Halifax Fringe Day 4

When I made my Halifax Fringe schedule a few weeks ago it was this Sunday August 31st lineup that I was most excited for, but also nervous about, because it required me to get from Neptune to Shakespeare By the Sea, to see their full-length Unrehearsed Romeo and Juliet, and then to book it back to Neptune for A BIPOC Agenda. At first I had planned on walking both ways, but soon realized this was ambitious bordering on stupidity (especially on four hours of sleep), so I took the bus to the park, and got an Uber back, but even so, it was a whirlwind. 

The day began in the Windsor Studio at Neptune Theatre for Daisy Dream and the Farming Commune written by Hermione Davis and performed by Davis with Gabriel Christie. The conceit of this show is that Daisy, played by Davis, has teamed up with her friend Fiddlehead to start a Queer Farming Commune, and she has invited all of us to a meeting to recruit us to join the ‘family.’ Yet, from the beginning we see that this is very much Daisy’s idea, and she is pretty particular about how she wants everything to go, and she is extremely idealistic and unwilling to settle for less than perfection for her new community. Fiddlehead is more pragmatic and the two start butting heads about their differing visions for the project. 

This is a very sweet and fringey show with some music, some meditation, and a podcast that can play from a 1990s boombox. I don’t know if I’ve ever written these words before, but I actually wanted more audience participation from this show. The audience provides the stakes in the story; it’s us having shown up to this meeting that makes it so important that Fiddlehead and Daisy work out their issues and figure out their plan ASAP, lest we just get up and leave. It might be fun to bring the audience into both the music and the meditation aspects of this show, and then sort of pepper the arguments between the two characters between the ways the audience is being initiated into the commune. 

Hermione Davis has excellent energy and a cute costume, and Gabriel Christie is good at pumping the breaks, while still trying to be gentle with his friend’s feelings. It is cute, and at just 30 mins it’s easy to pop into your Fringe schedule.

Daisy Dream and the Farming Commune plays at the Neptune Theatre Windsor Studio at the following times: September 2 at 9:30pm, and September 4 at 7:30pm. 

Next I caught Artmageddon Theatre’s production of Vhy? written and directed by Lorenzo Dylan Castro-Tytelman, which tells the story of a vampire hunter, played by John Black, who has been chasing one particular vampire, played by Jake Wilke, for decades in revenge for the death of his parents. The vampire hunter somehow picks up a Wise Fool, played by Castro-Tytelman, who follows him around pestering him with questions. The vampire hunter is written as a historic character, whereas the fool speaks in more contemporary language, so we also have a meta theatrical absurdist play on the vampire genre happening. At its heart Vhy is a meditation on singular obsession and how we might struggle to find meaning or purpose once we have accomplished a significant goal. 

I really liked the choice to make the props as absolutely rudimentary as possible, and to affix labels onto them so the audience could be sure what they were. All the actors strike the right tone for their characters, Black’s vampire hunter is pompous and grandiloquent, while Castro-Tytelman is more deadpan and seems to be not just aware of the audience, but his lines seem to be directed more to us than they are to the vampire hunter, since we seem to share the same frame of contemporary consciousness. There is room for Black to not start out at such a high level of emotion so there is a more gradual build for the vampire hunter. Jake Wilke’s vampire is also pompous, but his unbridled silliness seems to be his achilles heel. I did wonder why he doesn’t have fangs. 

The premise for this piece is strong. I think having stronger stakes when the vampire hunter and the fool first encounter the vampire will help to build up some tension in the play, and having the vampire and vampire hunter physically fighting with one another while having their verbal debates would still capture the absurdist and comedic tone of the piece, but would be a smidgen more realistic than having the two standing across from one another and putting their goals fully on pause in order to converse with one another. 

I wasn’t sure how the play was going to progress beyond the vampire hunter and the vampire’s ultimate meeting and battle, and then I was really pleasantly surprised by the more philosophical turn the play took at the end. 

Vhy plays at the Neptune Theatre Windsor Studio at the following times: September 3rd: 7:45pm, September 4th: 9:00pm & September 5th: 6:45pm.

Next, in the same studio, I caught Kaitlyn Thompkins’ play What Will You Be?, which unfortunately has closed its run at Halifax Fringe, but I have a feeling this won’t be the last time this play is produced. 

Ava arrives at Truepath, which at first seems like an ordinary agency where young folks struggling to find employment that suits both their skills and their interests can be given options based on answering some basic questions. We soon learn that the stakes at this particular agency are much higher. 

Ava, played beautifully by Mae Rafuse, is not invested at all in this process because we learn that she has essentially given up on ever having a dream or finding her one “true calling,” which is tragic given how young she is. The older Mr. Truepath, also well played by Michael Kamras, is hopeful that the agency’s infallible system will be able to send Ava along her merry way with a newfound lifelong career path that will be both economically sustaining and soul-enriching (oh, if this were only possible!). Things go awry, and together Ava and Mr. Truepath must delve deeper into Ava’s past to explore what has been holding her back from any sense of aspirations or joy. 

This is a beautifully written piece by Kaitlyn Thompkins. The characters are very vivid and specific, and the stakes that she gives them within this Truepath office creates a great sense of tension and urgency. I did have a few questions that Thompkins may want to keep exploring as she works on this piece, which I hope to see again: what did Ava want to be when she grew up before her father died?, how many other TruePath facilitators are there- when we are told that this process has always gone smoothly- does that mean it’s worked once before or does the company have tens of thousands of satisfied customers? There’s room for Thompkins to further clarify the tension inherent in Ava just a smidgen too, because on the one hand she is desperate to get out of the office, but on the other she keeps delaying filling out the questionnaire and thus extending her stay. If the delays are happening sort of against her better judgement or in spite of herself, there’s room to explore why she’s behaving this way. 

I left the play not knowing whether anything had actually gone awry, or if the process had been working as intended, and I really, really liked that, but I wasn’t 100% sure whether it was intentional on Thompkins’ part. I really liked being left with this question at the end. 

This play explores the pressures that young folks are under as they exit University and are suddenly thrust into the world- expected to know immediately what career path they want to take, and to seamlessly be able to meld right in to society’s workforce. Of course things are often not that simple, and for decades our expectations have been based on the political and societal conditions that worked, in general, so well for the Boomer and Gen X generations, that have since mostly evaporated into a pool of despair and confusion for Millennials and Gen Zs. What Will You Be is insightful, poignant, and I think very easy for folks to relate to. 

TWISI Fringe Rating: Two Thumbs Up

Bloom Theatre Company’s What Will You Be? at Halifax Fringe has closed.

Next I remained in the Windsor Studio to catch Théâtre DeAssimiles’ hilarious new play Copyright by Olivier Blais and directed by Zoë Comeau, which is presented en français, in french, with English surtitles. Simone is the Artistic Director of a french theatre company and she is standing onstage with her Assistant Director, Alex, in front of the audience making the pre-show announcements for the play. Suddenly Alex announces a big fun surprise. She has invited the playwright, Ban Dray, to come to see the play and to do a Q&A afterwards. Simone blanches, and everything immediately goes off the rails. 

Olivier Blais has written a really solidly hilarious play with many twists and turns and wild, outrageous surprises. Of course, if you know about Dan Bray’s prolific oeuvre as a local playwright who often writes multiple plays for a single Fringe Festival and enjoys writing in specific historical or genre-based styles you will appreciate Blais’ creation of Ban Dray even more ardently. Yesterday we were treated to an especially meta-theatrical experience since Bray was also in the audience. Yet, I think the play works whether you are familiar with this particular Easter Egg or not; all you need to know is that Dan Bray is a well-established and prolific writer who has obviously set a standard that Dray aspires to. 

All the actors give well-grounded and perfectly paced performances. Vera Dunlop-Vaillancourt plays hapless Alex who is desperate to find some way of making up for the fact that she invited Ban Dray to the play in the first place, Geneviève Richer plays Quinn, one of the actors in the play, who is also hoping that she will be the one to save the day and ingratiate herself in the eyes of Simone. Nancy Kenny plays Simone, and it’s hilarious to watch her oscillate between truly losing her mind offstage, but then having to constantly try to present a cool, calm, and collected façade when she is standing in front of the audience. Disco Labrie plays Ban Dray with so much exuberant flourish, as though they are the monarch of the community, but with a bit of a vicious streak as well, which further creates real problems for Simone. 

There is a moment that I can’t spoil at the very end of the play that really shows off Zoë Comeau’s prowess as a director. 

I loved every moment of this show, and, personally, as an anglophone qui fait son Duolingo chaque jour il ya presque sept ans, I love being able to have immersive French experiences in Halifax, because there is no better way to learn, to practice, and to gauge your own progress. If you don’t speak French at all, not to worry, the surtitles are easy to follow along with. I hope that there is a remount in this show’s future. Perhaps someday Halifax will have an entire French theatre festival. That would make my heart really happy. 

TWISI Fringe Rating: Two Thumbs Jump!

Copyright plays at the Neptune Theatre Windsor Studio at the following times: September 2nd: 6:15pm, September 3rd: 6:00pm, September 6th: 6:30pm, and September 7th: 3:30pm.

I then booked it on over to Point Pleasant Park to catch my very first Shakespeare By the Sea Unrehearsed show, which I have never been able to see before because, as is apparent, it happens at the end of Shakespeare By the Sea’s summer season, and it always ends up being at the end of the first weekend of Fringe. It would be objectively foolhardy of someone to cram as many shows as they could into Sunday at the Fringe and then head to the other side of downtown, deep into the park, to attend a full-length (well, two and a half hour long) Shakespeare play. But this year I decided, what the hell, and I joined over 900 other people (906) for what ended up somehow being one of the best pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen.   

So, to stress, this isn’t a Fringe show, but I’m plunking the review down here because that makes the most sense to me in this moment. This was a one-night only, never to replicated again experience, where the conceit is that the actors from the company are cast in a Shakespeare play, in this case Romeo and Juliet, and they all learn their lines (and they are given the line preceding their own at the very least), and they come up with their own costumes and essentially their own concept for just their characters, and then, live in front of an audience they attempt to put the whole thing together into one cohesive piece. 

I was amazed by how cohesive it was- especially concerning the exits and entrances, which the performers were largely making up as they go; it’s almost as though years and years, and in some case decades worth of performing Shakespeare plays outside in this venue renders it second nature for these actors to direct themselves. The most chaotic aspect of the show was the hodgepodge of costumes, but this was actually the element that I enjoyed the most. Matt Lacas played Tybalt as a black cat, and then attended the masquerade ball in one of those inflatable T-Rex costumes. Chris George legitimately looked a hundred years old as Juliet’s “daddy,” the menacing Capulet who doubled as a Sith Lord, with a little bit of Larry David energy. Patrick Jeffrey brought us Gandalf as Friar Laurence, which made for a nice counterbalance. Similarly Zach Colangelo was Paris Hilton as Petra, the Nurse’s page, who spoke with maximum vocal fry, and was accompanied by her faithful dog, Moose, played by Colangelo’s real dog, also Moose, who at one point got ahold of Gandalf’s wooden staff and started playing tug of war with it in a moment that could not have been better scripted. 

Some of the characters’ costumes were a bit more nuanced but still really rooted each of them in a specific concept. Seb Reade played Paris, dressed sort of like Columbia from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, quietly keeping in the background hoping someone else would coordinate their marriage to Juliet. Ian Sherwood, an expert at this point, played the Duke, with banjo in hand and what sounded like an Italian American accent (we are in Verona, after all). I really loved Siya Ajay’s 90s sufer dude Benvolio, and especially when combined with Melanie Leon’s 70s disco Mercutio. I was especially impressed with Ajay’s absolute clarity of expression, and the way that she really managed to make it sound like Benvolio’s words were supposed to be said in that very particular contemporary vocal cadence, dude. 

Notoriously married Shakespeare By the Sea veterans Drew Douris-O’Hara and Jade Douris O’Hara played Romeo and Juliet, and by that I mean they both played Romeo and Juliet, and swapped places every time Carly Chamberlain (who won the auction at the top of the show) rang a bell. My favourite part was when the Studio students behind me, teenaged students of the Douris-O’Haras, screamed in absolute disgust every time Romeo and Juliet kissed. Drew Douris-O’Hara set the bar low for himself at the beginning of the evening, saying that compared to his wife he was underrehearsed, so I think folks were just impressed after that that, actually, he did know all of his lines. The chaotic tension surrounding him being if not unprepared, at least lesser prepared created a fun level of anxiety and chaos for the audience, and that was completely countered by Jade Douris-O’Hara, who played both Romeo and Juliet as though she would be submitting her performance for Tony Award consideration. Jade should really add “Shakespeare Wizard” to her resume, because I think she has all the plays memorized in their entirety, and now I wonder whether she has a cache of party tricks. 

On top of all of this Rachel Lloyd became a Shakespeare By the Sea rockstar last night as 900 people lost their minds when she played Juliet’s Nurse as Sven from the company’s production of Robin Hood, which just closed last week. Sven is an odd and incredibly naive Swedish boy (?), who looks like Pinocchio from Shrek come to life, but in lederhosen, and who has a very specific hilarious vocal cadence and timbre, and also a very specific walk that reminds me of the way toys from the 1940s moved- sort of somewhere between waddling and lumbering. Lloyd has been absolute comedic genius playing Sven all summer, and this was absolutely her tour de force, piece de résistance- at one point Romeo and Gandalf Friar Laurence stopped their scene because 900 people were watching Sven reenacting Juliet’s grief over Romeo being banished to the right of them. I would argue that I don’t see any of these actors onstage often enough outside of when they are performing at Shakespeare By the Sea, but Rachel Lloyd has certainly showcased her very unique skillset this summer and I hope it has been noticed by those within the theatre community, because it’s certainly been noticed by the theatregoing community at large. Seriously, she could have crowd-surfed. It was amazing.

A small part of me is dismayed by how much I absolutely loved Unrehearsed Romeo and Juliet, because that means that I’m going to want to make the Unrehearsed show a regular part of my Halifax Fringe schedule, and so I’m always going to have an extra chaotic first Sunday. But, as I was running through the main path of the park in pitch darkness to get back to the Neptune Studio I knew it was so incredibly, hilariously worth it. I can’t recommend it highly enough, although, clearly, SBTS doesn’t need my endorsement. Did I mention they had over 900 people in the park last night? Congratulations on a rollicking and beautiful season. Now all of you local folks have time to go to the Fringe! Bring some of your 900 new friends with ya!

My evening ended with another performance that was just as epic, A BIPOC Agenda: a Drag and Burlesque Show hosted by Mike Hunt and produced by them with Elle Lixir and Beef Pattie at the Scotiabank Studio Theatre. This was a one night only event as well.

This lineup was absolutely stacked with some of the best drag and burlesque performers in the city, if not the province. The evening started with Richard Rockhard singing “Buckle Bunny,” while dressed like a sparkly cowboy. The song is from Tanner Adell’s 2023 album of the same name, and seeing Rockhard perform a country music song sends the clear message that, of course, Black folks are welcome to sing music from whatever genre they please. Rockhard has a great voice and the cowboy aesthetic really works well with his vibe. 

We then went to something completely different- Anita LandBack in a red dress performed a very emotional, thought provoking and serious piece, “Together We Emerge” by Jeremy Dutcher. LandBack confidently took up space, moving fluidly around the stage and frequently touching her throat, which I read as placing the focus on the act of speaking, of giving voice to experience, to emotion, history, and culture. The audience was right there enthusiastically with her. 

Elle Lixir’s performance began with a lip synched scene between herself and a white stranger who came over to her because he mistook her for an Asian celebrity. When he is corrected he promptly goes through every single Asian celebrity that he knows asking if she is any of them. This scene is played for absurdist comedy, but I’m sure is based on Lixir’s personal experience. Lixir is a great dancer and really knows how to command the room, bring up the energy, and throws in some cartwheels for good measure.

Elle Noir competed captivated the audience with her rendition of “I’ll Keep Sittin’ on It (If I Can’t Sell It), written by Andy Razaf in 1936 and as performed by Ruth Brown. Noir is one of Halifax’s best lip synch artists, and this performance was absolutely spellbinding. The whole thing, from her stunning outfit, to this choice of number, harkened us right back to the 1930s and the heyday of Burlesque. Brown mostly speaks the words to this old song, which is about a secondhand furniture store, but it is peppered with delicious innuendo and double entendre. It was such a privilege to be in the same room as Elle Noir while she was performing this number. 

KAGE was also dressed in red and performed a very intensely physical piece, filled with strong dancing, and also the way she whips her hair around in circles is absolutely breathtaking. 

Babia Majora’s number was the one that really made me understand the visceral power of burlesque (an art form that I am less familiar with) in a completely new way. Majora comes out dressed like Mulan from the Disney film of the same name while “A Girl Worth Fighting For”  from the film plays. This song is sung by an array of Chinese soldiers describing their ideal woman back home. Mulan, disguised already as Fa Ping, offers, “how about a girl who’s got a brain- who always speaks her mind?” to which the men all say “Nahhhh” in unison. Majora begins to take off their clothes, and there is a short interlude of the song “Reflection,” where Mulan laments that the reflection of her outward self doesn’t match the person she is on the inside. Here, in standing in front of us mostly nude Majora isn’t inviting us to look at their body in a sexual way, we can see the striping of their clothes very clearly as a metaphor for taking off the accoutrements that don’t represent who they are, and then they begin to cover back up, as Fa Ping, while “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” plays in triumph. This was one of the most stunning things I’ve ever seen in my life. 

Vanessa Buttercup, adorned in a big piece of gorgeous silky fabric, also gave us an ode to Old School Burlesque with a fun bit concerning her gloves. And just watching the way the fabric swirled around her body as she danced was gorgeously conceived. 

Aiya Xiaoxin, similar to Elle Noir, really helped us time travel back in time with her choice of music (Grace Chang’s rendition of “Carmen,” and also with her outfit, which was absolutely magnificent. The timing of her dancing combined with the striptease was absolutely impeccable. 

Beef Pattie ended the night with a truly joyful and inspiringly confident love letter to their body. The way they shine onstage is an infectious delight. Mike Hunt was the most supportive and lovely host; the care and respect that the performers show one another is apparent, and hopefully they felt the same love radiating from the audience as well.

Over the past few years Halifax Fringe has been one of my main introductions to Burlesque and especially Draglesque and Burlesque through a Queer lens, but even before this specific showcase if someone had asked me who the biggest names in burlesque and drag were in this city these ten performers would have absolutely been on my list. This show was incredible, and if these performers aren’t getting as much work as their white counterparts that’s both deeply disturbing and depressing to me, because it certainly isn’t a reflection of the caliber of their talents. 

TWISI Fringe Rating: Two Thumbs Jump!

Halifax Fringe runs from August 27th to September 7th, 2025 in venues throughout the downtown and North End of Halifax. For more information and to make your Fringe schedule please visit this website. All official Fringe venues are wheelchair accessible and have all gender washrooms. For Fort Massey Church, if you are a wheelchair user, please contact the Box Office ahead of the show. Each show has at least one mask mandatory performance. Grab a Fringe Guide at any of the venues for a handy way to follow along with all the events at the festival. See ya there! 

A Note On TWISI Fringe Ratings:

I have never liked rating Fringe shows, or any shows, using the 5 Star system as I have done in the past, so I started doing something new. From now on I will just be highlighting what I think are 4 or 5 Star Fringe Shows. A Two Thumbs Up Rating equals roughly to 4 Stars, while A Two Thumbs Jump Rating equals 5 Stars. I have stolen (with permission) “Two Thumbs Jump” from my friend Lenny Clayton, who is awesome, who came up with this phrase when she was a young kid reviewing films on YouTube.