Toronto Fringe Review: A Small Part of the Whole Story

Chris Graham. Photo by Graham Isador

A Small Part of the Whole Story, playing at the 2022 Fringe Festival, is a warm and humorous exploration of the grieving process. Humorous because sometimes grieving requires laughter. Written and performed by Chris Graham, this performance is presented like a TEDxTalk, which makes perfect sense considering Graham is the head of speaker coaching at TEDxToronto.

Accompanied by sound designer Sandro Pehar, on guitar providing backing music, Graham explores the two years leading up to his mother’s passing from cancer and the fragile and yet absurd time immediately after. He recounts stories and anecdotes with his parents that are comedic in how awkward and uncomfortable they are - the way most family stories tend to turn out.

Considering Graham’s experience with TEDxTalks, he’s quite familiar with how to get a crowd to warm up to not only the speaker but the subject at hand. His choice to put a story about how he would read his mother’s favourite books to her while she was in palliative care up front was a great choice. The reveal that his mother’s favourite author happened to be Nora Roberts who penned copious steamy and salacious romance novels chock full of scenes featuring heaving bosoms and ripping bodices made the story an instant hit with the audience. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like everything was a solid hit. For one, I found that Pehar’s live playing didn’t entirely jive with Graham’s presentation at the beginning of the performance. Graham did bring up how conflicting moods in music and story can create dissonance for the audience and that is exactly what I experienced - I didn’t feel that the music and story blended so I found my focus split between the two until it gradually balanced out. As well, it wouldn’t be a TEDxTalk without photographs on projection but the television used here was just too small to see the photos clearly from the back of the theatre.

But those quibbles aside, A Small Part of the Whole Story is both comedic and touching. It’s also eye opening and a heartfelt way of assisting anyone currently navigating loss.

A Small Part of the Whole Story is on now until July 17 as part of the 2022 Toronto Fringe Festival.
Find show times and tickets here.