Jack Creaghan, Charlotte Creaghan and Jesse McQueen from Childhood by Cheap Wine | Photo by Craig Glynn
Presented by Cheap Wine
Childhood by Cheap Wine. Alright. So. This was a journey. I was not feeling it at first. I had that whole polite smile, face-scrunchy thing going on. Now, comedy is very personal and polarizing and my particular deal isn’t an objective truth and blah, blah, blah I’m sure this isn’t your first rodeo and we’re all adults here. Except, maybe we’re not? Maybe the childhood theme of the show is inseparable from the content of these dumb sketches.
I chuckled occasionally, but overall, I was in a state of baffled irritation. Some bits were so fully alienating that I dissociated. But then this cool thing happened. As some ludicrous aspect of a sketch just went on and on, something in my brain snapped and I stopped resisting. Whatever obnoxious thing was grinding my gears, my fixation flipped it on its head. I’m realizing that the relentlessness of a bit can win me over.
And whose relentlessness is near infinite? Children, of course. And Cheap Wine (Jack Creaghan, Jesse McQueen and Charlotte Creaghan) is inviting us to be children again. The fact that this trio are related adds a certain coziness to the whole affair, which they address directly. There are their rules, for instance, which draw the line at certain content—like sketches about throuples.
The segments here mostly feature adults in all sort of scenarios—science presentations going lewdly awry, screenwriters forced to dumb down their pitch with one very specific and grotesque idea, a nostalgic video game quirk manifesting in a therapy session—with all the humour deliberately immature. My favourite sketch, when I was most fully on-board, was the one in which they portray a trio of child siblings, hiding in a closet, huddled over an adult version of their parents’ trivia game. That’s when all the elements aligned for me.
I do have to shout out a comedy pet peeve of mime though. If you, for example, mime making yourself a scotch, it’s part of the scene. You have to keep holding the scotch. Or put it down. The scotch can’t just…disappear. I’m going to wonder where the scotch went and, well, I’d rather be following the sketch—not the scotch. (Yes, I’m that guy.)
Hmmm, I hope you can tell if this is your jam or not. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? You support some artists and either laugh for an hour or else have a great story about how much something sucked.
(Also, how great are the vibes of that photo?!)
Childhood by Cheap Wine
@Toronto Fringe Festival
July 2 to 13, 2025
VideoCabaret – Deanne Taylor Theatre (10 Busy Street)
60 minutes
