The last four shows I saw in Fringe 2024 included two shows with stage magic and two shows with young women prepping for endtimes or disasters. But four very different experiences!

El Diablo of the Cards was a solo sleight-of-hand performance by Ewerton Martins of Brazil, in red nose. He greets guests in line outside Gateway Theatre, then seats some people on the stage of the intimate black box and goes back outside to announce more arrivals as “next victims!” and keeps promising that the show will start in five minutes. Eventually he taps one of the audience members to give him an introduction, and the one who did it in the Saturday show did a great job. His patter is amusing and he gets help from several audience members without making fun of them. And his tricks are astonishing and delightful.

kicked in the end: a magic show was a solo performance by actor/magician/academic/author Shawn DeSouza-Coelho, in the Kick Point OSPAC space. This charismatic performer also engaged with audience members before the official show start, and then reminded us that as per the show title, before the end of show, there would be some kind of kicking of someone. While we were puzzling over that one, he gave us a long riddle of descriptive poetic phrases that didn’t fit together at all, and then gave us one word that made them all make sense. He engaged audience assistants to conduct various magic tricks. I wasn’t sure what to attribute to physics, what to attribute to impressive “reading” of participants, and what was actually sleight of hand. In between, he told stories from his life which would have made an interesting show even without the magic and interaction. Later it became clear that just as the apparently-unconnected lines of the riddle made sense once the keyword was revealed, the anecdotes also had a common thread in racist microaggression. The structure of the show, particularly the ending that subverted my expectations of what a performer “owes” the audience, had me feeling as if I discovered my own problematic beliefs rather than having someone else call me out, which was much more effective. (Emo Majok’s gentle poking fun felt similar). I don’t know whether the performer teaches undergraduates, but I hope for the sake of York students that he does. Shawn DeSouza-Coelho is also the author of the fascinating biography of Stratford stage manager Nora Polley, Whenever You’re Ready, which I recommend.

Let’s Not Turn on Each Other features creative partners and recent BFA grads Jacquelin Walters and Michael Watt, who have been making performances together at Nextfest, at U of A New Works, and elsewhere. This one, billed as a play with original folksongs, was performed at Spotlight Cabaret, but is going to be held over at the Westbury Theatre next Friday and Saturday. (Note – you might remember that in past years, holdover performances cost more than tickets to regular Fringe shows. This year they’re a flat $20 – the same as the maximum price during the festival.)

Anyway, it’s weird, and playful, and engaging. The two performers, wearing plain modest dresses and blonde milkmaid braids under kerchiefs, are members of a guild, assigned to guard an outpost until they get a signal from their leader. It’s not clear if this is a religion or a doomsday-prep group or what, but they both seem completely devoted to their required daily schedule and the instructions they get from cassette tapes. They sing and play instruments, they make an expedition around the audience space which culminates in some participation from Spotlight serving staff, and eventually they make some discoveries that upset their belief system. See the holdover — and watch for these two in future. I understand that Michael Watt will be playing the eponymous Shrek in an upcoming Nuova Vocal Arts production.

W.R.O.L. (Without Rule of Law) has a more realistic setting and tone, but again it seems to be about a group of young-teen girls who have deviated from standard Girl Guides curriculum to teach themselves survivalist prepping. The script is by Michaela Jeffery – previous works of hers I’d seen in Edmonton were Sundogs (Fringe 2014) and The Listening Room (Cardiac Theatre, 2018). Emily Marisabel directed W.R.O.L. Set designer Amanda Bertrand and prop designer Kevin Cambridge have constructed an impressively detailed space for the group to explore, especially given the 15-minute limitations on setup and strike for each show. Performers Robyn Clark, Baran Demir, Astrid Deibert, Emily Thorne, and Jordan Empson bring five different characters to life, each with their own needs and motivations for becoming competent and independent. At first, the group’s concerns about solving mysteries and defying school restrictions seem immature or foolish, but by the end it seemed to me that they had credible good reasons to mistrust their authority figures, reasons that many contemporary young people might share.