St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival

We are just days away from the launch of Montreal’s annual Fringe festival. The Festival St-Ambroise Fringe de Montreal begins its 21st season May 30 and runs until June 19.

It is perhaps the most well-known Fringe festival on the planet next to Edinburgh and Edmonton. You’ve often read, in this space, about parts of Montreal called Plateau Mont Royal and Mile End, particularly artsy parts of town with several different venues where Fringe shows are staged, be they stand-up comedy shows, musical reviews, dance, cabaret, circus, anything that, like these parts of town, are slightly off the beaten path. On the edge. Or more to the point, on the fringe.

The festival kicks off with Fringe For All, an exciting event where, like in speed-dating, artists take the stage for 2 minutes or less to give you a shot of what’s to come, and hopefully entice you to see their shows, which usually last about an hour or so. The event takes place on Monday, May 30, 7:00 pm, at Café Campus. Admission is free, and everyone is welcome.

Over the next few weeks I’ll bring you news about some of the shows and groups to be featured at this year’s festival. Take Processed Theatre, for example. They’re a young, up and coming musical theatre company that popped up on the scene last year with a stage version of a cinema classic. The 1936 film Reefer Madness sought to scare the uninitiated away from the evils of marijuana.
70 years later Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical hits the big screen. Then last year Processed Theatre produced the acclaimed Reefer Madness: The Musical for the Montreal stage. This year they’ll be in the Fringe with something they call Edges: A Song Cycle, an original production bringing together the lives of 4 people through song. Local musician Shayne Gryn is the company’s musical director. A Fringe social butterfly for years, you can often find him working the beer tent. And this year he’s got his theatrical fingers in several fringe pies.

Edges: A Song Cycle runs right through the festival at MAI (Montreal, Arts International), a theatrical venue in the heart of the Plateau that, in its mandate, is almost like a microcosm of the Fringe itself. Tickets are $12.00 and, again, everyone is welcome.

Craig Ferguson credits Montreal’s Just for Laughs Festival with launching his comedy career, and tries to make it back here whenever he can. And, oh look: he’s coming back this year. Ferguson is, of course, best known as the host of CBS’s The Late, Late Show. Before that television audiences remember him as Mr. Wick from the Drew Carey Show.

He’s a novelist, a memoirist, and one of the best stand-up comics in the business. Craig Ferguson’s International House of Comedy, also featuring Russell Howard, Nina Conti, and Adam Hills, plays at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts for 2 shows Saturday, July 30, 7:00 & 10:00.