It’s been a really busy Fringe – and no flood this year, as there was last.
The festival has just announced this year’s Patrons’ Picks, based on the sales from each company’s first four performances at the 12 venues main venues. The biggest seller at each, clearly an audience fave, gets an additional performance on the closing evening (Sunday, July 13).
The shows getting an extra show are Elvis And Dick (Tarragon Mainspace), Parallel Play (Tarragon Extra Space), I Think Therefore I’m Graham (Tarragon Solo Room), Hugh And I (Randolph Theatre), Slut (Annex Theatre), Punch Up (George Ignatieff Theatre), Hey 90’s Kids, You’re Old (St. Vladimir’s Theatre), No Chance In Hell – A New Musical (Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse), I Was Born White (Robert Gill Theatre), Time Stands Still (Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace), Sean And Steven Run For Mayor (Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace) and #WeddingMusical (Al Green Theatre).
That’ll make for a busy day for several companies who end up with a pair of performances: I Think Therefore I’m Graham, Punch Up, Hey 90s Kids, No Chance In Hell and Sean And Steven Run For Mayor.
It’ll be especially taxing for the casts of Parallel Play, Hugh And I and Time Stands Still the first two have the last scheduled performance and then the Patrons’ Pick immediately afterwards, while for the last it’s the other way around. At least they won’t have to strike their sets.
See fringetoronto.com or call 416-966-1062 for tickets and nowtoronto.com/fringe for our reviews of most of the shows.
If you can’t get to performances on Sunday, the annual holdover series at the Studio Theatre in the Toronto Centre for the Arts, The Best of Fringe, offers other productions that have proven popular.
Punch Up and No Chance In Hell are both Patrons’ Pick and part of Best of Fringe. Also at the Toronto Centre are 52 Pick-Up, The Assassination Of Robert Ford: Dirty Little Coward, Cirqular, The Emergency Monologues, Lost And Found and Three Men In A Boat.
Performances run in rep from Wednesday (July 16) to July 30. Tickets at tocentre.com.
The Fringe has also announced a pair of other winners.
The Tosho Cutting-Edge Award, an audience choice pick, goes to Sandcastle Theatre’s Little Miss Understood.
You can attend a free staged reading of the finalist in this year’s 24 Hour Playwriting Contest, Katie Housley’s Midnight On A Monday, on Sunday (July 13), 9:30 pm, in the Tarragon Theatre Solo Room. Praxis Theatre’s Michael Wheeler directs.
Second and third places in the contest went to Michael Ross Albert (The Year After Jeremy Died) and Jennifer Krukowski (Coconut Ghetto).
