Orlando Fringe 2022 review: 'Father, Daughter and Holy Toast'

Love might mean never having to say you’re sorry, but sometimes it does mean scraping shit out of the back of a taxi van. San Franciscan writer-performer Barbara Brady is a divorced middle-aged white woman, trying to date on the road to Medicare while simultaneously dealing with the indignities that accompany caring for an aging parent. In her one-woman dramedy, Brady tenderly tells stories of connecting with her nerdy engineer father in the decades and days preceding his decline into incontinence, from a confusing childhood Catholicism conversion to taking freight train-chasing road trips and bickering with her baby sister over buttered toast.

Elder care ain’t for sissies, but Brady’s low-key, humanely humorous show provides an important preview of something most of us will eventually have to face. The pacing stumbled a few times, and I felt the abrupt final blackout’s tone was out of step with the elegiac ending that immediately preceded it. But with her very first solo show, Brady is off to an impressive start for a performer of any age; this is a woman worth leaning in and listening to.

Tickets and show info: Father, Daughter and Holy Toast