Stage/Toronto Fringe 2024

What: My Time Will Come
Where: Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, 30 Bridgman Ave.
When: Sun., July 7 at 4:15 pm; Tue., July 9 at 9:15 pm; Thurs., July 11 at 4:00 pm; Sat., July 13 at 6:00 pm and Sun., July 14 12:15 pm
Highlight: Leo Dressel’s performance as a guitar-playing narrator.
Rating: NNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: This 45-minute play about the backlands of Brazil has an ethereal atmosphere, replete with striking non-literal images. Its esthetic is distinctive, making use of masks, white makeup and patterned lights.

IN Murilo Salvador and Logan Chatterton’s My Time Will Come, a few cardboard cacti set the stage for a journey into the backlands of Brazil, where a vagrant named Tarso finds himself overwhelmed — and almost pushed to murder — by the hunger and violence surrounding him. That is until an unlikely sequence of events leaves him stranded, giving him the chance to remake his life under a new guise.

The show’s performances are passionate to the degree of sacrificing clarity, with mumbled lines sometimes obfuscating key plot details. Yet Chatteron’s 45-minute production has an ethereal atmosphere, replete with striking non-literal images. Although no designers are credited on the Fringe website, the show’s aesthetic is distinctive, making use of masks, white makeup and patterned lights.

Compelling, too, is Leo Dressel’s performance as a guitar-playing narrator on the side of the stage. His virtuosic, seemingly improvised fingerpicking provides a living score to the production, evocatively responding to the action as it unfolds. Sure, My Time Will Come is a little rough — but at times I also found it disarmingly effective. It’s offbeat gems like this that make the Fringe so worthwhile.