The small Northeastern Ontario town of Buttershire is being terrorized by a cheese pervert; a trench coat clad male who flashes women with cheese attached to his dick. The OPP are helpless (with laughter). Can local dairy heiress and top anti-vegan internet celebrity over 40 Priscilla Patton, recently returned from the big city (Sudbury) save the day?

It proves surprisingly complicated given that the population of Buttershire appears to be in single figures but what Priscilla lacks in analytical intelligence she makes up for in her internet savviness and outstanding ability to find non-culinary uses for dairy products (no, not that one…). Maybe if she didn’t live stream her investigation it might be easier to catch up with the pervert but Face-tok is what she does.

The real problem though is that she’s up against Big Dairy in the form of Ottawa’s top price fixing champions and Big Grocery where the heir to the Easton empire has some sort of hold over her. Actually he appears to have been holding quite a lot of her. Nonetheless with the help of the Big Cheese and non-vegan Tarot cards Priscilla will surely prevail.

Catching a Cheese Pervert: a Priscilla Patton Mystery, by Krista Rowe and Kayla Kurin is completely daft, fast paced, high energy and very funny. Priscilla is played by Arleigh Curran with considerable verve and great moves. And for an older woman (well, over 40) she’s dead sexy in a rustic sort of way. All the other roles; Priscilla’s parents, brother, frenemy, the cops, Easton and a vegan barrista are played by José Andrés Bordas using a variety of more or less outrageous accents. He’s also a great mover and manipulates various puppet characters to boot.

This is the sort of show one is only ever going to see at the Fringe. It’s quirky, it’s weird and it’s really very funny and they claim it’s based on true events. Sudbury must be even stranger than I ever imagined.

Catching a Cheese Pervert: a Priscilla Patton Mystery is presented by Women-led Cheese Shop Productions and plays in the RBC Studio at Soulpepper as part of the Fringe until July 12th.

Photo credit: Ally MacKenzie