The Globe and Mail

Hello - for those of you just arriving at Nestruck on Theatre, here's an introductory blog post. Part of the reason why we're launching at this particular moment is so I can blog about the 20th edition of the Toronto Fringe festival, which began last night.

I'm a fan of Canada's cross-country Fringe circuit, which is unique in the world. It's an excellent testing ground for artists and audiences and provides a home for genres of theatre that are often neglected by mainstream theatre companies. And I don't just mean zombie musicals.

Kate Hewlett, whose new play The Swearing Jar opened in the Tarragon Theatre last night as part of the festival, is an example of the kind of playwright that thrives on the Fringe. Her characters are quirky and gentle and armed to the hilt with clever one-liners; they make passing reference to pop-culture detritus like scrunchies and the sitcom Blossom. It's the kind of writing which, for better or for worse, we associate with television shows like the Gilmore Girls rather than theatre.

Hewlett, whose earlier play Humans Anonymous was a sell-out at the Fringe two years ago, should have another festival hit on her hands here. Cleverly structured and interspersed with song, The Swearing Jar concerns thirtysomething Carey's relationships with two men - her husband and a musician she meets in a bookstore. Though it deals with serious subjects like pregnancy, death and adultery, it always stays light, funny and charming. It's difficult to say much more because there is a M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist halfway through that changes everything - and reveals the play to be even slighter than thought. (Check the Toronto Fringe website for venue and times.)

Speaking of Shyamalan, Bluebeard, getting its Canadian premiere also in the Tarragon mainspace, is like a cross between the films The Happening and The Village. By young British writer Pericles Snowdon (what a name!), the play is set in a dystopian future where five women have holed up in a church after some vague apocalyptic event cleared the earth of all its men and most of its women. (There are references to the 2012 London Olympics, Iran going nuclear and "suicide saloons", but that's about as much information as we get.)

Blue (Melee Hutton) has raised Monkey, Rooster, Piglet and the slightly older Miss King (the excellent, androgynous Rae Ellen Bodie) in the church since their since childhoods, feeding them her own strange, feminist version of history. The sudden arrival of a sixth woman named Mignon (Christine Horne, who recently starred as Desdemona opposite Carlo Rota in CBC's Othello), shatters this self-contained world's certainties.

With a script written in a dense fantasy language of its own, Bluebeard is, like The Swearing Jar, easier to compare to film and television than theatre. It's own internal logic gets a bit garbled at the end, but it was overall quite enjoyable and surprising, if a bit murkily directed.

Four more shows: I saw a quartet of shows that are on at the Toronto Fringe at the Montreal Fringe festival two weeks ago. Of those, I recommended three in Globe TO preview on the weekend: performance poet Jem Rolls' latest work, spoof Berlin punk band Die Roten Punkte and the sketch comedy show Blastback Babyzap. (The fourth, Angela Rosenfield's ludicrously plotted MacBeth-inspired drama 'Beth, is to be avoided.)

Overheard in the beer tent: "Do you think The Drowsy Chaperone ruined the Fringe?" Discuss.