Our Little Secret: The 23&Me Musical

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Our Little Secret: The 23&Me Musical

The Toronto Fringe Festival is back in all its beautiful, messy, enthusiastic creative energy. What a joy! Here’s the second of two Fringe reviews for shows seen within a 24-hour window. We’re finishing with Our Little Secret: The 23&Me Musical.

Have you ever known that you were witnessing something that was destined to get real big, real fast? There have definitely been Toronto Fringe shows like that; The Drowsy Chaperone at 1998’s festival went on to win five Tony awards, and in 2009 My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding graduated to a full-budget Mirvish production, a Canadian tour, and a little follow-up show you may have heard of called Come From Away.

We’re overdue for another Fringe sleeper headed towards monster stardom, and it’s here. Our Little Secret: The 23&Me Musical has all the hallmarks of a hit. Stand in whatever line you need to, do whatever you can to catch this show before it goes nuclear. You’ll have bragging rights that you were there at the beginning.

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Maggie Chun’s First Love and Last Wedding - Theatre Review

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Maggie Chun’s First Love and Last Wedding - Theatre Review

The Toronto Fringe Festival is back in all its beautiful, messy, enthusiastic creative energy. What a joy! Here’s the first of two Fringe reviews for shows seen within a 24-hour window. We’re starting off with Maggie Chun’s First Love and Last Wedding.

I’ve got a friend who introduced himself to me by cheerfully asking “So, what small Ontario town are you from?” The fact that I am not from a small Ontario town and did in fact grow up in Toronto makes me an anomaly, he claims. Toronto is full of people from small towns looking for something different. Not necessarily better, he says - just different.

Maggie Chun doesn’t think she’s looking for different. It’s the morning of her wedding day in tiny Windser, Ontario (yes Windser with an e). Her dress is lovely, her best friend/wedding planner has every detail down to the cherubs sculpted from butter on lock, her intended has a bright career ahead of him working in the combination mayor’s office and deli. And yet (there’s always a yet), when her childhood crush walks through the hotel lobby dressed in a Wes Anderson-esque pink bellhop’s uniform, different starts to look a lot more interesting.

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Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - Theatre Review

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Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - Theatre Review

Do you remember the first musical you ever saw? I do. Vividly. It was 1993 and my parents took my sister and I to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, starring Donny Osmond (ok, technically we saw his understudy, but to be honest I think my mom was a lot more excited about Donny Osmond than I was). The point is, that day 30 years ago sparked a love of musical theater that I’ve carried with me my whole life. And I know I’m not the only one who had that experience.

If you’re not familiar with the story of Joseph and his fancy coat, let’s start there. This story is actually taken from the Bible (what Jewish people call the Torah and what Christians refer to as the Old Testament), an idea likely sparked by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s previous success with Jesus Christ, Superstar. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat tells the story of a young man named Joseph who lived in ancient Canaan with his father Jacob and his eleven brothers. It chronicles his unlikely rise to prominence thanks to his uncanny ability to interpret dreams; something he actually predicted in his dreams during his youth. The story of Joseph and his brothers has been told for thousands of years - and the musical itself has been around since the 1970s - but somehow this story remains timeless.

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Ross Petty’s Peter Pan soars above the mundane for its final flight - Theatre Review

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Ross Petty’s Peter Pan soars above the mundane for its final flight - Theatre Review

What a joy it was to be back in the Elgin Theatre for the sparkly, warm-hearted camp spectacular of Ross Petty’s annual holiday pantomime. After two years of virtual shows, it’s a bittersweet and brief return to the stage for its final - final! - version. I’m not going to bury the lede on this one; despite some scaled-down production values and minor technical flubs, PETER’S FINAL FLIGHT: The PAN-Tastical Family Musical! is pure delight and a beautiful goodbye to a local tradition.

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Boy Falls From the Sky - Theatre Review

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Boy Falls From the Sky - Theatre Review

Like many others, I’ve spent most of the past two years at home while Toronto’s theatre district sat dark. While I’ve certainly made good use of all of my streaming subscriptions, none of it quite lived up to the thrill of sitting in an actual theatre, waiting for the show to start. Thankfully, the marquees are once again lit up and the curtains have started to rise again. My first show back, Jake Epstein’s one man show Boy Falls From the Sky, felt like the perfect choice to welcome me back to the grand tradition of live theatre.

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