My first show at the Fringe this year was Minimum, by Victoria Sullivan, presented at Factory Theatre by Be Victorious Productions. Simon has just been elected Premier of Ontario by a landslide based on cleaning up the youth demographic by campaigning mainly on TikTok. Unfortunately on his first day in office a video of him, stoned and in his underwear, carousing with a bunch of female McMaster med students goes viral. In the video he promises, if elected, to live on minimum wage. When Saint Taylor Swift dogpiles on the video challenging him to do so there is no way back. It’s tricky. He has expensive tastes and an even more expensive wife (she owns a Tasmanian Tiger fur coat) who promptly leaves him.
So last night at the Tranzac, as part of Against the Grain’s Opera Pub, Queen Hezumuryango and Ryan Nauta did a version of the “Seguidilla” from Bizet’s Carmen but with the roles reversed. It was the Pride Edition after all. Turns out it’s not the first time I’ve heard Carmen gender bent. Not so long ago I heard Korin Thomas-Smith sing the “Habanera”.
BTW, the rest of Opera Pub was pretty good too with even more gender bending as Ryan also sang “Quondo men vo”. There was a really nice account by Queen of “Printemps qui commence” from Saint-Saëns’ 
And that’s a wrap on Opera Pub for 2025/26 but it will be back at the Tranzac in the Fall.
operaramblings 