Enjoying city life on the fringe
MONDAY
Summer Blockbuster Week
Watch this if: You’ve spent enough on popcorn and movie tickets already. You’ve seen the superheroes, the giant sharks, the secret spies, the bank robbers, the cursed families and the dinos. Now get ready to see it all again at Bad Dog Theatre’s Summer Blockbuster Week, back for a second year. The week of unscripted comedy celebrates and spoofs everything that makes summer movies simultaneously wonderful and terrible. This year’s formats include
Women Ruin Movies, in which a cast of women and nonbinary performers remake an audience favourite; Haunted, where the audience chooses what horrors meet a group of five teens in an abandoned mansion; Stakes, a new show from the beloved troupe Sex T-Rex; and favourites from last year like Teenage
House Party, which is exactly what it sounds like. (Bad Dog Comedy Theatre, 875 Bloor St. W., 8 p.m., on until Aug. 17) — Carly Maga
TUESDAY
Good Behavior Watch this if: You want another season of Downton Abbey’s former Lady Mary behaving badly. The second season of this series starring Brit Michelle Dockery has already aired in the U.S., but gets a Canadian run on CraveTV. Letty, the thief and con artist played by Dockery, is trying to give son Jacob (Nyles Steele) a normal life with the help of contract-killer boyfriend Javier (Juan Diego Botto) as the new episodes begin, but her attempts to do normal will go off the rails worse than ever, before the season is through. (CraveTV) — Deb Yeo
BOOM
Watch this if: You were born between 1945 and 1969, or are really interested in those who were. Rick Miller is an accomplished solo performer, with shows like MacHomer,
Bigger Than Jesus and Hardsell touring all over the country. His latest premiered with Mirvish Productions over three years ago and returns with the same company for a weeklong run. BOOM is a love letter to baby boomers and 25 years of North American politics, celebrity and culture, in which Miller plays dozens of luminaries and performs key musical moments that defined the period. Miller clearly knows his audience. Free tickets are available for American draft dodgers who moved to Canada during the Viet- nam War. (CAA Theatre, 651 Yonge St., 8 p.m., on until Aug. 19) — CM
FRIDAY
Best of Fringe Watch this if: You like a curated cultural offering. The defining feature of the Toronto Fringe Festival is its lottery-based programming model, which picks the vast majority of its roster by random draw. Though it’s what makes the Fringe special, it can also overwhelm the average theatregoer, so the Best of Fringe series is a nice backup. Eight of this year’s breakout shows are returning for a very limited engagement, including Morro and
Jasp: Save the Date; the improvised farce featuring Colin Mochrie, Entrances and
Exits; the solo show BikeFace; and the ensemble work starring recent Order of Canada recipient David Fox, First Dates. (Toronto Centre for the Arts, 5040 Yonge St., on until Aug. 23) — CM The Kindergarten Teacher, with Nadav Lapid
Watch this if: You don’t know about Israel’s coolest new auteur. A director based in Tel Aviv, Lapid has become an international festival favou- rite thanks to a series of steely dramas that mix provocative themes and characters with deft social commentary. He’s getting a boost in profile this year now that an English-language version of his 2014 film The Kindergarten Teacher with Maggie Gyllenhaal is earning kudos. Lapid will be on hand to introduce the original in a Lightbox spotlight that also includes 2011’s riveting Policeman and a Carte Blanche selection of Chantal Akerman’s Je tu il elle. (TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King St. W., 6:30 p.m.) — Jason Anderson Esme & Roy
á Watch this if: You fancy your kids getting life lessons from a girl and her monster pal. This series is the first new animated venture from Sesame Workshop, makers of Sesame Street, in more than a decade. Geared to children 4 to 6, it features teachable moments courtesy of “monstersitter” Esme and her big yellow sidekick (no, not that big yellow sidekick). Produced with Corus Entertainment’s Nelvana, it features the voices of Canadian actors Millie Davis ( Orphan
Black, Odd Squad) and Patrick McKenna ( The Red Green Show, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs). (Treehouse at 7:10 a.m.) —DY á Electric Light Orchestra
Watch this because: This act is so venerable one of its early support acts was Rush, on their North American debut. Their last time here, Jeff Lynne and band entered a long-gone Exhibition Stadium from a laser-shooting flying saucer, in front of 70,000. That was 40 years ago, when punk was scorching the paint off such arena-sized excesses and ELO seemed out of any other ideas. Now comes this unlikely return, sans the saucer and trappings like an exploding cello. Lynne is now one of rock’s renaissance men as a producer and part of the Traveling Wilburys. That supergroup shows up briefly in a set list otherwise dominated by old familiars from the spaceship era, which took the Beatles’ baroque baton and ran with it: melodic, well-written pomp-pop made for a nostalgic singalong. (Scotiabank Arena, 40 Bay St., 8 p.m.) —Chris Young Camp Wavelength
Watch this because: You can take the camping out of the indie fan, but you can’t take the indie fan out of the campground. It’s the end of an era and the start of another for Wavelength’s summer centrepiece festival. Gone is the boho, even terrifying prospect of camping overnight on the island (and last year, getting flooded right off it), while the new extras include a comedy stage and artists’ installations. As for the music, it’s the usual bag of irregulars, the standouts including Montreal maniacs Suuns headlining a Saturday menu that includes the wonderful Zaki Ibrahim; on Sunday, clear space for a suppertime set from local aces Casper Skulls leading up to Chad VanGaalen’s final bows. (Fort York Garrison, 100 Garrison Rd., 1 p.m.) — CY
SUNDAY
Vertigo at the Christie Pits Film Festival
Watch this if: You want a fond farewell to the outdoor movie season. Those massive rainstorms may have put a damper on some of your opportunities to enjoy movies under night skies, but here’s hoping the weather’s clear for the last night of the Christie Pits Film Festival. The fest’s season of tributes to “Cinematic Cities” closes with Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock’s San Francisco-set tale of romantic obsession. The program’s savvy selection of local shorts also ends with Scaffold, another great effort by Kazik Radwanski. (Christie Pits Park, starts at sundown) — JA