Fringe 2023 Review - My Only Hope For A Hero - A Call To Be More Fully Human - 5 Stars

tweet review - #mnfringe show 5 - My Only Hope For A Hero: Duck Washington is a stronger, braver and more articulate man than I; this solo show about finding heroes in popular culture, everyday life, and the home you grew up in is funny and moving in equal measure; great stuff - 5 stars

Duck Washington’s new solo show, My Only Hope for A Hero, is a marvel. It manages to be earnest without being naive or cheaply sentimental. It manages to be a real call to action without being unrealistic or judgmental. My Only Hope For A Hero engages the flawed humanity of the audience because Duck is willing to be a human, flaws and all, right in front of us.

“I think it had something to do with the laser swords and the murder teddy bears.”

I don’t want to spoil the show because you really need to hear these things directly from Duck, not from a reviewer, so I’m just going to skip lightly over the contours of the show itself.  Duck’s obsession with Star Wars is the leaping off point, which evolves into a love of G.I. Joe, and we get a very unexpected detour into the pop cultural touchstone that is the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie “Joe Versus The Volcano” (and yes, there is a volcano on stage).

“A large but delicious sandwich with many ingredients.”

But we also get real life reflections on both heroism and inaction from Duck’s own life - things he learned from both his father and his mother about war and killing, death and dying; feelings that he didn’t do enough himself during the uprisings after George Floyd was murdered; and chance encounters with a man beaten up on the light rail, and a young woman on a bridge.

“Even though I don’t remember your face, I still think about you all the time.”

Ultimately, Duck is making a plea for us all to just be more fully present and human, not to ignore the suffering of others, and to be more conscious about making the world around us better rather than worse. We’ve got to start somewhere.

“So many villains, so many bullies.  We’re going to need all the heroes we can get.”

There’s that old saying that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, and the second best time to plant a tree is today.  We can’t do anything about opportunities to do better that we missed in the past, we can only try to do better going forward.  We need encouragement to do that.  My Only Hope For A Hero is exactly the kind of encouragement we need.  Go see it, because we all need to be inspired, and Duck Washington’s writing and performance here are inspiring.

5 Stars - Very Highly Recommended

 

Here's some handy links to a rundown of 5 and 4.5 Star shows I've seen this year, also the 4 and 3.5 Star shows, and the rest, plus this year's Top 10 list, and Top 11-20 List, and the full list of all returning favorites in the 2023 Fringe, plus a link to all the 2023 Minnesota Fringe Festival coverage.