This play is wonderfully twisted, and hilarious. It is occasionally shocking, and pushed the boundaries of some peoples' sensibilities way past offensive. Good. They probably need it.
You see, under the usual Dead Troll's bent humour and the jokes. there is a nasty edge to this performance, and many things are said throughout the comedy which challenge viewers; "...You aren't afraid of men f***ing, you're afraid of men being tender to each other." This is a must-see.

- Kendra Aaron

All right, I admit it. Can you blame a guy for thinking that the Three Dead Trolls would produce yet another show of vaguely connected sketch comedy, which, with a little trimming for content and the seven dirty words, would probably make palatable late-night fare on CBC? Even once I'd read they were doing a show about gay wrestlers, I was still expecting pretty much the same. Don't get me wrong; even then it would still have been better than 99 per cent of what passes for comedy these days. But Piledriver! screws all those expectations. Who knew? An actual play? An actual plot? Actual characters who actually develop and interact over the course of the play? To see the characters -- three wrestlers (two gay, one straight), their ref/manager and the straight wrestler's wife/T-shirt salesperson, on tour through the grain belt in a third-tier 1970s Stampede Wrestling-style road show -- fire off not just hysterical dialogue but actual, tangible emotion, not only makes the play funnier, but makes each laugh a release for all the tension. And yes, there's tension.

You can probably guess by now what's going to happen, but it's the getting there which is well worth the eight bucks (I haven't got a card, have you?) and then some. But a word of warning -- if you're expecting some benign WCW-style wrestling, some funny sketches and maybe a bit of benign Golddust-like homoerotic subtext, forget it. As at least one family found out on opening night, before leaving halfway through, the play is labelled "Audience: Mature" for good reason. This is about as graphic as guys in Spandex can get.

- Dave Bedard

"Piledriver" is raunchy, vulgar, flashy and sometimes corny. It is also an old-fashioned morality tale. Of course, the difference between this latest offering from Three Dead Trolls and say, Everyman, is that every man in Piledriver is gay and involved in that most theatrical of sports, wrestling. Darrin Hagen and Wes Borg have come up with a neat piece of theatre that does what the Trolls do best: wrap their outrageous humour in a message baggie. They get more mileage out of a simple set than any company on the Fringe circuit and they seem to get more laughs, too. It's also worth pointing out that the prolific Wes Borg (he's responsible in one way or another for 3 Fringe shows this year) does some of the best acting of his career in this play. His double role as Karl "The Killer" Kraut and a wise and aging homosexual delivers something you don't expect from a Trolls play: emotion.

- Robert Enright, CBC Radio