Tara’s Reviews - FringeMTL 2025

RECANT

The Mission Santa Cruz show space is one of my favourites at the festival — a long room in the basement of a Portuguese language Catholic church and community centre. It’s clean, welcoming, a good size, and the sound is great. I’m here for Recant — a show that immediately grabbed my attention due to the subject matter: satanic ritual abuse allegations in the context of therapy.

The show explores the therapeutic relationship between Alix — a young, idealistic feminist — and her client, Stu. Stu is a father and husband with a bit of a drinking problem and a much more obvious panic problem. Alix is forced to confront the uncomfortable juxtaposition of her believe-all-survivors social justice orthodoxy and the facts of living in an imperfect world.

The show makes use of interesting sound design, and though this feature is more than a little clunky in practice I can see the vision and think it should be developed further. Performer Gabrielle Fraser is painfully relatable as a smart, compassionate young professional with incredibly weak and malleable boundaries in a job where your boundaries, and how well you keep them, either make you or break you. Sam Beaton breaks my whole heart open as a man trying very hard to balance the vulnerability necessary for effective therapy and the demands of masculinity, when his connection to any kind of role model in this capacity has been violently interrupted. I do basically think that this is a story about the struggle to maintain professional boundaries and their eventual breakdown, and there’s a stiffness between the two leads that has yet to be worked out — which I think they’ll be able to do, ultimately, since they naturally have a lot of chemistry.

The subject of ritual abuse allegations, dangerous therapeutic practices, false “recovered” memories, and the very complex social and legal pressures these create, is a subject so complex and interesting that it could support a play three times the length of this one — especially in this modern age, where conspiracy theories deliver the most powerful people on earth into office, and more people are seeking mental health counselling than ever before. The issue underpinning the original Satanic Panic was the way that “recovered” memories of fantastically severe abuse fit so easily into the exclusively-traumagenic model of severe mental illness, and how easily this can spin out into a conspiracy theory that provides a singular “bad guy” and an easy explanation for the weird, uncomfortable, or anti-social behaviour of the client and the people around them. I found myself wanting more of that deep-dive, and less time spent on the psychological consequences of all of this for Alix, especially since the structure of the play allows for a kind of “talking heads” exposition that’s been proven to work in the past (The Sopranos, hello). I’m excited to see where this play goes next.

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A Love Unbecoming

It’s the last Fringe ever at the Mainline theatre. Every time the place threatens to close, I think I’m ready — until I walk in, and am bowled over by nostalgia and fondness. It feels like arriving at a date where I was going to dump someone and deciding to propose instead. I take it all back, baby. I don’t want it to be over.

The set is dressed for A Love Unbecoming — a smattering of antiques behind a sign that says “On Air”. I accidentally sit in one of the worst seats in the house: directly in front of a lamp that obscures my view for most of the show. It is quickly made clear to me that this does not matter: the show is so well-paced, the characters so immediate, that the fun of it all fills every square inch of space in the room. I wouldn’t be able to miss something if I tried.

The story is this: honest and hardworking World War II-era producer Nigel just wants to put on a good hour of state-funded radio to boost the morale of the boys fighting the Nazis at the front. Helping him in this endeavour is the beautiful and talented Edwina Plumberry, his star and muse. Their attempts are threatened by the very rich, very famous, and very horrible Montgomery Peacock, Edwina’s co-star and “so-called husband.” Can our heroes prevent this hour of radio from flying off the rails? Can true love triumph over wealth and fame? Can state-funded media save the day?

I love live theatre. It’s where I’ve had the most transcendent art experiences of my life. I love the immediacy of the movements, the silent respect traded between the audience and the performers — the way I feel like the art is something my body is inside of, something I fill my lungs with when I take a breath. When I don’t see a good show for a while, I miss it, like I would an old friend.

A Love Unbecoming has come to me like an old friend. I am no longer lonely for theatre. It’s got everything I want: gorgeous costumes, delightfully campy acting, a clear political stance — because this is, ultimately, not just a love story, but a political satire. The political stance it takes isn’t radical, or at least doesn’t seem like it should be — fascism is bad! It is more interesting to make good art than to have very shocking opinions! Kind, honest men are hot and macho douchebags are not! State-funded radio is good! — but the politics are clear, spoken from the chest, expertly folded into an hour of theatre that rips right by. This show has old-timey foley art and lots of jokes about the Brits. This show has the best on-stage kiss I’ve ever seen. This show is not to be missed. Go see this show.

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Helena 2; or, The Island of Eden

I had a vague recollection of choosing Helena 2 from a list at the Forget the Box staff writer meeting, but don’t remember much else about it when I arrive at 10 des Pins uncomfortably full from the poutine that I became convinced, in the glorious late-spring evening hour I just spent wandering between shows, was absolutely necessary. Anyone who’s spent enough time in the heritage industrial buildings-cum-independent art lofts in Montreal will know the unreasonable way that they manage to trap and store heat. The room is as hot and humid as some kind of specialized baguette oven as the show begins, and I am sweating whole cheese curds, and I am not really a science fiction person. Absolutely not for the first time in my life, I begin to question my capacity to make choices.

The show is a female gaze revisitation of what I learn, later, doing research, is an iconic Czech play called Rossum’s Universal Robots, or R.U.R., by Karel Čapek — the work of art that introduced the word robot to the English language. I vaguely remember my father telling me about it while I sat at my kitchen table in my childhood home. The script for Helena 2 borrows extensively from the original work, while translating the action largely through the perspective of a set of female robots in the time following the events of the original play. The set and tech are uncomplicated — two desks, two chairs, a radio and a small collection of books — with the majority of the realism of the action carried by truly incredible performances from every actor on stage.

Through the fog of heat, humidity, and Quebecois hangover food, I am moved by the subtle realism of the characterization. Each actor plays both a human character and a robot, occasionally switching between roles mid-scene, and when they do I am jarred by the sudden absence, like each character is an independent human nervous system to which I am attuned and which is suddenly ripped away. The actors jump genders, timelines, and species with ease and dedication. The work never reads like farce, or absurdity, even if it could — and it would be easy, since R.U.R. is a play that’s a hundred years old, and has heavily influenced every single work dealing with the labour rights and humanity of artificial intelligence (Blade Runner, Westworld, Battlestar Galactica) created since. Perhaps this is what made me, ultimately, the right audience member for Helena 2: my mind unsullied by what came after, moved to the edge of tears by the way these very talented actors, on a nearly-empty stage, brought this world to life.

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HORSE GIRLS

When I enter the Mainline Theatre for Horse Girls, most of the cast is already onstage, in character, doing horse girl things. My hot take is that I usually hate it when actors are already on stage, engaged in mysterious behaviours I am clearly expected to care about. I usually feel that I don’t know these people well enough to care about whatever they’re doing, and here they are already making demands of me. To contrast, the Horse Girls braid each others’ hair and play with dolls both human and equine. A girl in a jean jacket practices the recorder with intense sincerity. Silently, they interact — their varied characters and complex social structure signaled in body language and gestures. It is adorable and very funny. Okay, well done — now I care.

As the action begins, we learn that we’re witnessing a meeting of the Lady Jean Ladies, a highly-self-organized collective bonded together by their passion for horseback riding. A horse girl is a specific subtype of adolescent female. I tend to believe that the horse is less a cause than a symptom of a specific cluster of personality traits: high-achieving, type A, romantic, social girls, fiercely compassionate and prone to emotional outbursts, replete with leadership qualities which are always a few steps away from calcifying into tyranny.

Horse Girls is a show that takes the lives and problems of young women extremely seriously: here is the often-unacknowledged way that status and class dictate their interactions, the complex systems of hierarchy that are so frequently dismissed as frivolous due to women usually managing to preserve basic social coherence, even as they jockey for status and dominate each other. The actor playing Margaret is a standout — effortlessly charming, funny and vulnerable, an infusion of heart and energy in every scenario she enters. The work is strongest at the beginning — the interactions between the girls are heartwarming, vicious, political and so hilarious that the performers seem surprised by the audience reaction. They keep talking right through our laughter and applause and hoots of delight. While I love the way that the story progresses — the afternoon meeting of the Lady Jean Ladies mounting in intensity, becoming a matter of life and death, and then flying off the handle into a Grand Guignol bloodbath — I find that the pacing and dynamics of the descent into madness lacks the razor-sharp intelligence of the work’s first movement. I don’t care, though. I love this play and if you don’t go see it you’re stupid.

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Kill Em With Kindness

After a very fucking long day, I am violently overstimulated when I arrive at Aux Angles Ronds for my first Fringe show of the season. I note joylessly how cute the café-buvette space is while I foam at the mouth in rage at the long, slow line. A woman cuts in front of me so she can wait with her friend, a reasonable behaviour which I frequently do myself, and which drives me nearly to madness. By the time this same woman’s friend asks if I can give up the seat I’ve settled into for Kill ’Em With Kindness, I must draw upon many years of meditative training to smile politely and relocate instead of unhinging my jaw like a python and swallowing her entire head.

The show space in Aux Angles Ronds is clean and intimate, and because this is Montreal, everyone inside of it is beautiful, which also makes me angry. We are nestled theatre-in-the-round style around a sparse set: a bare twin mattress on a rug and a single lidded box. Writer-actor Misha Nye signals the beginning of the show by emerging from the wings three separate times, in character, to fuss anxiously over the single sheet on the bed, set up an iPhone on a tripod. The hum of the crowd reduces by half and then by half again into silence.

We quickly find out that we’re meeting our hero in the wake of the biggest mistake he’s ever made. The piece speaks to the current political moment: the left needs competent professionals who can think long-term more than we ever have. Instead, what we usually have are people much like our hero: anxious and clumsy and emotional as little children, who want to be loved more than they actually know how to stand for anything. I find it interesting that the play never actually mentions what issue it is for which our hero was actually advocating — Majdi Hunter-Batal plays a gardener with significantly clearer goals than those of our hero. I might be wrong, but I place the politics as far-left due to what I recognize: mentions of a collective house that broke up dramatically, a lovestruck man escalating tactics more to impress a seemingly-fearless woman than anything else.

The text has moments of true brilliance, while also suffering from long bouts of functionally unnecessary dialogue that doesn’t sound anything like how human beings actually talk, making the long-for-Fringe run time of 75 minutes feel unearned. I found the unwillingness to take an actual political stance annoying, flaring my familiar contempt for what I know: activism that is more interested in popularity contests, in the aesthetics of a politic rather than the heart of one. Art that wants the caché of getting to look political without taking the risk of standing for anything. Maybe this is actually what makes Kill Em With Kindness a political work for this modern age. Or maybe I just needed a nap.

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