By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)
Over in the beautiful garden city if Victoria, B.C. Canada, the Victoria Fringe Festival returns for its 27th year with a few much-needed updates and, perhaps, an added regular venue. The voting system is changed so its more fair and the Maritime Museum provided the space for a unique play, “Judgement Day,” that kicked off the first week of the festivities. It will also be part of the last weekend too as the votes are being tallied for best of Fringe.
This gently philosophical and satirical look at how socially irreverent various world religions are gets center stage in the courtroom where real trials took place.
And the storm of controversy of which belief is right in granting a peaceful afterlife gets elegantly played up for laughs by New Blood Theatre, a group that may well be ‘new’ to the Victoria scene. They had done a previous production “Greg Phillips: Alleged Antichrist” in collaboration with the Student Alternative Theatre Company at the University of Victoria, and this new show marks their first production that will hopefully tour to other Fringe festivals around the world.