The 2014 Vancouver Fringe Festival opened on Thursday Sept 4th. This event features 91 artists in more than 800 performances of over 80 shows in 11 days on Granville Island in theatre spaces and other odd sites as well as various off-island venues such as The Cultch, Studio 16, Havana and the Firehall.

The Unfortunate Ruth was developed with the support of Vancouver's Playwrights Theatre Centre. This play received the 2014 playwrights Theatre Centre and Fringe New Play prize and after seeing this show, I agree this award was well deserved. The Unfortunate Ruth was one of my favourite plays so far at this year's Fringe. In this play Travis presents a fascinating look at two alternate universes and the way one can chose to view the world.

I should preface these two reviews by saying I am more into drama and big themes than comedy, and shows that have other people rolling in the aisles don't usually make me chuckle. However, I liked both these crazy comedic shows shows although I enjoyed one much more than the other.

Oscar Wilde, master of the epigram, might well have agreed that like Shakespeare’s great fallen hero, Othello, he had “loved not wisely but too well.” Wilde's affair with the young Lord Alfred Douglas led to his ultimate destruction  and the negation of all the fame and admiration his talent had achieved.

Earlier this year I saw Iceland by Nicolas Billon, also directed by Kathleen Duborg.  Iceland is one of the three plays that make up Billon’s award-winning trilogy published as “Fault Lines”, and in my review at the time I called Iceland a “gem of a theatrical piece.”