Openings We're Tracking This Week, June 11-17

'Tis Pity She's a Whore

(l-r) Randy Hughson, Dan Chameroy, Lucy Peacock, 

Marek Norman, Robin Hutton, Tom Rooney 

photo: Andrew Eccles

If you're in Central Canada 'tis Fringe season. No fewer than three Fringes are ending or starting this week beginning with the London Fringe. Featured there - as it is in the Montreal Fringe - is the iconoclastic work by Rob Salerno Fucking Stephen Harper about the playwright's run-in with our Beloved Leader.

If we were going to go out of our way for one show, however, it would probably be 'Tis Pity She's a Whore at the Ottawa Fringe. You want a sordid, seedy piece and still want to feel noble about seeing it? This John Ford potboiler is just the ticket. Filled, as it is, with authentic thee's and thou's it...well...look at the picture up top. Horny young people, you say? Try brother and sister.

Meanwhile, in a less transgressive tone is Wanderlust, a song of love to the works of Robert Service, at Stratford. Directed and with book by Morris Panych and music by Norman Marek, it might be one of the little gems of the company's season. In previews.