, to listen, to learn something about Jerry's life. Peter reluctantly agrees and what ensues engages questions of class, dignity, decency, fear and trust. The Zoo Story was Edward Albee's first play and it's the first Fringe production for Vineberg and Steele, a pair of 16-year-olds who handle this two-hander rather well. Steele is the most wooden of the pair but, then again, his character demands it. Vineberg, with the meatier part, takes time to warm up to Jerry's state agitated neediness but play's end, he's developed his character enough that his final act of madness comes as no surprise.
- John Kendle