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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Lighters in the Air

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Lighters in the Air

It is really and truly summer in Toronto - hot, steamy weather, beer on patios, snatches of music spilling out of bars, arts festivals everywhere. For me, summer is a glorious time, but has a hint of sadness and nostalgia underneath all the sunny fun times. No feeling can ever match the thrill of being a kid on the first day of summer vacation, seeing time unspool in a lazy ribbon into an infinite point in the distance. September seems so far away. As an adult, though, you can’t help but remember other, perfect, past summers and wonder what might have been. 

This week, there’s a show at the Toronto Fringe Festival that combines that nostalgia, yearning, music, bars, and laughs. It’s called Lighters in the Air and it’s the product of musician/writer/actor Kris Hagen. He calls it “not quite a musical, not quite a play, not quite a concept album, and yet at the same time kind of all three.” It’s a show that defies easy characterization, but whatever else it might be, it’s perfect for right now.

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