✭✭✭✩✩

by Dawna Wightman, directed by Ginette Mohr

Broadview Laundry Mat Theatre Company, Toronto Fringe Festival, Ulster Coin Laundry, 202 Lippincott St., Toronto

July 3-14, 2013

Dawna Wightman gives a terrifically engaging performance as Rosie Fudge, a creative young woman trapped in a stifling marriage. (She wants to be an actor; her spouse wants her to be a "normal" wife and mother.)

Wightman plays more than a dozen characters, most memorably Rosie's ailing mother and her husband's snarky secretary, but it's a cliché to portray the Wicked Witch of the West as her internal critic. The story itself is overly familiar, and the unusual venue, a real laundromat, oddly bears no relation to the themes or plot of the play.  It’s quite an intimate show with room for only five audience members per performance.

              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in NOW Magazine 2013-07-11.

Photo: Dawna Wightman.  ©2013 Broadview Laundry Mat Theatre Company.

For tickets, visit http://fringetoronto.com.