REVIEW: Ottawa Fringe’s 2025 undercurrents festival charts fresh theatrical frontiers
iPhoto caption: 'Revelations' photo by Erik Stoplman.
undercurrents, hosted by Ottawa Fringe, calls itself the city’s “innovative contemporary theatre festival.” This year’s iteration ran from February 6 to 15 and featured a wide variety of shows — from a retelling of Macbeth themed around high school football, to an interactive survivalist escape room scenario, to an original musical about going to space.
undercurrents provides a platform for diverse, original Canadian theatre. It invites both local and national talent, with productions from Ottawa, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Sudbury. The festival is notable for its commitment to accessibility; the shows have assistive listening, audio-described performances, captioning, a chillout space, and plenty of accessible seating.
Here’s my take on the three shows I was able to catch.
One Small Misstep (Silas Chinsen and Sandy Gibson in partnership with Sol One Arts Inc.)
Sam’s life is finally looking up. She’s graduated from her orphanage, and, freshly 18, she’s just landed her dream job… working in space. For the first time in Sam’s life, it seems like things will be smooth sailing.
Or, at least, until pirates intercept her spaceship.
Through a comedy of errors, Sam finds herself stranded on an alien planet, with her ship broken beyond repair, the communicators offline, and her crew scattered across the planet. And to make matters worse, she’s just come face to face with real, honest-to-god aliens.
One Small Misstep, created by Silas Chinsen and Sandy Gibson, is a hilarious musical comedy, featuring a dozen original songs and a live four-piece band. The songs are catchy earworms, and they are all performed beautifully by the cast.
Most notable is Gillian Hosick, who plays the evil space pirate Demona. Hosick commands the stage as she sings ballads about hijacking spaceships, losing her love, and her regime of terror. Demona elicits fear in anyone who dares to speak — or sneeze — in her presence.
Many of the actors play more than one character, and they are able to switch from alien to scientist to crewmate with the help of creative, colourful, and crazy costumes designed by Thalia Paterson. Bright, fun colours worn by the crew contrast beautifully with the dark, moody attire of the space pirates — each character has their own unique style. Overall, One Small Misstep is an incredibly fun show, with well-made music, great acting, and beautiful costumes.
Blindside (Stéphanie Morin-Robert)
Stéphanie Morin-Robert may have lost an eye from cancer as a child, but that hasn’t stopped her from living life to the fullest. Blindside, written, directed, and performed by Morin-Robert, tells the story of her childhood, and what it was like growing up with one eye.
Morin-Robert performed the show in both English and French versions during undercurrents, which is a bilingual festival. I had the opportunity to see the English version of the show (translated by Faustin Lasnier).
The stage features a small camera that projects Morin-Robert’s face larger than life on a backdrop, as well as a spinning camera that lowers from the ceiling, projecting her image as both she and the camera spin and twirl in a sort of interpretive dance. The camera is meant to elicit the images an MRI machine creates, a callback to the ones she frequently visited as a child. Having had a glass eye for so many years, Morin-Robert has learned to do quite a few tricks with it that those of us without glass eyes would not expect. At one point, she even puts the eye in her mouth in order to “sanitize” it, before handing it to an audience member for safe-keeping.
Morin-Robert is a captivating storyteller, and this show is at once educational, hilarious, devastating, heartwarming, and a little bit gross.
Revelations (Revelations Collective in association with Outside the March and Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Theatre)
Do you have a fire extinguisher in your kitchen? How about a first aid kit? How long could you survive with just the food you have in your house right now?
These are some of the questions asked by Mike, played by Griffin McInnes, at the beginning of Revelations, created by Anahita Dehbonehie, McInnes, and Aidan Morishita-Miki.
The fictional RevelationsTM Consulting is run by “preppers”: they know the world is an unstable, scary place, and they are taking steps to ensure their safety — stocking up on canned goods and medical supplies, learning to build traps and rudimentary shelters, and even buying property outside of the city that they can escape to, should the worst-case scenario happen.
This show provides a unique experience by offering two ticket options: players and general audience. The general audience tickets cost the same as other undercurrents shows, while the player pass was $50 per group of one to eight people. A RevelationsTM Consultant visited the players at their homes in the days prior to the show, to brief them on their roles. The players are in pre-formed groups (households or otherwise), and during Act One, Mike has them sent away to separate, private rooms around the building. In these rooms, they are given a locked box containing an escape room-esque puzzle, and a walkie-talkie to communicate with each other and with Mike. As a member of the general audience in the theatre, I watched them through security cameras while Mike explained in great detail about his genius business idea: the escape room puzzle that’s being demonstrated live for our viewing pleasure.
During Act Two, the participants are all brought to the theatre and invited on stage, and the room is transformed into a veritable game show, where participants must roll dice to see if they’ve successfully escaped, and survived.
Unfortunately, the general audience seems to have been forgotten in Act Two, with all of the focus and attention being put on the players. Although we were still present and observing, the second half of the show felt almost irrelevant, as it was all about the players and the choices they made while doing the escape room puzzle.
Still, Revelations is a fantastic storytelling escapade, and McInnes commands the stage with his presence, both through his actions and his fascinating demonstrations of survival tools. It’s a show that truly encompasses the daring spirit of undercurrents.
undercurrents festival ran in Ottawa from February 6 to 15, 2025. More information is available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Lucy Baker
Lucy is an aspiring journalist and theatre critic currently pursuing her studies in theatre and music at the University of Ottawa. When she's not writing, you can find her onstage, playing the saxophone, and backstage – working on sets, lighting, costumes, and more! She dedicates everything she writes to her cats, Nugget and Oatmeal.
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