✭✭✭✭✩

by Briane Nasimok, directed by Peter Moss

Herculean Effort with No Fixed Address Productions, Toronto Fringe Festival, George Ignatieff Theatre, Toronto

July 2-12, 2014

Briane Nasimok’s solo show provides the kind of backstage view of Canadian theatre history that is rapidly being lost.  Stage-struck at an early age, Nasimok worked as an extra at the COC under its first artistic director, Herman Geiger-Torel and into the first years of its next artistic director, Lotfi Mansouri.  Over time he became the head of the extras and ultimately moving up in status to become a stage manager.  He has a wealth of surprising anecdotes of on-stage and off-stage goings-on at the opera in the 1970s that any theatre-lover will enjoy.  His absolutely deadpan delivery only makes his stories funnier.

              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in NOW Magazine 2014-07-10.

Photo: Briane Nasimok.  ©2014.

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