Fringe Binge returns to London, Ont.’s Palace Theatre on Tuesday

The London Fringe Festival’s “Fringe Binge” is returning for another year at The Palace Theatre.

The event, which runs from Tuesday until Sunday at the Old East London venue, is organized by the Palace Theatre Arts Commons, and will see six shows performed six times over the course of six days.

This year’s Fringe Binge will be bigger than the Fringe Binge held last year, which was impacted by COVID-19 restrictions, said Kelli Gough, chair of the Palace Theatre Arts Commons.

“The one thing that makes us not quite back to normal yet is that we haven’t got performers from all over the world this year. We’re still looking at local talent,” Gough said.

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“When it came to looking at people to put up billets for the out-of-town entertainers, there was quite a bit of reluctance still of having international travellers in your home, so we decided to run with just the local talent. And boy, did we ever have a lot of it.”

This year’s Fringe Binge contains a variety of shows, dance performers, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Tempest, and several plays.

Among them is Boundaries, which addresses colonialism and racism, Passing Notes, which Gough says “is a haunting tale of souls bound by what they don’t see,” and a third is called Maybe Jon Bon Jovi Was Right.

Gough said she was looking forward to seeing Boundaries, along with another show, Tango, to the Pointe, involving the dance company PointeTango. The show is described as a fusion of ballet and tango.

“I saw the PointeTango dancers practising the other day and it was breathtaking. And that was just practise. They didn’t even have their costumes on,” Gough said.

Another performance, Stick, Stick, Stuck, is described as a “dance theatre story about failure, success, and never giving up.”

“We’ll see how much time I get,” Gough said of catching the shows. “When you’re running it, you don’t often get to see the shows, so you sneak into the rehearsals.”

Details and tickets for this year’s Fringe Binge can be found on the Palace Theatre website.

— with files from Devon Peacock