Jeff and Grungled KNOW FRILLS, Holy! Scoundrels! Theatre!. Photo supplied.
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
Things are about to get a whole lot more exciting in these parts. In one week, the Fringe is back, with a 45th annual edition. And the 209-show playground of Fringe Unforgettable is open for you to explore Aug. 13 to 23, a adventure into the As-Yet-Unseen.
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So, what looks promising? Intriguing? Experimentation isn’t just for artists, it’s for us audience people too! But just to get you started, here’s a preliminary selection, a baker’s dozen of shows (in no particular order) that caught my eye — for the artists, the play, the premise, the genres in bed together, the off-centre originality…. I haven’t seen any of them yet, so we’re adventuring together. Stay tuned to for more suggestions, more encouragement, features and, when the time comes, reviews.
The Shape of Seamen: a new comic opera, with Nicole Maloney and Michael Watt. Photo supplied
The Shape of Seamen: a new comic opera. If you saw Let’s Not Turn On Each Other, a wistful and funny clown musical adventure, a couple of Fringes ago, or their folk-rock musical What Was Is All, you already know something about the multi-talented, expansive originality of Walters & Watt, who often work with actor/director Nicole Maloney. The Shape of Seamen, written and directed by Jacquelin Walters, has hints of Walters’ love of G&S, she has said. Maloney and Watt star, respectively, as a fisherman and the impressive mermaid he brings home. Domestic frictions (and as billed, “lovecrafian body horror”) ensue, across gender and species divides.
Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matkin in In My Room, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied
In My Room. Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matkin, the appealing (and much sought-after) young actors who brought a production of Victor and Victoria’s Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things to the Fringe last year, are back, this time with their own original musical. The premise? the fictional Eli, hiding from the outside world, hasn’t gotten out of bed in three weeks. And he and his best friend cum therapist, the fictional Rain, bring musical adventures inside.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ROBOCOP The Musical, Cousins in Law Productions. Photo supplied.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ROBOCOP: The Musical. Bend your mind around this, billed with utmost plausibility as “the most ambitious show ever written” by the big-deal musical theatre team who created Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music (you may have heard of them). It’s never before been staged (I know, amazing, right?). And we get the world premiere at the Fringe, in an 11-actor extravaganza from Cousins In Law Productions (and the creative duo of Lauren Boyd and Andrew Boyd, with the former also directing). Cousins In Law recently picked up a couple of Fringe Sterlings for their 1995 premiere of SPEED a 1940s Radio Drama of last summer. And you’d have to think that their latest has its own lunatic allure for musical theatre lovers and action film devotés (and who in this town isn’t?). Yeah yeah, I’m in.
“Hemming and Hawing” from ’35mm: a musical exhibition’, photo by Matthew Murphy, Uniform Theatre at Fringe 2026.
35 MM: a Musical Exhibition. You have to be intrigued by the idea of marrying musical theatre to photography — can a song capture a picture that captures a moment?. It’s the inspiration of this unclassifiable 2012 sort of musical/concert creation by the highly original New York composer/lyricist Ryan Scott Oliver. His songs are paired to evocative photos by his partner Matthew Murphy, a busy theatre photographer in NYC. The enterprising indie company Uniform Theatre, who brought the Fringe last summer’s production of Sondheim’s Assassins, is back at ArtsHub Ortona with this song/picture capture. And Jim Guedo, who recently won a Sterling Award for his crack 2025 Fringe production of Victor and Victoria’s Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things, returns to the festival to direct (only his second Fringe outing in 37 years, so he’s picky).
Muffy with Adam Francis Proulx, 12 Angry Puppets, Pucking Fuppet Co. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
12 Angry Puppets. If you saw Adam Francis Proulx’s puppet murder mystery The Family Crow a Fringe or two ago — a crow detective played an entire family of crow suspects, you know something of the renegade brilliance of this virtuoso puppeteer/playwright. So this is a chance to see “the first show I ever created,” as Proulx says of its 12th anniversary run here, where the much-awarded dark comedy has never touched down before. Says Proulx, “it’s a solo show in which I use one blank-faced puppet and a ‘jury box’ full of features (eyes, noses, mouths…) to create an entire jury, exploring how preconceptions and storytelling shape our ideas of justice.”
Jeff and Grungled Know Frills. The only show of the Fringe (to my knowledge) set in the produce department of a grocery story. And the characters of the comedy created by Nicholas Chieffo and Rainier Pearl-Styles, who co-star in this Holy! Scoundrels! Theatre! production, are two men struggling to find their way through to the fruit and veg aisle, and the maze puzzle of masculinity and gender roles, in all their confusing rules and rituals. More about the play in an upcoming interview with Pearl-Styles, who’s also the new managing producer of Common Ground Arts.
Sarah Emslie, Autumn Strom, Geoffrey Simon Brown, Kristen Padayas in ‘gore (i just want to disappear), Tiny Bear Jaws. Photo by Brianne Jang
gore (I want to disappear). Tiny Bear Jaws is one of those genuinely adventurous, experimental theatre indies that tries something different every time out (Gender I Hardly Know Them sketch comedy, Smoke, Everyone We Know Will Be There, I Don’t Even Miss You, Miss Katelyn’s Grade Threes Prepare for the Inevitable…). Elena Belyea, Tiny Bear Jaws’ fearless playwright muse, has never tried anything like this: an adaptation, which is to say a contemporary four-actor queer/trans re-imagining, of Aeschylus’s revenge and violence-saturated Oresteia.
Find out more in an upcoming interview with Belyea.
Being Norwegian, Trunk Theatre at Fringe 2026. Photo supplied
Being Norwegian. The Edmonton indie Trunk Theatre, a Fringe regular, has a production archive of lesser-known plays by star playwrights on both sides of the Atlantic. With Being Norwegian, Trunk’s Amy DeFelice — here under the Orange Theatre banner she uses when she directs Irish plays — brings us a two-hander rom-com from 2003 by the premier Scottish playwright David Greig. Two lonely strangers meet by chance in a pub, and go home together. And Lisa tells Sean she’s Norwegian, and being Norwegian means “we know how to live with the dark.” DeFelice’s production stars Cody Porter and Clarice Eckford.
Ramneek Singh, creator and star of The Butter Chicken Odyssey, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied.
The Butter Chicken Odyssey. Two years ago an intrepid Edmonton-born Punjabi food writer from Mill Woods with a huge social media following (Ram’s Food Reviews, @ramfoodguy), set forth on a quest to find the find the best butter chicken in Edmonton. And 51 restaurants and 51 servings of butter chicken later, Ramneek Singh had rocketing cholesterol, and a solo play. The evolution from fork to stage, and food writer to playwright had a lot to do with the urging of award-winning playwright/director/dramaturg Collin Doyle (Let The Light Of Day Through, The Mighty Carlins), as the pair explained in a March interview with here. And it became about more than a dish — the immigrant experience, reclaiming ethnic/cultural roots, childhood memories…. It had a first outing, as a staged reading, at Workshop West’s Springboards New Play Festival this past winter. And now Doyle is directing the premiere at the Fringe.
The Beanstalk Market Crash, Mind of a Snail Puppet Co. Photo supplied
The Beanstalk Market Crash. The Vancouver-based Mind of a Snail Puppet Co. hasn’t been here for a decade. And they’re back! This artful and ingenious duo returns with their latest, a fairytale reimagined as live-action movie, created before your very eyes with shadow puppets, camcorders, overhead projectors, original music. There’s an inventive, free-floating, human-scale magic about their work, judging by Caws and Effect or Curious Contagious from Fringes past.
Hereafter, Wordsflyup Productions. Photo supplied
Hereaafter. How can you not be intrigued by the theatrical proposition of this show from Wordsflyup Productions in Victoria? A solo clown show, set in the time of the Black Plague and inspired by the existentialist Gravedigger in Hamlet whose perspective on life, death and time stop the title character in his tracks.
Fetch. For his directorial (and producer) debut, Steven Sobolewski, a theatre veteran who’s a top-of-the-line stage manager, has chosen a mysterious mind-bender of a black comedy by notable Edmonton playwright Cat Walsh (The Laws of Thermodynamics, Do This In Memory Of Me). In Fetch, last seen at the Fringe nearly a decade ago, we meet two Hannah Morgans who are either very different versions of the same person, or maybe mirror images, and they tell opposing stories of their childhood. Sobolewski’s production stars actor/playwright Shyanne Duquette and newcomer artist Abby Krushel.
Ingrid Hansen and Stéphanie Morin-Robert in #The Merkin Sisters: Backcombed, SNAFU. Photo supplied
#The Merkin Sisters: Backcombed. And speaking of unforgettable and fringe in the same sentence, we’ve met the riotous, hair-raising Merkin siblings (Stéphanie Morin-Robert and Ingrid Hansen) before. In earlier outings into clever wacky satire at Fringes gone by, they bombarded us with lunatic physical comedy and gave us insights into the so-called avant-garde, and what ’performance art’ would look like if it were hilarious. They’re back, with a new hair-centric show. And hey, it could be your bonkers experience of the Fringe.
Tickets, show descriptions, the full schedule of shows: fringetheatre.ca. Have you checked out our Fringe tickets on sale post? It’s here.
