Stage/Toronto Fringe 2024

What: Rat Academy
Where: Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, 16 Ryerson Ave.
When: Sat., July 13 at 2:00 pm
Highlight: Wild physical comedy and costuming makes these actors recognizable as humans
Rating: NNNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: The rats will probably make fun of you (and you’ll enjoy it.)

“THAT was such a Fringe show,” I hear an audience member exclaim with cheeky delight as the sold-out show exited the theatre. I ponder this for a second. What is a “Fringe show”? I think, in this case, it is a show that pushes the boundaries of what’s socially acceptable for a person to do while also being objectively good theatre (if there is such a thing).

Yes, Rat Academy certainly fits that bill.

Creator-performers Katie Yoner and Dayna Lea Hoffmann are completely unrecognizable as humans through their impressive costuming, makeup, vocal modulations and stellar physical performances as Fingers and Shrimp, the last rats in Alberta. Fingers is wiser, scruffier, generally more weathered and tasked with teaching the adorable Shrimp how to “rat”!

Paired with direction by collaborator Joseph McManus, this clown-rat show is impossibly funny. The rats interact with the audience almost the whole time, insulting them, bringing them up on stage and even letting them hold their cheese! They both had complete command over the stage, being fine-tuned to their audience — at one point a couple left to go to the bathroom, and when they came back, Fingers mocked them. It was priceless.

Though Alberta was trying to kick these rats out in the 1950s, I’m sure Toronto would welcome them with open arms after this side-splitting performance. Bravo.