Toronto Fringe Review: The Chels Stands Alone

Chelsea Larkin stands centre stage, microphone in hand, and begins belting out to the crowd. From the moment the lights go up, she is the star of comedy and song, peaking within her initial spotlight moment, and surpassing herself to no end as she makes an audience heave with laughter and awe at her talent.

As playwright and performer in Cbot Inc.’s The Chels Stands Alone, Larkin fills the 60 minutes with sketches and bits based on her own life that counter her people pleasing self. Creative would be an understatement to this work; ingenious is better suited to describe her personal stories coming to you in characters, rants, and never-before-heard secrets.

Bringing back her bits in healthy doses, they are perfectly timed to keep an audience from parting eyes with the stage for even a moment. Well-developed characters headline the show as if they were the real people from Larkin’s life, booming with differences of voice and physicality, never ceasing to showcase their unique traits that would have gotten them this gig.

Lighting and sound, with stage manager Andrea Miller and composer Jordan Armstrong, matched the show with wondrous consistency, murmuring in all the right places, and shouting in all the wrong ones - a beautiful combination for comedic excellence. Props and wigs filtered the show to drive every moment of it but never overshadowed the woman holding or wearing them.

Larkin brought courageous honesty to the stage so much that it became hers; she melded with the curtains and floor so powerfully that it was another prop to her shining verbiage and action. Merging comedy with vulnerable material is a risk, a challenge, and frightening. But The Chels Stands Alone was triumphant, empowering, and inspiring. And funny, too.

The Chels Stands Alone is on now until July 17 as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival.
Find show times and tickets here.

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