I’ll admit my bias right up front. The Calgary Fringe is my favourite festival of the summer. It’s an abundance of riches for a theatre lover like me: about 30 shows happening all within a 10-minute walk.

The only thing I don’t like about this year’s fringe is the “no handshakes, only hugs” rule. Call me a wet blanket, but I’m at the fringe to see the shows, not to hug my audience neighbours. (For those of you who haven’t been yet, fringe volunteers tell you to hug whomever is sitting beside you at the beginning of each show.) I’m tempted to sit in an empty row at the back to avoid all that.

Zandra Bell’s Confessions of a Baby Boomer Bombshell tops my list so far. Bell, who hails from Edmonton and takes on the persona of flamboyant, middle-aged housewife Shirley Best, complete with a green, leopard-print turban, is hysterical. I laughed my way through the full 60 minutes of her show.

To be fair, a lot of that has to do with the fact I’m a woman.

Women, particularly those in their 40s and 50s, can relate to practically everything Bell parodies, from the travails of squeezing into “one-size-fits-all” control-top pantyhose, to the difficulties of finding an appropriate spot “to go” in the bush on a camping trip.

Bell nails so many of these issues on the head. I felt the collective nod of agreement from the audience, as she illustrated the dangers of “hovering” while the automatic-flush toilet is doing its “hoovering.”

Especially if you’re a woman, who doesn’t mind laughing at some of the unique challenges we women face, Confessions of a Baby Boomer Bombshell is a must see.

For something totally different, Thomas Baxter’s Thought Control is amazing. (That is, at least for a neophyte to psychological illusion shows like me.)

He had me “hook, line and sinker,” with his seeming ability to read peoples’ thoughts (or control what they were thinking, I’m not sure which), guess what cards people were holding, make people believe their hands were stuck to a chair and the like.

And if you think this is the type of hypnotist you’ll see at the Calgary Stampede’s Coca-Cola stage, it isn’t. Baxter doesn’t make people walk around like chickens, or embarrass them in any way.

Baxter has no agenda other than to impress the audience with his prodigious abilities at thought manipulation and human observation. If you’re OK with that and don’t think the fringe has to equal socially provocative, boundary-pushing theatre, Thought Control is a great, family-friendly spectacle.

It left me, for one, scratching my head and wanting to find out more about the mysteries of psychological illusion.

Some Reckless Abandon, a one-woman play by Leah Bailly, is a great show, perhaps more for its professional quality and visually driven script than anything else. It is the most polished show I’ve seen thus far.

The play follows an 18-year-old who is so desperate to leave her small Alberta hometown in search of adventure, that she signs up for a “teenage Jesus camp” in Honduras. This is despite the fact she has no interest in discovering “J.C.,” or in convincing the Honduran population to become born-again Christians. Instead, her plan is for her “cowboy” to come rescue her from the camp, so they can head to the beach.

Through a series of dark twists and turns, she finally comes to her own point of self-discovery.

To be frank, I would have liked to see a slightly more developed “ending” that expanded on some of those personal revelations.

My only other frustration with the play is that it primarily ridicules evangelical Christians, an easy target. I would have found it more interesting had Bailly explored at least some of the non-stereotypical aspects of the evangelical Christian community.

That said, this play is a well-acted, well-written, visual script that takes the audience on a journey.

(KR)

Ditto on the hugs. When you’re going to multiple shows in one day, you are more likely to want to resort to violence at the umpteenth suggestion of group hugs, rather than participate in a love fest. My other complaints of the festival writ large is a lack of bike racks and the unbearable heat in most venues. Sure, it was hot outside, but a fan would have made a world of difference.

But, enough of the complaining. This year’s fringe is still a wild, hit-and-miss smorgasbord of theatre treats. And treats there have been.

The Power of Ignorance is one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen. I laughed hard for the full hour and a half. Chris Gibbs plays Vaguen, a motivational speaker attempting to convince the crowd on the merits of his philosophy — ignorance. We are told that what we don’t know can’t hurt us, so it follows that the less we know, the better.

At the beginning of the show, we are told that the most negative word in the English language is “No.” Vaguen then explains that its opposite is “Don’t know.” Therefore, not knowing has to be a good thing.

It’s this kind of word play and twisted humour written into the script that keeps this production humming, but it’s Gibbs and his immense comedic talent that brings it all home. His timing is perfect and his improvisation and quick-witted interactions with the audience are hilarious and impressive. While often outlandish, sometimes all it takes is a quick change of facial expression on Gibbs’s face to crack the audience up.

I will be talking about this one for a while.

On Second Thought is another funny production, but with a more laid-back attitude.

Paul Hutcheson performs memories from his life, from odd jobs (and I mean odd) to childhood mishaps to jumping out of a plane. And he does it with great skill and humour.

In between the prepared segments of the production, he takes the risk of interacting with the audience, encouraging back-and-forth conversation. Though this could end in disaster with the wrong crowd, Hutcheson possesses such an easygoing, friendly style, it’s hard to imagine him not winning anyone over.

This was a fun, relaxed show.

Drunken Fucker is a bit of a departure from my other two picks. I went into this one blind, expecting a light-hearted romp through good boozy times. What I got was a sometimes hard-to-watch descent into alcoholism performed by Sean Bowie — based on his real-life experiences.

Bowie is hard not to like, but he sure tries hard to see that you don’t. Starting off as a carefree youth who likes to party, you soon find yourself cringing, waiting for the disaster around the corner; and they pile on.

The simple lighting was effective and the music by Jay Crocker, who shares the stage with his guitar, was just enough to add to the production without being distracting.

Not what I was expecting and that’s a good thing.

Check out additional reviews, good and bad, on the Fast Forward fringe blog: ffwdweekly.com/calgary-blogs/fast-forward-fring-blog/