Leni T. Goggins

What happened to the good ol' days when a writer could walk into a show with a simple flash of a press pass? I was turned down at several Vancouver International Fringe Festival shows this week because I couldn't comprehend the 24-hour advanced booking system.

The Saddest Girl in the World written and performed by Tina Teeninga. It took a little while for this one-woman show to get going, but once the two main characters were established, a young bubbly woman and a forked tongued woman from former Yugoslavia, it reminded me of how alientating and lonely Vancouver can be. My favorite character was Nadia, the engineer who cleans for cash because her credentials and her heritage can't get her a job in the engineering field. She works day and night and doesn't sleep because "sleep is the furnace of nightmares," she explains. One performance remains tonight, Sunday September 20 at 7 p.m. at Carousel Theatre on Granville Island.