Fringe Festival Review - Catchy Tune's "Playground: A New Family Musical"
Updated: Mar 13
Hello lovely people! As you likely saw from my other TO Fringe review for Rule of Three's production of "The Velveteen Rabbit", during the summer of 2025, I had the opportunity to attend my very first Toronto Fringe Festival, which was an amazing experience!
As always, a little bit of background info about Toronto Fringe: Toronto Fringe is a grassroots, charitable organization that runs the annual Toronto Fringe Festival every year since 1989, with the goal of providing emerging artists, BIPOC artists, artists with disabilities, and members of the performing arts community who have historically been excluded from established arts festivals, with an inclusive space to showcase their craft.
Taking place over the course of 12 days every July, the Toronto Fringe Festival invites over 1,200 artists from around Canada to showcase their work in one of Downtown Toronto’s 30 theatre venues, ranging from performances in comedy, drama, musicals, improv, children’s theatre, dance, and more.
Well, keeping in the vein of nostalgia and reconnecting with your inner child, I'd like to share with you another delightful family-friendly show that I came across as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival’s “Best of Fringe” selection.
“Playground”, is a new musical by Catchy Tune Productions, from the minds of Olivia Daniels, Elly-Barlin Daniels, and Amanda Freedman. The best way I can describe Playground is as a musical love-letter to the power of imagination and its ability to bond kids together, even those who seemingly don’t have a lot in common with each other.
Featuring the music of 4 time Juno Award-winning children’s singer and songwriter Jack Grunsky, who provided live music accompaniment during the show, “Playground” was originally featured as part of Fringe’s KidsFest, with shows playing at Soulpepper Theatre’s Garland Cabaret, but after winning a “Best of Fringe” award, the musical was later selected by T.O. Live to run for an additional two shows at the Meridian Arts Centre’s Studio Theatre, and after watching it for myself, I can see why!
You can listen to my audio review below.
**This audio review was featured as part of Met Radio's "TO Fringe" 2025 coverage. You can listen to other Toronto Fringe reviews at Met Radio's SoundCloud page.
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