Halifax Fringe: Day 5

Day 5 at the Halifax Fringe Festival started off with a lovely little musical called Train to Nowhere, written by Jeremy Foot and Kathleen Mills and produced by Papermills Productions. 

We are introduced to little August (Rhys Parks) and their dad (Dylan Jackson) as the dad brings them down to the old train tracks. He tells August a mysterious story about a ghost train that he saw once stopping in their town that only comes on infrequent magic nights. We see that August and their dad have a good relationship, but also that the dad has a melancholic longing that isn’t immediately explained. When their father later disappears August is determined to track down the train and to be reunited with him. 

Kathleen Mills has written a fantastic score for this 25 minute musical. There is a really fun song that captures the sounds and the speed of the train, which also has some great choreography, and a great blues number that captures the ambiance once aboard the train. The four cast members all have strong voices and their harmonies with one another are especially beautiful. 

I think, for Fringe especially, the play works well at this length, but if there are plans to expand the story a bit I would be interested in seeing more of August’s relationship with their mother as a teenager and a bit more of a sense of interest or intrigue (or even obsession) around the mystery train between when August is a child and when they find the station for themselves. I wanted to have a really clear sense that there hadn’t been a day that went by where August didn’t wonder, “might that weird train come tonight?” so that them finding it felt more inevitable than a coincidence.

The cast all work well together to bring these characters and this story to life in a very poignant and imaginative story. 

TWISI Fringe Rating: Two Thumbs Up!

Train to Nowhere plays at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (1723 Hollis Street, but use the Bedford Row doors) at the following times:

September 4: 7:30 & 9:45pm

September 8: 1:00pm

I then went down to North Barrington Street to see Breaking Circus’ show Boundaries. I would describe this show as “gentle circus,” where the interesting and aesthetically pleasing pictures they are creating with their bodies with the lights (and in Dawn Shepherd’s case costume!), and their various circus apparatuses are more the heart of the performance. The show also explores the question of what circus is, and I think does in some ways broaden the boundaries of what those clichéd definitions might be. This short piece works well as teaser, giving audiences a taste of what this contemporary circus’ work is like, but also, as a place that also offers workshops, I think it is a show that might whet interest in prospective circus students, as there are certainly aspects in the show that (if you don’t have a fear of heights) you might be able to envision yourself learning how to acquire these skills. 

Breaking Circus’ show Boundaries plays at their own venue (2164 Barrington Street, near Nora Bernard) at the following times:

September 4: 7:30pm

September 5: 7:30pm

September 7: 7:30pm

September 8: 7:30pm

At the Bus Stop Theatre I saw The Distance Between Newfoundland and Toronto, written and performed by Dolores Drake and directed by Lynna Goldhar Smith. This show was considerably darker than I was expecting (I didn’t read the content warning, but it is there in the Fringe Guide), but it is beautifully written and performed with absolute mastery.

The play is set on an airplane between Toronto and Saint John’s and we meet Theresa, a Newfoundlander, who is chatting with the person beside her, essentially whether that person wants to chat or not. The scene is vividly familiar- a very sweet, friendly, well intentioned grandmother strikes up an conversation with a stranger in a public space. The stranger, who is younger and from a more urban place, is kind and humours Theresa as she talks more and more and more, but eventually the stranger, and the audience, become so riveted by her story they are genuinely hanging on her every word.

This is only Theresa’s second time on an airplane- returning from a short trip to Toronto to visit her granddaughter, Kaleigh. That was her first time going to Toronto as well, so her world view is quite narrow and limited to her own experiences growing up in a more rural part of the province and then moving to St. John’s when her children were teenagers. Sometimes she says ignorant or cringey things and sometimes she is unexpectedly broadminded. The audience assumes, I think, that the unseen stranger feels the same tension we do- never knowing what she is going to say next but trying to be polite about it. We learn all about Theresa’s troubled daughter Marlene, her generous son Ryan, and her beloved granddaughter Kaleigh, who she helped to raise until she was seven years old. Kaleigh lives in Toronto now, and we find out that is the crux of Theresa’s heartbreak. Then we find out why.

This was the first of the Fringe shows this year to make me cry. Dolores Drake wholly transports us onto this airplane; I was completely riveted by this story and the deft nuance with which she captured the way Theresa not just speaks, but the cadence with which she reveals the details of this story, oscillating between the very dark and the very mundane in a way that feels so beautifully and also absurdly human. I feel like I know Theresa so well, that we are friends now, because she confided in me such a heavy and personal secret, and because Drake’s writing and performing were so richly detailed and specific. 

There were a few times when I wondered if the conceit of Theresa unloading this entire heartrending story on a stranger was a bit forced, but the more invested I became and the more I came to like her, the more I believed our unseen stranger would too. I also feel like I have met a Theresa before, maybe not one with an hour long saga to share, but someone who was so sweet and well intentioned that you didn’t have the heart to shake free of them, even if you really did want to just put in your earbuds and disengage. In the wild I usually feel all the better for having those moments of connection with someone when I’m forced to remember that I belong to a wider community of folks and perhaps the opportunities for me there are more interesting and meaningful than the ones afforded by my wifi connection. People like Theresa know about community. They can build bridges between generations and experiences, and sometimes even between cities like Toronto and Saint John’s.   

TWISI Fringe Rating: Two Thumbs Jump!

The Distance Between Newfoundland and Toronto plays at the Bus Stop Theatre (2203 Gottingen Street) at the following times:

September 5: 9:45pm

September 6: 5:30pm

September 7: 1:30pm

Halifax Fringe runs until to September 8th, 2024 in a myriad of venues throughout the Downtown and the North End of Halifax. For more information and to purchase all your tickets please visit this website. Masks are mandatory again this year inside all Halifax Fringe spaces. Neptune Theatre, The Bus Stop Theatre, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia Lecture Theatre, and the Cambridge Battery are all wheelchair accessible. Neptune Theatre and the Bus Stop Theatre both have all gender washrooms.

You can follow Halifax Fringe on Facebook. Instagram. TikTok.

A Note On TWISI Fringe Ratings:

I have never liked rating Fringe shows, or any shows, using the 5 Star system as I have done in the past, so last year I started doing something new. From now on I will just be highlighting what I think are 4 or 5 Star Fringe Shows. A Two Thumbs Up Rating equals roughly to 4 Stars, while A Two Thumbs Jump Rating equals 5 Stars. I have stolen (with permission) “Two Thumbs Jump” from my friend Lenny Clayton, who is awesome, who came up with this phrase when she was a young kid reviewing films on YouTube.