Bremner Fletcher Duthie in Onwards! at Orlando Fringe Credit: Courtesy Photo

Self-described “opera busker anarchist” Bremner Fletcher Duthie always wanted to sing and act, but he’d almost abandoned his art after endless dispiriting auditions, until his wife encouraged him to perform a one-man show at “one of those weird festivals.” Twenty-five years later, Bremner gratefully credits Fringe with saving his life, and he’s repaying the debt by delighting Orlando audiences with his indescribable combination of pitch-dark stories and sunshiney songs. 

Dressed in a grey pinstripe suit with a vibrant yellow shirt and scuffed Converse, surrounded by foot-trigger floor lamps, Duthie introduces Onwards! with a string of original songs that sound at first like they could have slipped out of the 20th century’s Great American Songbook. But upon a closer listen, they overflow lyrically with mischievously mixed metaphors, merging carnival claptrap and the Egyptian Book of the Dead with Warner Bros’ disturbingly prescient 1977 shareholder statement … and that’s just in the first 20 minutes. 

Like an old-timey crooner with an operatic baritone, Duthie is equally at home standing behind a vintage microphone stand or showing off his dynamic clown-like physicality in front of it. He’s stressed out about social media, the rise of A.I. and the decline of American democracy; he expresses his anxieties in the form of a toe-tapping blues tune,or a Suno-generated anthem to the absence of choice. Whether he’s performing a Gilbert and Sullivan patter paean to his patron’s perverse peccadillos or whistling a gentle ballad written for his late mother, Duthie encourages his audience to make the choices that make you happy and move defiantly onward, no matter what our sociopathic tech-bro overlords might do. 

In these crazy times that we live in, it’s easy to feel like you’re always at the wrong time and in the wrong place. But Duthie’s deliriously delicious delight of a show reminds us that if we’re all in this mess together, we might as well sing along while our shipwreck of a world slowly sinks beneath the waves. 

Big Empty Barn Productions (Montreal, QC, Canada)
Yellow Venue, Lowndes Shakespeare Center
65 minutes; 13 and up
Tickets: $15

Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

This article appears in Orlando Fringe 2026.