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REVIEWS: Toronto Fringe Festival 2025

This collection of Toronto Fringe Festival capsule reviews will be updated throughout the festival with writing from 20 different critics.

Lighthouse Festival unearths rarely performed Norm Foster one-acts

“There’s not much time for character development, like there would be in a long play,” says Norm Foster of one-acts. “You have to… make it satisfying, and to have it come around to a plausible ending. It can’t just be a skit… So, it’s actually a little tougher to write.”

Spotlight: Marie Farsi

“I’ve learned how truth is revealed in translation, and I feel like that’s my job as a director,” says Farsi. “I have to translate the piece from the page to the stage, and all the meanings that can be derived from that process of translation.”

Let’s-a go: Embedded with the Fools’ Comedy of Errors

While I was preparing for the summer heat by shopping for lighter clothes, Kate Smith, artistic director of a Company of Fools, was getting ready for their next show. She called me while I was in the Rideau Centre and pitched an idea: “Would you have any interest in being an embedded critic?”

Theatre Aquarius’ NCNM selects three new musicals for 2025-26 development 

“The Danish Guest, The Blue Castle, and My Beef with Beef each bring such distinct worlds to life — from Victorian London to early-1900s Muskoka to a modern kitchen haunted by a ghost cow," wrote artistic director Mary Francis Moore in a press release.

As he plays Leontes at the Stratford Festival, Graham Abbey reflects on his deep bond with The Winter’s Tale

“It’s got to be my favourite [Shakespeare play] at this point,” says Abbey. “I don't understand why it's so rarely done. It’s listed as a ‘problem play,’ and I see that, but I have had such beautiful experiences with it throughout my life… I think it has the ability to unite audience and cast in a deeply human event.”

REVIEWS: Toronto Fringe Festival 2025

This collection of Toronto Fringe Festival capsule reviews will be updated throughout the festival with writing from 20 different critics.

Spotlight: Steven Gallagher

A love of theatre runs so deeply through Gallagher’s bones that you’d think it was a path he began to follow as soon as he could walk and talk. But for a boy who came of age on a rustic farm in Quebec and favoured sports venues over stages in high school, an eventual career in theatre was hardly a given.

Invisibility cloaks, cardboard rockets, and flying orbs of light: Here’s how Canadian theatre uses the art of magic

In many ways, theatre artists and magicians have the same job. We push the bounds of a live experience to startle audiences into confronting their realities. We aim to tell stories that linger. For a magician, there’s no such thing as “it can’t be done.” It can always be done, one way or another.

The Rise of Hamilton (the City, not the Musical)

“Hey Toronto friend! Wanna come see my show in Hamilton?”

“I mean, maybe, I dunno.”