Toronto Fringe Review: Crime After Crime (After Crime)

It’s a high stakes, high budget action movie. The star of the film is just about to perish, hanging on by only a thread. Just then—gasp—the sidekick appears (the one we’d thought had been captured) to save the day. Sound familiar? 

Sex T-Rex’s Crime After Crime (After Crime) at the 2024 Toronto Fringe Festival takes the tropes we so commonly see in classic mystery and action movies and draws attention to them. They use comedy to successfully point out how silly a resolution can be or how obvious a plotline is. 

Their satirical sketch show runs in three parts and over three generations. Part one is in the same vein as Film Noir, building a story around a love triangle, family secrets, and miscommunication. Part two is a heist 20 years later in 1972 that sees a team of four attempt to overcome lasers and more family drama. Another 20 years later, part three triples down on the family drama and is reminiscent of 90s sci-fi films, where freeze rays and spaceships come to life. 

The four creator-performers of Sex T-Rex, Conor Bradbury, Julian Frid, Lowen Morrow, and Seann Murray, have put an effortful amount of work into creatively ensuring the audience sees the movie magic live that would normally be done during editing, or with on-set wind machines. Each performer is smoothly running about the stage to deliver props to fellow troupe members, or perfectly flick a cape just so, like you’d see in a Superman movie. The physical comedy in this show is exceptional—neck ties become storytellers, hangers double as spacecrafts with timed attacks and rhythmic defenses, car chases are exciting yet the miming is superbly easy to understand. 

Music and sound, all completed by the performers using a hidden onstage computer, helps to keep the pace and moments that call for verbal pause so a fight scene can break out are well-accepted. I found myself craving them as the show went on, wondering what prop or extravagant dance move the troupe would pull out next. 

A fan favourite of the production, garnering many laughs at the performance I attended, is the multiple characters on the go. With four performers only, the troupe plays with the forced jumps between roles, finding expertly innovative ways for character and costume changes. Despite the tropes in use, Sex T-Rex has discovered different ways to shock an audience.

Crime After Crime (After Crime) is on now until July 14 as part of Toronto Fringe. Show times and tickets.