Look who’s coming back: a sneak peek at fringe faves

It’s all in the game at this year’s Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. Though the majority of the indie performances at this year’s fest don’t have to do with video games, the “Play Hard” theme will surely yield dozens of critical hits for veterans and newbs alike.

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After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks. It’s all in the game at this year’s Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. Though the majority of the indie performances at this year’s fest don’t have to do with video games, the “Play Hard” theme will surely yield dozens of critical hits for veterans and newbs alike.

As always, the Free Press is glad to join you for this multiplayer journey, offering previews, features and interview coverage of the festival while also reviewing each and every one of the 160 productions you’ll see in your fringe program. Since 2022, the arts section in the newspaper has been offered online without a paywall, ensuring that performers both local and globe-trotting make their way into your homes and onto your home pages. Our advice: select start, take some risks, suit yourself and use the one life you have to live to see as much live theatre as you can in Winnipeg.

Play on! Throughout the festival’s run — July 15-26 — fringers have the chance to customize and refine their own character while exploring a map featuring 30 unique venues, each bringing its own charm to this highlight of the city’s summer theatre scene. Audiences can get acquainted or reacquainted with some of the city’s top year-round arts venues, such as Prairie Theatre Exchange; Manitoba Theatre for Young People; Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s John Hirsch Mainstage, Tom Hendry Warehouse and the cult favourite Son of Warehouse; and St. Boniface’s Théâtre

Cercle Molière. Over on Ellice Avenue at Sherbrook Street, find the festival’s downtown hub at the Gargoyle Theatre and the West End Cultural Centre. To fringe smarter, stay tuned for plenty more coverage in the coming days at winnipegfreepress.com/fringe.

For now, here’s a quick roundup of some returning fringe favourites. Burns and Allen (Venue 1: John Hirsch Mainstage) Improv impresarios Stephen Sim and Caity Curtis can be found all around the festival: Curtis alone is writing, directing or performing in six comedy productions, including a pair of shows by Winnipeg’s Club Soda Improv (Love is Blank, The Truth Is Out There).

It’s difficult to predict the heights an improv show can reach, but Sim and Curtis found a winning comedic formula in 2024 with their first run of Burns and Allen. “Taking us back to the golden days of radio, when the vaudeville legends Gracie Allen and George Burns reigned supreme, the pair successfully capture the magic of the real-life comedic couple with impeccable vocal mimicry and comedic styling,” AV Kitching wrote in her rave review. Promise and Promiscuity (Venue 1, John Hirsch Mainstage)

In a more belated return, New Zealand’s Penny Ashton is bringing this Jane Austen musical — a fan favourite in 2014 — back to Winnipeg. Billed as a “new musical by Jane Austen and Penny Ashton,” the show stars Ashton as Elspeth and several others in this novel one-woman production from one of the festival’s farthest travellers. 52 Stories (Venue 3, Théâtre Cercle Molière) Here’s the deal: armed with a deck of cards and an agile approach to narrative and audience immersion, British Columbia comedian Dave Morris tells an unforgettable life story, using each number and suit as a mnemonic code to unlock precious memories.

Look out for Morris as a pop-up guest at a variety of improv shows throughout the festival, but keep your eyes and hearts open for this one-man masterclass that earned a five-star review in 2025. Oversharer (Venue 5, Son of Warehouse) Have you met Kristen Einarson yet? It took until she was 30 years old for this Winnipeg standup to truly meet herself.

In this remount of last year’s fan favourite — directed and dramaturged by Caity Curtis — Einarson gets into the nitty and the gritty details of a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis. We could say more, but rest assured that Einarson will tell you all about it. (A pairing suggestion, if we may: check out Vancouver’s Katie-Ellen Humphries’ new show

No Worries if Not — a people-pleasing comedy — also at Venue 5). Randy and Elizabeth: A Savage Love Story (Venue 9, Planetarium) You might read “Savage” and “Love Story,” and think about Seattle sex columnist Dan Savage before you think about the Macho Man.

You’d be wrong. After stepping into the fringe arena last year, wrestling fanatic Geoffrey Owen Hughes is back to jump off the top rope and tug at your heartstrings. “Even if you are not a wrestling fan, this unique show is not to be missed,” wrote Free Press reviewer Sonya Ballantyne.

(A note: Ballantyne’s reviewing byline will be absent from the Freep this time around, but not from the fringe: the local writer and performer is starring in How Bono Saved My Life (Three Times) over at Venue 29, Club 200). Dungeons and Dragons Improv Show XVII: The Rise of the Lich (Venue 18, Park Theatre)

When rolling the fringe dice, there are far worse places to land than in this annual tribute to fantasy, role play and unapologetic nerddom. At the Park — a new venue this year — South Osborne plays host to D&D night for some of the city’s silliest and most deranged improvisers. “While the majority of the audience are clearly well acquainted with all things D&D unfolding onstage, there is not one moment of confusion or exclusion,” wrote Denise Duguay in the Freep last year.

The storyline introduced on night one continues throughout the fringe run, offering rewards for repeat viewing. Lies of a Promiscuous Woman (Venue 21, MTYP) With Jesus Christ Superstar wrapped up at Rainbow Stage, this production from Winnipeg fringe mainstay Theresa Thomson turns back the clock to play the son’s mother, the Virgin Mary, who is here to tell her own story. Before Lies premièred at the 2014 fringe, detractors had already decided how they felt: Thomson’s posters were defaced with words like “whore” “slut” and “blasphemer,” her car was vandalized and the actor was stalked.

Thomson rewrote the script and has expanded the cast to include Carlyn Graff-Czehryn, Christopher Dunn and Maggie Koreen. Why remount the lightning rod in 2026? Because “patriarchy is everyone’s problem,” Thomson says.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University’s (now Toronto Metropolitan University’s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben.

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