Review: TORONTO FRINGE FESTIVAL: FINAL REVIEW ROUNDUP at Toronto Fringe

It’s the end of the 2025 Toronto Fringe, which has entertained audiences for the past 12 days with more than 100 shows in 22 venues. Which was your favourite?

BroadwayWorld’s final review roundup is below.

KILLY WILLY (Theatre Passe Muraille)

Perhaps the first Relaxed Performance I’ve attended where the warnings included more than one decapitation, KILLY WILLY, second runner-up for the 2025 Adams Prize in Musical Theatre, is about an orca who orchestrates a deadly revolution to try to save the whales from exploitation and extinction. Taking the form of a nature documentary with a disaffected narrator (Jordan Kuper), the show chronicles the abuse of Willy (Maya Fleming) at the hands of Aquapark trainer Jenny (a sweetly villainous Jenna Brown) and the disorganized pod of insurgent wild whales in search of a leader.

Mona Fyfe’s folk-inflected music is catchy and memorable, especially when evoking Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie in a rousing protest song about the never-ending cycle of working for the man. Feeling more like a first act than a full show, Eliza Smith’s book is less successful, relying on pop culture references and more intent on delivering broad humour than developing characters we can really care about. Deflating the ecological message, the book portrays all the sea creatures through a very human lens, their understanding of our media serving as a stand-in for their level of intelligence. Even Willy, the most nuanced whale, mostly seems upset because he’d rather be performing Shakespeare than tricks, an odd motivation suggesting that the real problem with exploitative and deadly aquatic theme parks is that they don’t allow the trapped sea creatures to choose the artistic programming.

That said, Zoe Marìn’s direction effectively utilizes the levels and catwalks of the Passe Muraille stage as a literal framing device, and Gabe Woo’s stylized costumes are a treat, particularly a creepy dolphin’s circa 2000 Europop sunglasses and Willy’s dapper black and white pants and bowler hat with sparkly blowhole.

Photo of the cast of KILLY WILLY by Trinity Lloyd

PEOPLE SUCK: A MUSICAL AIRING OF GRIEVANCES (Theatre Passe Muraille)

If there’s one certainty in life, it’s death. If there are two certainties, death and taxes. If there are three certainties, they are death, taxes, and that people suck. Sometimes they suck via big, inexcusable actions, sometimes merely causing minor annoyances. Peter Cavell and Megan Phillips’ PEOPLE SUCK espouses Sartre’s theory that hell is other people, enumerating the various ways they can ruin our days in mostly unconnected vignettes. I saw the show in its initial, hour-long incarnation, when it played the 2015 Fringe. This time, the show started more than ten minutes late, because the TTC sucks and delayed an actor. Despite this hiccup, the cast gamely rallied (even adding a couple of jokes about the situation) and delivered a very entertaining show, full of observations about the jerks in our lives that will probably have you nodding along in sympathy.

Highlights included the opening number that introduces the concept of terrible people to kindergarteners, a puppet sketch where puppeteer Liana Bdwei tries to play a fun game of “who sucks worse” and merely winds up depressed, a Weimar cabaret-style piece (a fiery Michelle Nash) about the one place people need to suck more that’s still stuck in my head, and a song about the vagaries of grammar, delivered with sublime frustration by Chris Johnson (though its pop-culture reference to Eats, Shoots & Leaves would have been fresher a decade ago). Director Jessica Sherman keeps things moving at a fast clip, Did the show need to be expanded to 90 minutes? I’m not sure; I remember it making its point equally well in an hour. But it’s still a cathartic good time of vented frustrations, with a reminder that we can all work to be at least slightly better people. Let’s just say it doesn’t suck.

Photo of the cast of PEOPLE SUCK by Kristy Boyce

CTRL ALT DELETE: AN ALPHABETICAL MUSICAL (Theatre Passe Muraille)

We live in a time of cutbacks and austerity, and apparently, the English language is no exception. In Douglas Price’s delightfully creative and fun musical, CTRL ALT DELETE, W (Tahirih Vejdani) announces to a stunned set of letters (F, K, S, Q, X, and Z) that, since their sounds can be made by other combinations of consonants and vowels, one of them will be let go from their cushy job. The creativity of concept extends to some excellent audience participation, as some audience volunteers sit on stage as the jury that will seal the dispatched letter’s fate. As the letters try to justify their existence, we get plenty of bickering and a juicy office romance or two amongst the able cast of characters (get it?). Price’s score is full of bold, catchy tunes about which words and concepts we’d lose if certain letters got the ax, including Ryan J. Burda’s frightfully funny fight for F words, Taj Crozier’s quirky quest to quantify the quality of Q’s qualifications, and expressive Vanessa Campbell’s exquisite explosion of X’s exposition.

Language does change, often irrevocably. There’s a poignancy in the situation that Price closes in on but then shies away from at a crucial moment. As well, some songs do land on and stick with one or two puns, when there are many other clear opportunities that cry out for wordplay. Perhaps I’m greedy—the puns that exist are solid—but I found myself wanting to offer suggestions. Perhaps that’s for the next iteration of the show, which I hope has a future somewhere.

Photo of the cast of CTRL ALT DELETE provided by the company

THE ADDING MACHINE (The Puppy Sphere, The Burroughes Building)

There’s a delicious irony in a story about the vagaries of the corporate world being staged at a studio that does puppy yoga for businesses looking to combat employee burnout. Perhaps Mister Zero (Tim Walker), the man at the centre of Elmer Rice’s 1923 expressionist classic THE ADDING MACHINE, would have faced a very different path had his boss gently placed a puppy in his hand, rather than unceremoniously dumping him for an automated calculator on his 25th service anniversary.

Alice Fox Lundy’s adaptation of the Rice work, with dramaturgy by Guillermo Verdecchia, slims Mister Zero’s existential crisis to a one act. The effectively stylized production could easily transfer to the Soulpepper mainstage season as is, with impressive performances by Walker and company in their best tough New Yorker accents. A Fringe highlight, the production gives careful consideration to pacing, with effectively moody lighting (Chin Palipane), minimal but impactful set pieces, and careful costuming – the triple-headed jurors in Zero’s trial for his violent response to his firing make a particular impression.

The play, as relevant today as when it was written, ably critiques both the disposability of the working world and societal illusions of morality and respectability. Jamar Adams-Thompson’s terrific turn as a moral murderer bothered by his lack of punishment in the afterlife exemplifies the latter.  If the production gets another incarnation, it could lean even more into stylization, making already shadowy makeup looks more extreme and further emphasizing each character’s disconnection from the others. A new location or better seating would also be ideal, as sightlines are suboptimal and the folks who get relegated to the mats on the floor are in for an experience that steadily goes downward (dog) in comfort. Exciting stuff.