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.

Having to spend his days hustling for the train fare to and from Hamilton (marginally preferable to Oshawa) and dealing with his ex’s shenanigans leaves little time for governing which allows his assistant to take over the political agenda with a platform (666 pages long) that appears to combine fairly mainstream progressive ideas (Guaranteed Minimum Income), stuff that even Lenin would have thought went a bit too far (no private ownership of homes) and a big dose of tech bro fascism into a sort of Brave New World 2026. It’s not a big hit at first but there is a “surprise” ending.

Along the way it’s mostly chaos. Simon drunkenly throwing up in the pot plants, ex stealing the government jet and attacking Ottawa, drunk on-line posts, a golden toilet and an unseen character called Lurch. It’s not subtle but it hits the obvious buttons in the right way. There are plenty of digs at Drug Fraud (and his relationship with Mark Carney). It moves fast. The cast; Brandon James Sim (Simon), Victoria Sullivan (his wife), Christa-Marie Waugh (Grace; his assistant) deliver their lines with excellent timing and are good physical comics. The sets and lighting; though fairly basic, work well.

It’s not deep, it’s not particularly nuanced but it is a pretty good send up of contemporary politics and internet celebrity culture. You get what it says on the packet.