Review on the fly:
#mnfringe show 1 - Small Minded - brilliant mix of clowning, comedy, singing and serious acting, backed by impressive production values that entertains at the same time it lets the audience sit with the discomfort of exoticizing/laughing at little people performing for their amusement - 5 stars
Tyler West’s new show “Small Minded” is such a remarkable collage of so many different talent sets that one marvels that he can cram it all into one show without it seeming either rushed or overstuffed. And yet he does. I couldn’t even fit them all into the mini-review I posted on social media. In addition to clowning, comedy, singing and serious acting, there’s also mime and magic and juggling and puppetry and stand-up comedy. There are multiple extremely colorful costume changes, interactions with complex sound cues, and a full-on extended homage to the Bob Dylan “Subterranean Homesick Blues” music video (the one where he shuffles through an enormous set of cue cards with key words from the song lyrics). So add song writing and prop comedy to the talent list then as well. You want to see someone do a one-handed cartwheel, or swallow an entire balloon? Tyler can also do that.
“While other performers had a mask they can take off at the end of the day, I’m left with my differences.”
Tyler uses snippets of his own personal story of building a career in show business as launching points into different segments demonstrating his art. His childhood fascination with Cirque Du Soleil launches him into a sequence of juggling, which starts simple (even though it also often involves his feet) and gets increasingly complex from there. His encounters with educational and training mentors, both those that supported him and those that blocked him, lead to moments such as performing the Edmund soliloquy (“now, gods, stand up for bastards!”) from Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and later creating a mime version of the downfall of Humpty Dumpty.
“Was that a dwarf dream inside a dwarf dream?”
Attempts to include stories of significant little people from history also lead to unexpected entertainments, like an extended sequence where he enacts the police clowning antics of Tom Thumb from P.T. Barnum’s traveling circus, complete with hat, whistle, spongy billy club, and audience participation ranging from insisting a person keep their hands up at all times, to escorting a person out of the theater (they’re allowed back in, don’t worry), and deputizing one lucky audience member to accompany him on his appointed rounds, which can include anything from dancing to a trip to the urinal (We got a bonus clown at the opening performance as last year’s visiting clown, Richie Whitehead of the hit show “The Wickie,” happened to be passing through town on his way home from a gig up in the Saint Cloud area, so he thought he’d catch some Fringe - he was deputized to work with Tom Thumb, of course, and both clowns had a lot of fun playing together.)
“That would be a lot for our audiences to wrap their heads around.”
There’s an intriguing extended nightmare sequence, building off an earlier recounting of being typecast in roles traditionally assigned to little people, involving everything from Pinocchio to the Ewoks to the Munchkins to Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs to the Oompa Loompas. And of course, the long shadow cast by Deter Pinklage (letters swapped in order not to incur celebrity wrath). Tyler escapes one casting nightmare only to be confronted by the next. This is also a good spot to shout out the co-writer and director of the show Cleo DeOrio, who helped Tyler craft his personal story and many talents into a performance that has a clear beginning, middle and end (even if, as an audience, we have no earthly idea what's going to happen next, these two collaborators do, and it all ties together nicely in the end because of their joint efforts on the piece.)
“You don’t need an analyst to know which way the wind blows.”
There is also a recurring through line to the show, resurfacing the idea that here we are, an audience, laughing at a little person, or sexualizing a little person, so what does that say about us, and at the same time, the performer is often inviting this kind of attention, wanting to make us laugh, wanting us to look at their body. There isn’t an answer to that question, the performer just lets the audience sit with the discomfort of it here and there, before moving on to the next thing, but it’s a thought we take out with us at the end.
“So I guess I’m part of the problem.”
“Small Minded” is enormously entertaining, and really impossible to summarize. You should experience it for yourself. I’m very glad Tyler’s back visiting our Fringe again, and that he brought another amusing show that also makes us think (and re-think what we might consider empathy).
5 Stars, Very Highly Recommended
You can find reviews of other shows in these links to my listings of 5 and 4.5 Star Shows (VERY Highly Recommended) and 4 and 3.5 Star Shows (Highly Recommended). Here's a link to a list of all the coverage of returning favorite artists from past pre-Fringe Top 20 lists of mine that are part of this year's Minnesota Fringe Festival. And here's links to the 2026 versions of my pre-Fringe Top 10 list and Top 11 through 20 for the 2026 festival.
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