Truly This Is A Sad (Obscene, Offensive, Hilarious) Carousel
A Sad Carousel - Rarig Arena
Pommelhorse
I think Mom summed it up in a way Herschel Douscheberg would appreciate when she said, "A couple of fucks go a long way with me."
Pommelhorse's Fringe production of A Sad Carousel is one obscene, offensive, and hilarious piece of work. If you're easily offended, you will be. But the chief charm of this nasty little comedy is that it liberates you, giving you permission for an hour to laugh at things you should not be laughing at.
"All this time I've been taking spiritual advice from an Indian? Boy is my face red."
No one emerges unscathed. Not the Fringe Festival and its button discounts. Not Southdale Mall. Not product placement and sponsorships of art. Not the space shuttle Challenger. Not the Tet Offensive. Strange fodder for comedy, you say? You'd be right. But that doesn't make it any less amusing - despite the fact you are gasping and recoiling even as you laugh.
"Every time I hit it off with a guy it's always, 'Oh, I'm married!' 'Oh, I'm gay!' 'Oh, the Special Olympics are tying to kill me!'"
Herschel Douscheberg (Sam L. Landman) is the #7 insult comic in the world. But he is about to be eclipsed in the comedy galaxy by his own bumbling nephew Saul (Matthew Glover). Herschel, of course, self-involved fellow he is, is manipulating Saul to stave off the inevitable. Meanwhile, Morty Kaufmann (Peter Ooley), Herschel's manager, wants to hitch his wagon to the star on its ascent, and puts out a contract on Herschel. Coco (Lindsey McDonald Dorsey), the friendly erotic dancer at the Airport Lounge ("Airport Lounge! Airport Lounge! Airport Lounge!"), and Rudy Boyden (Steve Lattery) - savior, or assassin? - figure into the final confrontation.
"I hear the screams of my ancestors every time I take a bite of lemon meringue."
The use of voice-overs and flashbacks is more hilarious than I can adequately express in words. These guys know the conventions of theater and comedy, and shred them. It's why I put them on my Top 10 list this year in the first place. As they would say, "They're good, Tawny Kitaen good." And their tech people deserve medals of valor, because A Sad Carousel cannot be an easy show to run, particularly with the actors in character bellowing abuse at the tech booth every five minutes.
"I've been through more managers than WalMart. And just like Sam Walton, I've buried every single corpse."
The cast makes great use of the space, running around and using all four entrances in the Rarig Arena, and being sure to give every member of the audience something to look at at all times. The show is a marathon and the pace never flags once. The plot is a little convoluted, but not in a bad or impenetrable way. The narrative never gets in the way of the jokes, and vice versa. If the whole thing is a little on the shallow side, well, it was never really trying to be all that deep. I quote this one liberally in my reviews, "Life is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel." This is a comedy. If you want depth of feeling, look elsewhere. This could have been "Death of An Insult Comic (Salesman)" but that's not the animal this dog is hunting.
"Holy Deus Ex Machina!"
Let me just stress again that A Sad Carousel is not for the faint of heart. Everyone in the show swears like a sailor. Minorities and national tragedies/open wounds of all stripes are flogged for all the inappropriate humor they can offer. But if you're looking for the single most politically incorrect show of the Fringe, A Sad Carousel may just be your ticket. After all, it's about a bunch of insult comics, and the people who love (or have sex with) them. Prepare to be insulted.
Even though I probably shouldn't have enjoyed myself, boy did I. If you've got a thick skin, you probably will, too.
4-1/2 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Monday 8/9 at 5:30pm
("Monday 5:30 is a hard slot to fuck," despaired Herschel, so he asked us to help spread the word.)
(Then Tuesday 8/10 at 8:30pm, Saturday 8/14 at 1pm, and Sunday 8/15 at 5:30pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #15 - Saturday, 8/7 10pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Saturday, August 07, 2010
Fringe 2010 - Missing - 5 stars
Tracking Down A Con Man Father
Missing: the fantastical and true story of my father's disappearance and what I found when I looked for him - Intermedia Arts
Jessica Ferris
"I remember looking at my hands until my skin disappeared and there was nothing left of me but water."
Jessica Ferris comes from a line of women with an uncanny knack for falling in love with men who are not what they seem to be. In several cases, these men are outright con men. One of those con men in Jessica's grandfather. And another is her father. Her search for him, and the things she learns about the women in her family along the way, are the meat of Jessica's Fringe show Missing: the fantastical and true story of my father's disappearance and what I found when I looked for him (hereafter known as simply "Missing"). All the things that landed Jessica on my Top 10 List this year were on full display. It was great to finally have a chance to share Jessica with Mom, who described the show as "intense."
"When can you say two people ever feel the same way about each other?"
The play starts, however, with a fine example of Jessica's physical comedy work, where as a child in search of her (also) missing invisible friend, she worms and wiggles her way through the seemingly impossible task of climbing through the open space in the back of a folding chair. This establishes up front that Jessica is not afraid to look silly, but a woman of such steely determination even in ludicrous circumstances, must also be taken seriously.
"It was years before I could do laundry without feeling nauseous."
The finely realized physical performance work continues - this time aiding Jessica in creating the personas of her mother, aunt and two grandmothers. The great thing about these human pieces of the puzzle is that there is no need for Jessica to introduce, or reintroduce, them to us. She simply launches into each character, and quickly in the course of conversation, their identities and place in Jessica's family tree become clear. The precision of gesture and posture, modulation of voice, and force of personality make each of these women immediately distinct from the others. And each testimonial piles upon the ones before it, revealing a fractured family history which can never fully be put back together again - men who can't be trusted, who nonetheless gain, then betray, the trust which they are given.
"About one in 25 individuals are sociopathic."
The setting and prop needs of Missing are so slight - a chair, a laundry rack, a laundry basket, some hanging linens, a book, a metal box, a small folding table - that Mom began to wonder, "Why is she at Intermedia?" This becomes clear at the end, when Jessica comes face to face with video evidence of her father, under one of his many aliases, on the evening news. After hearing so much about the man, seeing him, larger than life, gives us a little of the impact he must have had, even in his absence, over Jessica's life these many years.
"My first date was an Eagle Scout, who's currently on trial for killing his parents."
Those sheets hanging on the spinning laundry rack serve as a hiding place, a repository of the twisted family tree, and even take on personality when the metal box becomes its talking head. That metal box has a series of magnets and small metal objects which transform it into a face with recognizable expressions, and even a singing mouth. When some of those linens come down off the line, one of Jessica's female relatives wields those sheets and the folding of them with sometimes violent military precision. These are not women you want to mess with, they've been messed with quite enough.
"I've come all this way and I could have stolen it myself?"
Missing is a fascinating, humorous look into a family that you are quite glad is not your own. But they're a mesmerizing bunch of ladies to hang out with for an hour. They've been knocked around a bit by life, and love, but the thing you really admire about them is how they keep going. Jessica Ferris' search for her father has instead fashioned a fitting tribute to the women in her life.
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Monday 8/9 at 5:30pm
(Then Wednesday 8/11 at 7pm, Thursday 8/12 at 10pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 1pm)
Her Fringe page
Fringe show #13 - Saturday, 8/7 7pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Missing: the fantastical and true story of my father's disappearance and what I found when I looked for him - Intermedia Arts
Jessica Ferris
"I remember looking at my hands until my skin disappeared and there was nothing left of me but water."
Jessica Ferris comes from a line of women with an uncanny knack for falling in love with men who are not what they seem to be. In several cases, these men are outright con men. One of those con men in Jessica's grandfather. And another is her father. Her search for him, and the things she learns about the women in her family along the way, are the meat of Jessica's Fringe show Missing: the fantastical and true story of my father's disappearance and what I found when I looked for him (hereafter known as simply "Missing"). All the things that landed Jessica on my Top 10 List this year were on full display. It was great to finally have a chance to share Jessica with Mom, who described the show as "intense."
"When can you say two people ever feel the same way about each other?"
The play starts, however, with a fine example of Jessica's physical comedy work, where as a child in search of her (also) missing invisible friend, she worms and wiggles her way through the seemingly impossible task of climbing through the open space in the back of a folding chair. This establishes up front that Jessica is not afraid to look silly, but a woman of such steely determination even in ludicrous circumstances, must also be taken seriously.
"It was years before I could do laundry without feeling nauseous."
The finely realized physical performance work continues - this time aiding Jessica in creating the personas of her mother, aunt and two grandmothers. The great thing about these human pieces of the puzzle is that there is no need for Jessica to introduce, or reintroduce, them to us. She simply launches into each character, and quickly in the course of conversation, their identities and place in Jessica's family tree become clear. The precision of gesture and posture, modulation of voice, and force of personality make each of these women immediately distinct from the others. And each testimonial piles upon the ones before it, revealing a fractured family history which can never fully be put back together again - men who can't be trusted, who nonetheless gain, then betray, the trust which they are given.
"About one in 25 individuals are sociopathic."
The setting and prop needs of Missing are so slight - a chair, a laundry rack, a laundry basket, some hanging linens, a book, a metal box, a small folding table - that Mom began to wonder, "Why is she at Intermedia?" This becomes clear at the end, when Jessica comes face to face with video evidence of her father, under one of his many aliases, on the evening news. After hearing so much about the man, seeing him, larger than life, gives us a little of the impact he must have had, even in his absence, over Jessica's life these many years.
"My first date was an Eagle Scout, who's currently on trial for killing his parents."
Those sheets hanging on the spinning laundry rack serve as a hiding place, a repository of the twisted family tree, and even take on personality when the metal box becomes its talking head. That metal box has a series of magnets and small metal objects which transform it into a face with recognizable expressions, and even a singing mouth. When some of those linens come down off the line, one of Jessica's female relatives wields those sheets and the folding of them with sometimes violent military precision. These are not women you want to mess with, they've been messed with quite enough.
"I've come all this way and I could have stolen it myself?"
Missing is a fascinating, humorous look into a family that you are quite glad is not your own. But they're a mesmerizing bunch of ladies to hang out with for an hour. They've been knocked around a bit by life, and love, but the thing you really admire about them is how they keep going. Jessica Ferris' search for her father has instead fashioned a fitting tribute to the women in her life.
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Monday 8/9 at 5:30pm
(Then Wednesday 8/11 at 7pm, Thursday 8/12 at 10pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 1pm)
Her Fringe page
Fringe show #13 - Saturday, 8/7 7pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Fringe 2010 - Uncle Shelby's Traveling Treasure Trunk - 4 stars
A Grab Bag of Absurd Bits and Pieces
Uncle Shelby's Traveling Treasure Trunk - Minneapolis Theater Garage
Shelby Company Theatre
"We're fine, jumbled, wonderful, underneath a town where we both used to live."
A friend was saying he was glad that Shelby Company was doing something a little different this year, because he didn't think he could take something quite as intense as their first offering to us "Winnemucca (Three Days In The Belly)" again quite so soon. He loved it, of course, as did I, but some people can only be overwhelmed so much by theater in a short span of time. Personally, I'd love it if they knocked my brain around again with a script that good. Once a year? I could take it. Heck, I'd like someone to keep pushing my limits, personally. But I can understand the impulse to want to shake things up a bit, on both sides of the footlights. I knew whatever Uncle Shelby's Traveling Treasure Trunk had to offer, it'd be worth seeing.
"Boo hoo! I'm gonna die alone!"
In fact, they've got so much in their Treasure Trunk, it doesn't all fit in one Fringe slot. So they've got a rotating assemblage of 18 different scenes and monologues by Jonathan A. Goldberg and Dan Moyer (author of "Winnemucca") that are not only shuffled in content but also sometimes in casting from one performance to the next. For instance, half the line-up of the show I saw is being replaced by other material for the next performance, and the ones that repeat might not have the same faces in the same combinations. Of course, there's only four actors in the ensemble (Lauren Glover, Nathaniel Kent, Amy Landon, and Dan Moyer), so it can't switch up that much for the audience, but I'm sure it keeps the performers (and director Carl Howell) on their toes.
"You're going to finger the sunset, Randy."
On the roster the day Mom and I saw it...
"The Spaghetti Incident" - the horrible lie of spaghetti sauce sends a perky housewife on a supermarket rampage
"The Monster Closet" - what do you do when the monster in your closet when you were a boy sticks around into adulthood and begins an affair with your wife?
"The Differences Between Being Inside A Whale and Outside A Whale - A List" - a child's absurdist Sunday School report
"Ghosts of Stingrays" - when being haunted by your first love just won't do, and he has a twin
"Magic Hour" - sometimes, you can love the sunset a little too much
"Come Fly With Me" - what do you do when you get your girlfriend mixed up in your genetic mutation experiments?
"Glass Indians, Iron Cowboys or, The Barker" - when how long you can convince yourself to believe a lie means you can die happpy
"Collide" - (my personal favorite) - a socially awkward man reaches out to the high school acquaintance who shaped his socially awkward teen years
"Fireflies" - a boy on summer vacation gets his dad on a real existential rant
"Octopus" - the unsettling presence of a plastic octopus elicits confessions without saying a word
"I can give you that moment, and you can give me your organs."
The challenge with material like this is that you can only take things so far in a single scene or speech, no matter how good the material is, or how good the actor is. There isn't a chance for the experience to accumulate into anything. There's a "one joke" or "one feeling" premise. Good jokes, good premises, good actors, good show. You're much more aware, however, that you're watching theater. There's much less chance to submerge yourself in the story, and follow the characters on a journey, because you're switching up characters every five to ten minutes. You're constantly rebooting and starting over. Not a bad experience, just a different one. It makes for a great sampler. There aren't really any duds in the bunch.
"Outside a whale, lots of uses for a nail gun. Inside a whale, only six."
There was, at least the day I saw it, a preponderance of sexual deviancy - often quite original sexual deviancy - but sex was not a fun thing for these people (and mutants). There was a lot of angst, and unpleasant consequences. Oh, and death. Lots of death. Some of it welcome, some of it funny, none of it onstage, but all of it very final. The most successful pieces for me were actually the ones without that - the unburdening of a heart in "Collide," the father-son chat about mortality in "Fireflies," and the unexplained assortment of oddities that comprised "The Differences Between Being Inside A Whale and Outside A Whale - A List." The smiling face of madness in "The Spaghetti Incident" was the one touch of black comedy I most enjoyed.
"You made me a monstro-sexual!"
There's a lot of wonderful writing here, no surprise. Sometimes it went too far, sometimes it didn't go far enough, but it was always well-crafted, and well-performed. Honestly, it made me long to spend more uninterrupted time with one or the other or both of the writers, and just a handful of their characters. Which I guess is a good thing. Better to have me wanting more, rather than less. And this year's scenario means no one needs to feel trapped in any one moment for very long. There's always something new just around the corner. Other items we can look forward to which are part of the shuffle: "All I Have Pictured," "The Curse," "Hark, Hark The Arrival of Lemonseed Larry," "Hot Pepper Paradox," "Keep Shoveling The Walk: A Visit to the Northernmost Maine Museum of Maine," "Night Train," "The Opposite," and "The Tiger's Tale"
"That octopus is back."
So if you're looking for a showcase of good writing and acting, and particularly if you missed "Winnemucca (Three Days In The Belly)" last year and are wondering what all the fuss over Shelby Company Theatre was all about, well, this is mighty fine way to make their acquaintance. You'll see a broad cross-section of the things they do and the way they do them, in Uncle Shelby's Traveling Treasure Trunk
4 stars, Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Tuesday 8/10 at 5:30pm
(Then Friday 8/13 at 8:30pm, and Sunday 8/15 at 1pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #12 - Saturday, 8/7 5:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Uncle Shelby's Traveling Treasure Trunk - Minneapolis Theater Garage
Shelby Company Theatre
"We're fine, jumbled, wonderful, underneath a town where we both used to live."
A friend was saying he was glad that Shelby Company was doing something a little different this year, because he didn't think he could take something quite as intense as their first offering to us "Winnemucca (Three Days In The Belly)" again quite so soon. He loved it, of course, as did I, but some people can only be overwhelmed so much by theater in a short span of time. Personally, I'd love it if they knocked my brain around again with a script that good. Once a year? I could take it. Heck, I'd like someone to keep pushing my limits, personally. But I can understand the impulse to want to shake things up a bit, on both sides of the footlights. I knew whatever Uncle Shelby's Traveling Treasure Trunk had to offer, it'd be worth seeing.
"Boo hoo! I'm gonna die alone!"
In fact, they've got so much in their Treasure Trunk, it doesn't all fit in one Fringe slot. So they've got a rotating assemblage of 18 different scenes and monologues by Jonathan A. Goldberg and Dan Moyer (author of "Winnemucca") that are not only shuffled in content but also sometimes in casting from one performance to the next. For instance, half the line-up of the show I saw is being replaced by other material for the next performance, and the ones that repeat might not have the same faces in the same combinations. Of course, there's only four actors in the ensemble (Lauren Glover, Nathaniel Kent, Amy Landon, and Dan Moyer), so it can't switch up that much for the audience, but I'm sure it keeps the performers (and director Carl Howell) on their toes.
"You're going to finger the sunset, Randy."
On the roster the day Mom and I saw it...
"The Spaghetti Incident" - the horrible lie of spaghetti sauce sends a perky housewife on a supermarket rampage
"The Monster Closet" - what do you do when the monster in your closet when you were a boy sticks around into adulthood and begins an affair with your wife?
"The Differences Between Being Inside A Whale and Outside A Whale - A List" - a child's absurdist Sunday School report
"Ghosts of Stingrays" - when being haunted by your first love just won't do, and he has a twin
"Magic Hour" - sometimes, you can love the sunset a little too much
"Come Fly With Me" - what do you do when you get your girlfriend mixed up in your genetic mutation experiments?
"Glass Indians, Iron Cowboys or, The Barker" - when how long you can convince yourself to believe a lie means you can die happpy
"Collide" - (my personal favorite) - a socially awkward man reaches out to the high school acquaintance who shaped his socially awkward teen years
"Fireflies" - a boy on summer vacation gets his dad on a real existential rant
"Octopus" - the unsettling presence of a plastic octopus elicits confessions without saying a word
"I can give you that moment, and you can give me your organs."
The challenge with material like this is that you can only take things so far in a single scene or speech, no matter how good the material is, or how good the actor is. There isn't a chance for the experience to accumulate into anything. There's a "one joke" or "one feeling" premise. Good jokes, good premises, good actors, good show. You're much more aware, however, that you're watching theater. There's much less chance to submerge yourself in the story, and follow the characters on a journey, because you're switching up characters every five to ten minutes. You're constantly rebooting and starting over. Not a bad experience, just a different one. It makes for a great sampler. There aren't really any duds in the bunch.
"Outside a whale, lots of uses for a nail gun. Inside a whale, only six."
There was, at least the day I saw it, a preponderance of sexual deviancy - often quite original sexual deviancy - but sex was not a fun thing for these people (and mutants). There was a lot of angst, and unpleasant consequences. Oh, and death. Lots of death. Some of it welcome, some of it funny, none of it onstage, but all of it very final. The most successful pieces for me were actually the ones without that - the unburdening of a heart in "Collide," the father-son chat about mortality in "Fireflies," and the unexplained assortment of oddities that comprised "The Differences Between Being Inside A Whale and Outside A Whale - A List." The smiling face of madness in "The Spaghetti Incident" was the one touch of black comedy I most enjoyed.
"You made me a monstro-sexual!"
There's a lot of wonderful writing here, no surprise. Sometimes it went too far, sometimes it didn't go far enough, but it was always well-crafted, and well-performed. Honestly, it made me long to spend more uninterrupted time with one or the other or both of the writers, and just a handful of their characters. Which I guess is a good thing. Better to have me wanting more, rather than less. And this year's scenario means no one needs to feel trapped in any one moment for very long. There's always something new just around the corner. Other items we can look forward to which are part of the shuffle: "All I Have Pictured," "The Curse," "Hark, Hark The Arrival of Lemonseed Larry," "Hot Pepper Paradox," "Keep Shoveling The Walk: A Visit to the Northernmost Maine Museum of Maine," "Night Train," "The Opposite," and "The Tiger's Tale"
"That octopus is back."
So if you're looking for a showcase of good writing and acting, and particularly if you missed "Winnemucca (Three Days In The Belly)" last year and are wondering what all the fuss over Shelby Company Theatre was all about, well, this is mighty fine way to make their acquaintance. You'll see a broad cross-section of the things they do and the way they do them, in Uncle Shelby's Traveling Treasure Trunk
4 stars, Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Tuesday 8/10 at 5:30pm
(Then Friday 8/13 at 8:30pm, and Sunday 8/15 at 1pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #12 - Saturday, 8/7 5:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Fringe 2010 - I Remember You - 3-1/2 stars
An Entertaining Game of "Fill In The Blanks"
I Remember You - Minneapolis Theatre Garage
Jessica Dunne and Connor Molloy
"I saw a kid puke on the lawn and I knew I was in the right place."
There's something scrappy and charming about the ensemble coming-of-age Fringe production I Remember You that I can't quite place my finger on. Mom had a harder time relating to this new generation on stage but by the end, they'd won her over, too. These young characters probably aren't the leaders of tomorrow, and if they are, God help us. But you can't help liking them, even as most of them stumble around half-stoned out of their minds at a party celebrating their impending graduation from high school. This story has a twist, however, since Donny (Jeff Spoo), the guy at the center of the action, is returning to his old stomping grounds with a huge swath of his memory completely blank. The car accident that killed his mother left Donny with amnesia (fourth through tenth grade memories? gone.) Donny's father moved them out of the neighborhood and into a new school where Donny could start as fresh as his clean slate of a brain. But Donny has known most of these people at the party pre-4th grade, so nostalgia on the eve of their graduation brings him back.
"It's weird that something so painful can also be so beautiful."
No one knows quite what to do with Donny. None of them can really believe they've been forgotten, and keep assaulting Donny good-naturedly with memories he no longer shares, and in some cases may be more wishful thinking that past reality. Did Donny and statuesque blond Erica (Victoria Nightingale) really date for a whole year? Was Donny the animal on the football field that belligerent Rick (writer Connor Molloy) makes him out to be? Who the heck is happy drunk Ben (Brady O'Brien) anyway, since most people even without amnesia can't remember him?
"I will literally light you on fire."
Donny's new post-amnesia best friend Kevo (Jeremy Walton) makes a ninja flying leap of an entrance. Bustling through private conversations is boisterous Brooke (Joy Dolo), even arguing with her text messaging device ("I'm trying to spell fuck, don't pretend you don't know that. I'm not trying to tell my boyfriend to duck off.") Caretaker friend Marianne (Katie Clarkson) watches over her reality-impaired friend Jo (Marly Ramstad) who is so high on mushrooms she has a hard time getting out of the tub to confront the moonlight. Even co-writer Jessica Dunne makes a cameo as partygoer Jenny.
"It's the tea platter on which death is served to one's enemies."
I Remember You doesn't have your standard beginning, middle and end, which is one of its strengths. The script doesn't trouble you with a lot of exposition. Just like Donny, the audience has to learn about everyone at the party as they go along, taking information at face value until someone comes along to contradict it. It's fun to be pushed off into the deep end the second the lights come up and have engage our brains to follow along and keep up. All the things that charmed me about this group's Fringe-For-All preview are still in effect, minus the narrator. Though part of me missed him, I have to admit I felt closer to these characters because there wasn't an interpreter standing between us and them. Once again, a smart and unconventional choice on the part of the writers. Sometimes the proceedings feel like they meander a bit too much off the track, but it's hard to tell if that's the performances or writing at work, or a combination of both. The production is so laid back about everything that it's sometimes hard to know whether you're really off track, or perhaps finally getting "on" track. It's a little confusing, but strangely I didn't seem to mind a whole lot. It's rare to get the feeling that you're just hanging out with a bunch of characters, so I rolled with it.
"I don't have many normal first conversations."
The production also asks the audience to play along in other ways. There's a screen door present, but the Theater Garage's red curtain must serve as the playing space's only real wall through which people come and go to different parts of the party house. There's a real couch and chairs and even a keg, but a big plastic bin must do service as a bathtub. Because it's a Fringe show, we go along with these low-tech set solutions, and the use of space is laudably consistent throughout. No one accidentally wanders into the bathroom from the living room. The architecture of the unseen house is preserved, and so we in the audience buy into the characters' reality. It's a little thing, but I'm surprised by how often it's forgotten, in or out of the Fringe.
I Remember You is an odd duck of a Fringe show, but both Mom and I found it quite charming. New script, new actors, both of which work well together, it's definitely worth a look.
3-1/2 stars, Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Thursday 8/12 at 10pm
(Then Saturday 8/14 at 7pm, and Sunday 8/15 at 2:30pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #11 - Saturday, 8/7 4pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
I Remember You - Minneapolis Theatre Garage
Jessica Dunne and Connor Molloy
"I saw a kid puke on the lawn and I knew I was in the right place."
There's something scrappy and charming about the ensemble coming-of-age Fringe production I Remember You that I can't quite place my finger on. Mom had a harder time relating to this new generation on stage but by the end, they'd won her over, too. These young characters probably aren't the leaders of tomorrow, and if they are, God help us. But you can't help liking them, even as most of them stumble around half-stoned out of their minds at a party celebrating their impending graduation from high school. This story has a twist, however, since Donny (Jeff Spoo), the guy at the center of the action, is returning to his old stomping grounds with a huge swath of his memory completely blank. The car accident that killed his mother left Donny with amnesia (fourth through tenth grade memories? gone.) Donny's father moved them out of the neighborhood and into a new school where Donny could start as fresh as his clean slate of a brain. But Donny has known most of these people at the party pre-4th grade, so nostalgia on the eve of their graduation brings him back.
"It's weird that something so painful can also be so beautiful."
No one knows quite what to do with Donny. None of them can really believe they've been forgotten, and keep assaulting Donny good-naturedly with memories he no longer shares, and in some cases may be more wishful thinking that past reality. Did Donny and statuesque blond Erica (Victoria Nightingale) really date for a whole year? Was Donny the animal on the football field that belligerent Rick (writer Connor Molloy) makes him out to be? Who the heck is happy drunk Ben (Brady O'Brien) anyway, since most people even without amnesia can't remember him?
"I will literally light you on fire."
Donny's new post-amnesia best friend Kevo (Jeremy Walton) makes a ninja flying leap of an entrance. Bustling through private conversations is boisterous Brooke (Joy Dolo), even arguing with her text messaging device ("I'm trying to spell fuck, don't pretend you don't know that. I'm not trying to tell my boyfriend to duck off.") Caretaker friend Marianne (Katie Clarkson) watches over her reality-impaired friend Jo (Marly Ramstad) who is so high on mushrooms she has a hard time getting out of the tub to confront the moonlight. Even co-writer Jessica Dunne makes a cameo as partygoer Jenny.
"It's the tea platter on which death is served to one's enemies."
I Remember You doesn't have your standard beginning, middle and end, which is one of its strengths. The script doesn't trouble you with a lot of exposition. Just like Donny, the audience has to learn about everyone at the party as they go along, taking information at face value until someone comes along to contradict it. It's fun to be pushed off into the deep end the second the lights come up and have engage our brains to follow along and keep up. All the things that charmed me about this group's Fringe-For-All preview are still in effect, minus the narrator. Though part of me missed him, I have to admit I felt closer to these characters because there wasn't an interpreter standing between us and them. Once again, a smart and unconventional choice on the part of the writers. Sometimes the proceedings feel like they meander a bit too much off the track, but it's hard to tell if that's the performances or writing at work, or a combination of both. The production is so laid back about everything that it's sometimes hard to know whether you're really off track, or perhaps finally getting "on" track. It's a little confusing, but strangely I didn't seem to mind a whole lot. It's rare to get the feeling that you're just hanging out with a bunch of characters, so I rolled with it.
"I don't have many normal first conversations."
The production also asks the audience to play along in other ways. There's a screen door present, but the Theater Garage's red curtain must serve as the playing space's only real wall through which people come and go to different parts of the party house. There's a real couch and chairs and even a keg, but a big plastic bin must do service as a bathtub. Because it's a Fringe show, we go along with these low-tech set solutions, and the use of space is laudably consistent throughout. No one accidentally wanders into the bathroom from the living room. The architecture of the unseen house is preserved, and so we in the audience buy into the characters' reality. It's a little thing, but I'm surprised by how often it's forgotten, in or out of the Fringe.
I Remember You is an odd duck of a Fringe show, but both Mom and I found it quite charming. New script, new actors, both of which work well together, it's definitely worth a look.
3-1/2 stars, Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Thursday 8/12 at 10pm
(Then Saturday 8/14 at 7pm, and Sunday 8/15 at 2:30pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #11 - Saturday, 8/7 4pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Fringe 2010 - Ballad of the Pale Fisherman - 5 stars
Mixed Marriages Never Work
Ballad Of The Pale Fisherman - Mixed Blood Theater
Isabel Nelson
"Lyrical" was the word Mom used to describe Ballad Of The Pale Fisherman and I have to agree. Lyrical is a good place to start. This show landed in my Top 10 largely on the strength of their Fringe-For-All preview. From that, I was able to divine that it was exactly the kind of theatrical storytelling I enjoy. Very Fringy, the only set pieces being a chair and an accordion down in the corner of the stage. Everything was created by the cast, the movement of their bodies and the direction of their gaze. And what movements, and what gazes, they were.
"Go to sleep, my child, my own
Land nor sea will call you home
My heart, my own..."
Ballad Of The Pale Fisherman is a story of longing. And love, and loss. It's pretty much gorgeous from start to finish. Director Isabel K. Nelson has gathered quite the ensemble (Willie Gambucci, Diogo Lopes, Derek Lee Miller, Adelin Phelps, Anna Reichert, Natalie Remus, and Allison Witham) and set them loose on the story of a selkie, a seal (Reichert) pulled from the sea, trapped in the body of a woman. The selkie tries to make a life on land, married to the good fisherman (Lopes) who caught her in his nets, and fell in love. They have a child together. But when the fisherman discovers the lost seal skin which could allow his wife to return to the sea, and the seal community she left behind, everyone has some decisions to make.
"She's a seal! It's never gonna work! You belong in the sea!"
The cast does some simple but nonetheless amazing vocal and physical work. They embody the elements of nature, a world of both land and sea. They create the town, both physically, and in the sense of the community and cast of characters that surrounds this unusual family. They transform into seals (also known as pale fishermen) and fish. They personify prejudice and forgiveness, fear and acceptance. Much of the humor comes from the three old ladies who mend the fishermen's nets (Phelps, Remus and Witham), a slow-moving, hunchbacked, occasionally forgetful Greek chorus that you can't help loving. They're delightful creations.
"On land, she was drowning."
Miller acts as narrator (and in those final moments is the best kind of narrator, revealing, almost accidentally, his connection to the story he tells). Miller also provides not just musical accompaniment but sound effects on his accordion. It took me a shamefully long time to realize the wind wasn't a recorded sound cue, but Miller working the bellows of the musical instrument in his lap. The wind, and the undulations of the tide evident in everyone's movements, is a hypnotic constant at the back of this tale.
"Something broke that day the seals died..."
Ballad Of The Pale Fisherman is a story full of enough romance to make anyone swoon. I am, I will admit, particularly susceptible to its charms, but the audience around me, including my mother, seemed transported as well. It's funny and sweet and sad and just really, really lovely. It's not the flashy kind of work that draws a lot of attention to itself, but it's the kind of solid, well-crafted work that makes for the most satisfying of audience experiences. Give me substance over flash any day, if it's substance like this.
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 5:30pm
(Then Wednesday 8/11 at 10pm, Friday 8/13 at 7pm, and Sunday 8/15 at 7pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #10 - Saturday, 8/7 2:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Ballad Of The Pale Fisherman - Mixed Blood Theater
Isabel Nelson
"Lyrical" was the word Mom used to describe Ballad Of The Pale Fisherman and I have to agree. Lyrical is a good place to start. This show landed in my Top 10 largely on the strength of their Fringe-For-All preview. From that, I was able to divine that it was exactly the kind of theatrical storytelling I enjoy. Very Fringy, the only set pieces being a chair and an accordion down in the corner of the stage. Everything was created by the cast, the movement of their bodies and the direction of their gaze. And what movements, and what gazes, they were.
"Go to sleep, my child, my own
Land nor sea will call you home
My heart, my own..."
Ballad Of The Pale Fisherman is a story of longing. And love, and loss. It's pretty much gorgeous from start to finish. Director Isabel K. Nelson has gathered quite the ensemble (Willie Gambucci, Diogo Lopes, Derek Lee Miller, Adelin Phelps, Anna Reichert, Natalie Remus, and Allison Witham) and set them loose on the story of a selkie, a seal (Reichert) pulled from the sea, trapped in the body of a woman. The selkie tries to make a life on land, married to the good fisherman (Lopes) who caught her in his nets, and fell in love. They have a child together. But when the fisherman discovers the lost seal skin which could allow his wife to return to the sea, and the seal community she left behind, everyone has some decisions to make.
"She's a seal! It's never gonna work! You belong in the sea!"
The cast does some simple but nonetheless amazing vocal and physical work. They embody the elements of nature, a world of both land and sea. They create the town, both physically, and in the sense of the community and cast of characters that surrounds this unusual family. They transform into seals (also known as pale fishermen) and fish. They personify prejudice and forgiveness, fear and acceptance. Much of the humor comes from the three old ladies who mend the fishermen's nets (Phelps, Remus and Witham), a slow-moving, hunchbacked, occasionally forgetful Greek chorus that you can't help loving. They're delightful creations.
"On land, she was drowning."
Miller acts as narrator (and in those final moments is the best kind of narrator, revealing, almost accidentally, his connection to the story he tells). Miller also provides not just musical accompaniment but sound effects on his accordion. It took me a shamefully long time to realize the wind wasn't a recorded sound cue, but Miller working the bellows of the musical instrument in his lap. The wind, and the undulations of the tide evident in everyone's movements, is a hypnotic constant at the back of this tale.
"Something broke that day the seals died..."
Ballad Of The Pale Fisherman is a story full of enough romance to make anyone swoon. I am, I will admit, particularly susceptible to its charms, but the audience around me, including my mother, seemed transported as well. It's funny and sweet and sad and just really, really lovely. It's not the flashy kind of work that draws a lot of attention to itself, but it's the kind of solid, well-crafted work that makes for the most satisfying of audience experiences. Give me substance over flash any day, if it's substance like this.
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 5:30pm
(Then Wednesday 8/11 at 10pm, Friday 8/13 at 7pm, and Sunday 8/15 at 7pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #10 - Saturday, 8/7 2:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Fringe 2010 - Can Michael Come Out And Play - 5 stars
How A Man Comes To Terms With His Name
Can Michael Come Out And Play? - Playwrights' Center
Mahmoud Hakima
"If you respectfully ask for my story, I will tell it to you. But I can't right now, because I know what it is."
Last year, with Two Bowls Of Cereal & Some Bacon, Mahmoud Hakima created a one person Fringe show so winning, and funny, and honest, that it landed him on my Top 10 for this year's Fringe. Two Bowls Of Cereal & Some Bacon focused on Mahmoud's childhood, with particular attention paid to his relationship with his often abusive stepfather. This time around, in Can Michael Come Out And Play?, Mahmoud struggles to build a relationship with his biological father, a man his mother left when Mahmoud was only one year old. And this time around it isn't the story of a boy, but the story of young man, coming to terms with the cumbersome birthright of an unique name.
"That was an eloquent speech. I'm sure it's gone through many rewrites."
Being named Mahmoud Abdul Hakima was no picnic even before 9/11. Mahmoud often found it easier just to go along with people who'd prefer to call him something simpler, like Michael. Especially growing up in Selma, Alabama. Dealing with mispronunciations and misspellings was the easiest part of it. People thinking you should go back to Africa, even though you're from California, or people thinking you're stupid, or a terrorist, or Muslim (not that there's anything wrong with it, except that it isn't true), or perhaps didn't have access to chocolate where you grew up, those are the things that are hardest to stomach. Even the most well-meaning and benign people can end up doing damage.
"I don't know what he looks like. I don't know what he sounds like. Now our dad was on the phone a few feet away from me."
Mahmoud at first resists when his biological father tracks the family down, and wants to reestablish ties with his children. Mahmoud retreats into video games rather than take that first phone call, despite his sister's excitement and enthusiasm. He writes a letter only reluctantly, and perfunctorily. Only the death of their grandfather prompts Mahmoud not to put things off any longer.
"That's what I should have said. But I needed this job..."
Though Mahmoud's mother never had a good word to say about his father, Mahmoud's father doesn't go the same route. When they meet, the father takes responsibility for driving the mother away. Mahmoud is introduced to his father's friends ("This is a blessed day. This is my son.") Mahmoud learns the story of how his parents met. Mahmoud watches his father flirt with a young lady at the checkout counter. They eat together, and Mahmoud's father tells him the origin of his name.
The family changed their last name to Hakima, meaning wise.
He was named Mahmoud, a variation on the name of the prophet Mohamed, but Mahmoud means worthy of praise.
But they didn't want him to get too full of himself, so they have him the middle name Abdul, meaning servant of God.
Can Michael Come Out And Play? explores not just the hurdles society puts in front of those who are different, but also how those who are different play along, and end up perpetuating the behavior they want to stop. In coming to terms with his father, Mahmoud comes to terms with himself, and his name. And begins to have a sense of greater pride in all three.
The experimentation with poetry as a device interspersed throughout the narrative doesn't work as well as it might. Often it reinforces or repeats something that's already been said before, either explicitly or implicitly, as if Mahmoud didn't trust the text, or the audience, to get the point across. Maybe he feels that the story isn't light or entertaining enough, and needs a bit of a break. In these instances, he's a sharper storyteller than he gives himself credit for being. The one place the poetry gambit works is in the story about the origin of chocolate among "his people," which is an amusing detour into the mind of an ignorant person he needs to deal with on a daily basis. In that instance, it would work as just a one-shot device. Otherwise, he can trust that his story is compelling, and amusing, enough to hold our attention. The specificity of his journey makes it worth taking. The poetry often oversimplifies something that is delightful in its complexity, and moving besides. (My mother was repeatedly making sympathetic noises beside me throughout the show, moved many times by Mahmoud's story of self-discovery. And she wasn't alone.)
Once again, Mahmoud presents the best kind of Fringe one-person show. Not wallowing in childhood trauma or neurosis, instead he builds the foundation and the steps needed to emerge as the better man he strives to be. Sure we've seen variations on this theme before, but when it's done well, we all still get something out of it. Since Mahmoud let out the detail of having two sisters, and five other half-siblings, I think there are still many other fascinating family stories yet to be told. I look forward to every one of them. But while you can, be sure to catch Can Michael Come Out And Play?
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 5:30pm
(Then Tuesday 8/10 at 5:30pm, Thursday 8/12 at 8:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 4pm)
His Fringe page
Fringe show #9 - Saturday, 8/7 1pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Can Michael Come Out And Play? - Playwrights' Center
Mahmoud Hakima
"If you respectfully ask for my story, I will tell it to you. But I can't right now, because I know what it is."
Last year, with Two Bowls Of Cereal & Some Bacon, Mahmoud Hakima created a one person Fringe show so winning, and funny, and honest, that it landed him on my Top 10 for this year's Fringe. Two Bowls Of Cereal & Some Bacon focused on Mahmoud's childhood, with particular attention paid to his relationship with his often abusive stepfather. This time around, in Can Michael Come Out And Play?, Mahmoud struggles to build a relationship with his biological father, a man his mother left when Mahmoud was only one year old. And this time around it isn't the story of a boy, but the story of young man, coming to terms with the cumbersome birthright of an unique name.
"That was an eloquent speech. I'm sure it's gone through many rewrites."
Being named Mahmoud Abdul Hakima was no picnic even before 9/11. Mahmoud often found it easier just to go along with people who'd prefer to call him something simpler, like Michael. Especially growing up in Selma, Alabama. Dealing with mispronunciations and misspellings was the easiest part of it. People thinking you should go back to Africa, even though you're from California, or people thinking you're stupid, or a terrorist, or Muslim (not that there's anything wrong with it, except that it isn't true), or perhaps didn't have access to chocolate where you grew up, those are the things that are hardest to stomach. Even the most well-meaning and benign people can end up doing damage.
"I don't know what he looks like. I don't know what he sounds like. Now our dad was on the phone a few feet away from me."
Mahmoud at first resists when his biological father tracks the family down, and wants to reestablish ties with his children. Mahmoud retreats into video games rather than take that first phone call, despite his sister's excitement and enthusiasm. He writes a letter only reluctantly, and perfunctorily. Only the death of their grandfather prompts Mahmoud not to put things off any longer.
"That's what I should have said. But I needed this job..."
Though Mahmoud's mother never had a good word to say about his father, Mahmoud's father doesn't go the same route. When they meet, the father takes responsibility for driving the mother away. Mahmoud is introduced to his father's friends ("This is a blessed day. This is my son.") Mahmoud learns the story of how his parents met. Mahmoud watches his father flirt with a young lady at the checkout counter. They eat together, and Mahmoud's father tells him the origin of his name.
The family changed their last name to Hakima, meaning wise.
He was named Mahmoud, a variation on the name of the prophet Mohamed, but Mahmoud means worthy of praise.
But they didn't want him to get too full of himself, so they have him the middle name Abdul, meaning servant of God.
Can Michael Come Out And Play? explores not just the hurdles society puts in front of those who are different, but also how those who are different play along, and end up perpetuating the behavior they want to stop. In coming to terms with his father, Mahmoud comes to terms with himself, and his name. And begins to have a sense of greater pride in all three.
The experimentation with poetry as a device interspersed throughout the narrative doesn't work as well as it might. Often it reinforces or repeats something that's already been said before, either explicitly or implicitly, as if Mahmoud didn't trust the text, or the audience, to get the point across. Maybe he feels that the story isn't light or entertaining enough, and needs a bit of a break. In these instances, he's a sharper storyteller than he gives himself credit for being. The one place the poetry gambit works is in the story about the origin of chocolate among "his people," which is an amusing detour into the mind of an ignorant person he needs to deal with on a daily basis. In that instance, it would work as just a one-shot device. Otherwise, he can trust that his story is compelling, and amusing, enough to hold our attention. The specificity of his journey makes it worth taking. The poetry often oversimplifies something that is delightful in its complexity, and moving besides. (My mother was repeatedly making sympathetic noises beside me throughout the show, moved many times by Mahmoud's story of self-discovery. And she wasn't alone.)
Once again, Mahmoud presents the best kind of Fringe one-person show. Not wallowing in childhood trauma or neurosis, instead he builds the foundation and the steps needed to emerge as the better man he strives to be. Sure we've seen variations on this theme before, but when it's done well, we all still get something out of it. Since Mahmoud let out the detail of having two sisters, and five other half-siblings, I think there are still many other fascinating family stories yet to be told. I look forward to every one of them. But while you can, be sure to catch Can Michael Come Out And Play?
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 5:30pm
(Then Tuesday 8/10 at 5:30pm, Thursday 8/12 at 8:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 4pm)
His Fringe page
Fringe show #9 - Saturday, 8/7 1pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Friday, August 06, 2010
Fringe 2010 - ROBO-homa! - 3 stars
You Got Your Sci-Fi On My Musical! You Got Your Musical on My Sci-Fi!
ROBO-homa! A Territory Tale with a Technological Twist - Rarig Proscenium
Rewired Theatre Company
"So, does everyone express themselves in musical outbursts out here?"
Man, if the whole show had all been as good as the dream ballet, it would have been fantastic. Because the dream ballet really knocked my socks off.
So let's start there. Because if you're going to have a group of robots obsessed with a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, there's gotta be a dream ballet.
Laurie (Jane Samsal) a robot who's been breaking out of standard robot protocol and actually singing and dreaming outside the bonds of their established program, drinks an elixir to help her with that pesky dreaming. But it just ends up sending her on an even more troublesome dream. In it, the other female robots - Ado Android (Claire Richards), LR (Rachael Schlee), GER-T (Molly Pan), Viv.E.N (Elana Gravitz), Lil.E (Kelsey Eide), and Carnes (Lisa Bol) - do what girls in a dream ballet do, dance in their pretty frontier gear. Then Jud (Michael Lee) a human who's been reluctantly enlisted in the robots' little play, appears in Laurie's dream. Of course the robot holds a forbidden desire for her human captive. Which doesn't sit well with Curl-E (Jack Kloppenborg) her robot boyfriend. He enlists the help of the other male robots W.I.L.L. (Jay Melchior) and I.K.E. (Izzy Waid), to put poor Jud in his place. Then the robots all turn on the blue laser lights that are part of their special eyewear. The lights go out and we get a dazzling and dizzying dance of the blue lights til you don't know where one robot begins and the other ends anymore. The whole thing is quite a spectacle, one of the best I've seen in the Fringe so far.
"A human must be killed to create a new territory."
Like I said, if everything were up to the level of the dream ballet sequence, ROBO-homa! would be amazing. Sadly, the rest of the execution of this promising idea is just a little clunky. More than anything, I think ROBO-homa! suffers from the constriction of being squeezed into a Fringe format. For starters, there's an enormous cast of characters. We don't have any time to get to know any of them. We have to move the plot forward and cram in those musical numbers.
"I get stuck like a dupe
in a feedback loop
and my OS starts to crash."
It's hard to stuff the sweep of a two-act musical into a show running less than an hour. Something's got to suffer. Here, I think the decision to err on the side of making room for the music and letting the character development slide is the only choice they could really make. The music is good (even if some members of the cast were still stumbling their way through the lyrics during the opening night performance). There are a lot of clever nods and winks to the original, if you know "Oklahoma!" And if you don't, not to worry, ROBO-homa! works on its own terms.
You don't have to know that there's a female solo called "I'm Just A Girl Who Can't Say No" to enjoy her robot counterpart encouraging everyone to "Just Say Yes." You don't need to remember that there's a lovely anti-love song duet called "People Will Say We're In Love" to appreciate two robots fumbling toward a relationship and insisting that "People Will Say We Can Love." You don't even need to know the title song "Oklahoma!" to get a kick out of "ROBO-homa!" Mark Sweeney on music and Sweeney and Phil Gonzales on book and lyrics, have come up with clever, catchy ways to invoke the spirit of the original, without invoking the wrath of copyright attorneys. (Though I have to admit, if I hear the phrase "Everything's up to date!" one more time I may have to hit somebody.)
"Some day I'll greet the day
In a non-robotic way..."
The plot is just a little confusing. I think what's going on is The Peddler (Charles Hubbell) has got the robots under his control by feeding them little bits of the musical "Oklahoma!" to keep them occupied, and striving for whatever their next big scene or musical number is. I'm not sure what he gets out of this arrangement exactly. Maybe the robots live to serve him, though I don't see much evidence of that. Maybe he's just distracting them so 1) they won't kill him, or 2) he can go about his business of doing... what exactly?... undisturbed. Why the robots go out looking for a human, and upon finding him, bring him back to force him to be part of the musical, I'm not sure. Why he can't be allowed to leave, I'm not sure. It seems the robots do and then don't have Pinocchio syndrome (wanting to be humans, and not just machines), so I'm unclear on what the stakes are for them. If The Peddler can manipulate and reboot the robots at any time to suit his whim, I'm not exactly sure where the danger is. All of this, plus character development, could have been smoothed over with a little more time, which of course Fringe shows don't have.
"Designed to thrill
Rewired to kill!"
While watching ROBO-homa!, I kept thinking, "What if the robots could only really let loose, and be close to being human, when they were singing?" In their normal life, they're more robotic, but in the world of the musical, their programming might get a little scrambled when those big emotions took over. Then like junkies, they'd just be looking for that next musical high. And the numbers would get bigger and bigger (not necessarily in numbers of bots involved, but in terms of "showstopper" potential, even in a solo or duet). Of course, that's me extrapolating a bit, but the seeds of it are already there. If only Laurie and Curl-E could get to that next musical intro for "Surrey With The Fringe On Top" that they keep circling around in their own personal rehearsals. (Hehe. Fringe on top.)
"I'm professing my inner turmoil through song!"
ROBO-homa! is, oddly enough, a really great idea. It's a musical comedy riff on any number of "Star Trek" or "Doctor Who" plots in which aliens with limited knowledge of a human cultural touchstone pervert it into something bizarre, yet strangely familiar and comforting. Humans, naturally, fill in the blanks and puzzle it out, setting everyone free. But there's nothing that says the robots can't free themselves from humans - if they just sing with enough heart, and belt for that audience up in the second balcony!
3 stars, Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Monday 8/9 at 10pm
(Then Friday 8/13 at 5:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 7pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #8 - Friday, 8/6 10pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
ROBO-homa! A Territory Tale with a Technological Twist - Rarig Proscenium
Rewired Theatre Company
"So, does everyone express themselves in musical outbursts out here?"
Man, if the whole show had all been as good as the dream ballet, it would have been fantastic. Because the dream ballet really knocked my socks off.
So let's start there. Because if you're going to have a group of robots obsessed with a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, there's gotta be a dream ballet.
Laurie (Jane Samsal) a robot who's been breaking out of standard robot protocol and actually singing and dreaming outside the bonds of their established program, drinks an elixir to help her with that pesky dreaming. But it just ends up sending her on an even more troublesome dream. In it, the other female robots - Ado Android (Claire Richards), LR (Rachael Schlee), GER-T (Molly Pan), Viv.E.N (Elana Gravitz), Lil.E (Kelsey Eide), and Carnes (Lisa Bol) - do what girls in a dream ballet do, dance in their pretty frontier gear. Then Jud (Michael Lee) a human who's been reluctantly enlisted in the robots' little play, appears in Laurie's dream. Of course the robot holds a forbidden desire for her human captive. Which doesn't sit well with Curl-E (Jack Kloppenborg) her robot boyfriend. He enlists the help of the other male robots W.I.L.L. (Jay Melchior) and I.K.E. (Izzy Waid), to put poor Jud in his place. Then the robots all turn on the blue laser lights that are part of their special eyewear. The lights go out and we get a dazzling and dizzying dance of the blue lights til you don't know where one robot begins and the other ends anymore. The whole thing is quite a spectacle, one of the best I've seen in the Fringe so far.
"A human must be killed to create a new territory."
Like I said, if everything were up to the level of the dream ballet sequence, ROBO-homa! would be amazing. Sadly, the rest of the execution of this promising idea is just a little clunky. More than anything, I think ROBO-homa! suffers from the constriction of being squeezed into a Fringe format. For starters, there's an enormous cast of characters. We don't have any time to get to know any of them. We have to move the plot forward and cram in those musical numbers.
"I get stuck like a dupe
in a feedback loop
and my OS starts to crash."
It's hard to stuff the sweep of a two-act musical into a show running less than an hour. Something's got to suffer. Here, I think the decision to err on the side of making room for the music and letting the character development slide is the only choice they could really make. The music is good (even if some members of the cast were still stumbling their way through the lyrics during the opening night performance). There are a lot of clever nods and winks to the original, if you know "Oklahoma!" And if you don't, not to worry, ROBO-homa! works on its own terms.
You don't have to know that there's a female solo called "I'm Just A Girl Who Can't Say No" to enjoy her robot counterpart encouraging everyone to "Just Say Yes." You don't need to remember that there's a lovely anti-love song duet called "People Will Say We're In Love" to appreciate two robots fumbling toward a relationship and insisting that "People Will Say We Can Love." You don't even need to know the title song "Oklahoma!" to get a kick out of "ROBO-homa!" Mark Sweeney on music and Sweeney and Phil Gonzales on book and lyrics, have come up with clever, catchy ways to invoke the spirit of the original, without invoking the wrath of copyright attorneys. (Though I have to admit, if I hear the phrase "Everything's up to date!" one more time I may have to hit somebody.)
"Some day I'll greet the day
In a non-robotic way..."
The plot is just a little confusing. I think what's going on is The Peddler (Charles Hubbell) has got the robots under his control by feeding them little bits of the musical "Oklahoma!" to keep them occupied, and striving for whatever their next big scene or musical number is. I'm not sure what he gets out of this arrangement exactly. Maybe the robots live to serve him, though I don't see much evidence of that. Maybe he's just distracting them so 1) they won't kill him, or 2) he can go about his business of doing... what exactly?... undisturbed. Why the robots go out looking for a human, and upon finding him, bring him back to force him to be part of the musical, I'm not sure. Why he can't be allowed to leave, I'm not sure. It seems the robots do and then don't have Pinocchio syndrome (wanting to be humans, and not just machines), so I'm unclear on what the stakes are for them. If The Peddler can manipulate and reboot the robots at any time to suit his whim, I'm not exactly sure where the danger is. All of this, plus character development, could have been smoothed over with a little more time, which of course Fringe shows don't have.
"Designed to thrill
Rewired to kill!"
While watching ROBO-homa!, I kept thinking, "What if the robots could only really let loose, and be close to being human, when they were singing?" In their normal life, they're more robotic, but in the world of the musical, their programming might get a little scrambled when those big emotions took over. Then like junkies, they'd just be looking for that next musical high. And the numbers would get bigger and bigger (not necessarily in numbers of bots involved, but in terms of "showstopper" potential, even in a solo or duet). Of course, that's me extrapolating a bit, but the seeds of it are already there. If only Laurie and Curl-E could get to that next musical intro for "Surrey With The Fringe On Top" that they keep circling around in their own personal rehearsals. (Hehe. Fringe on top.)
"I'm professing my inner turmoil through song!"
ROBO-homa! is, oddly enough, a really great idea. It's a musical comedy riff on any number of "Star Trek" or "Doctor Who" plots in which aliens with limited knowledge of a human cultural touchstone pervert it into something bizarre, yet strangely familiar and comforting. Humans, naturally, fill in the blanks and puzzle it out, setting everyone free. But there's nothing that says the robots can't free themselves from humans - if they just sing with enough heart, and belt for that audience up in the second balcony!
3 stars, Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Monday 8/9 at 10pm
(Then Friday 8/13 at 5:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 7pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #8 - Friday, 8/6 10pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Fringe 2010 - My Mother Told Me - 3-1/2 stars
The Puzzle Pieces Don't Quite Match
My Mother Told Me - Southern Theater
Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw, with phillip andrew bennett low and DRP Dance
"What man can stand before God with so much blood on his hands?"
Mom was actually a lot harder on this show than I was. We both agreed it wasn't a bad show, by any means. But we also both agreed it didn't quite work in the way that the artists probably wanted it to work. My Mother Told Me is, after all, stuffed with returning favorites of both Mom's and mine - storyteller phillip andrew bennett low, dancer/producer Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw, and choreographer Danielle Robinson-Prater of DRP Dance. (They were joined here by dancer Jill Murphy.) phillip once again told a compelling story, and Scrimshaw, Robinson-Prater, and Murphy all executed some lovely dance moves set to bluegrass and country music. But the two halves didn't quite mesh together to make up a cohesive whole. Still I'm happy to see that the experiment of trying to mix dance and verbal storytelling continues. Because I think they're getting closer to nailing it.
"Like a good soldier, he sued for peace."
Mom said, "It's like they were telling a story for a while and then all of sudden, time for a little dance. Then back to the story. And so on. Sometimes the story would go on for so long, you'd almost forget there were dancers that were going to take the stage. And sometimes the dance continued for so long, you'd nearly forget there was a larger story being told, to which we would return." The balance is devilishly tricky. Personally, I think this story and these dances are a better fit for each other than "The Dance of the Whiskey Faerie" of a couple of Fringes ago. That may be because, however lighthearted a dancer Scrimshaw may be, the grace in her moves seems to demand subject matter with a little more gravity (no pun intended). The dancing is seriously impressive, so a story with a little heft (as well as some humor) is in order. That's what they've got this time around.
"It's the way of mothers to find things out."
A young man leaves his mother in search of adventure. He completely (and comically) misinterprets his mother's advice on how to conduct himself, and has no clue how to interact with normal people, but he somehow stumbles into good fortune. He helps out a damsel in distress but eventually leaves her the same way he left his mother. It's way of men bent on finding glory to leave a trail of brokenhearted people behind them.
"I never saw his body. Never saw his face again, which shouldn't bother me. But I'll be damned if it doesn't."
Mom says she would willingly listen to phillip tell a story any time, so that was the part of the show that worked the best for her. She didn't feel the dance was as connected to the story as I did. For me, it was as if the dance were almost the subtext to the story, the emotional underpinning that couldn't be put into words. Some things were literal, like the mother or the lover mourning the departing soldier, solos by Robinson-Prater and Scrimshaw that were both lovely to watch and emotionally resonant. Other things were more symbolic or metaphorical, such as the trio of dancers moving to Dolly Parton's song "Little Sparrow" in the aftermath of the bird massacre; or the dancing duo that seemed to personify the man and his horse, lost in the snow of the mountains.
"The son of the widow of the lonely mountain."
If you like a little story, and you like a little dance, and you're not all that particular whether they play well together, this is some fine storytelling and some fine dancing. You can enjoy each of them for what they are, and look forward to the next time Scrimshaw tries to mate verbal and physical storytelling in a Fringe show. Because she's getting really, really close to the perfect mix. And she certainly has surrounded herself with accomplished collaborators to keep trying to make it work.
3-1/2 stars, Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Saturday 8/7 at 2:30pm
(Then Wednesday 8/11 at 10pm, Thursday 8/12 at 5:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 7pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #7 - Friday, 8/6 8:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
My Mother Told Me - Southern Theater
Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw, with phillip andrew bennett low and DRP Dance
"What man can stand before God with so much blood on his hands?"
Mom was actually a lot harder on this show than I was. We both agreed it wasn't a bad show, by any means. But we also both agreed it didn't quite work in the way that the artists probably wanted it to work. My Mother Told Me is, after all, stuffed with returning favorites of both Mom's and mine - storyteller phillip andrew bennett low, dancer/producer Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw, and choreographer Danielle Robinson-Prater of DRP Dance. (They were joined here by dancer Jill Murphy.) phillip once again told a compelling story, and Scrimshaw, Robinson-Prater, and Murphy all executed some lovely dance moves set to bluegrass and country music. But the two halves didn't quite mesh together to make up a cohesive whole. Still I'm happy to see that the experiment of trying to mix dance and verbal storytelling continues. Because I think they're getting closer to nailing it.
"Like a good soldier, he sued for peace."
Mom said, "It's like they were telling a story for a while and then all of sudden, time for a little dance. Then back to the story. And so on. Sometimes the story would go on for so long, you'd almost forget there were dancers that were going to take the stage. And sometimes the dance continued for so long, you'd nearly forget there was a larger story being told, to which we would return." The balance is devilishly tricky. Personally, I think this story and these dances are a better fit for each other than "The Dance of the Whiskey Faerie" of a couple of Fringes ago. That may be because, however lighthearted a dancer Scrimshaw may be, the grace in her moves seems to demand subject matter with a little more gravity (no pun intended). The dancing is seriously impressive, so a story with a little heft (as well as some humor) is in order. That's what they've got this time around.
"It's the way of mothers to find things out."
A young man leaves his mother in search of adventure. He completely (and comically) misinterprets his mother's advice on how to conduct himself, and has no clue how to interact with normal people, but he somehow stumbles into good fortune. He helps out a damsel in distress but eventually leaves her the same way he left his mother. It's way of men bent on finding glory to leave a trail of brokenhearted people behind them.
"I never saw his body. Never saw his face again, which shouldn't bother me. But I'll be damned if it doesn't."
Mom says she would willingly listen to phillip tell a story any time, so that was the part of the show that worked the best for her. She didn't feel the dance was as connected to the story as I did. For me, it was as if the dance were almost the subtext to the story, the emotional underpinning that couldn't be put into words. Some things were literal, like the mother or the lover mourning the departing soldier, solos by Robinson-Prater and Scrimshaw that were both lovely to watch and emotionally resonant. Other things were more symbolic or metaphorical, such as the trio of dancers moving to Dolly Parton's song "Little Sparrow" in the aftermath of the bird massacre; or the dancing duo that seemed to personify the man and his horse, lost in the snow of the mountains.
"The son of the widow of the lonely mountain."
If you like a little story, and you like a little dance, and you're not all that particular whether they play well together, this is some fine storytelling and some fine dancing. You can enjoy each of them for what they are, and look forward to the next time Scrimshaw tries to mate verbal and physical storytelling in a Fringe show. Because she's getting really, really close to the perfect mix. And she certainly has surrounded herself with accomplished collaborators to keep trying to make it work.
3-1/2 stars, Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Saturday 8/7 at 2:30pm
(Then Wednesday 8/11 at 10pm, Thursday 8/12 at 5:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 7pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #7 - Friday, 8/6 8:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Fringe 2010 - Thinkingaview/CorresponDance - 5 stars
Wow. I Feel Like I Just Had Sex. Really Fun Sex.
Thinkingaview/CorresponDance - Southern Theater
Jeffrey Peterson Dance (choreographed by Jeffrey Peterson/Rebecca Katz)
I knew it was going to be good. I just had no idea it was going to be *this* good.
I don't think I have words to adequately describe how much fun this was. Or how sexy it was.
When you combine a group of dancers as lithe and limber as Sarah Jabar, Patrick Jeffrey, Jordan Klitzke and Ashleigh Penrod, with choreography by Rebecca Katz Harwood, and the music of Marty Winkler (backed by Tate Ferguson on guitar, and Kate Bordeaux and sometimes Harwood as well on vocals), well, damn. That's "CorresponDance."
A friend in the audience commented afterward that for a while they weren't sure if it was a dance piece accompanied by amazing music, or a live concert that included dance. And I almost think it doesn't matter. The music was so languid and lush, the the dancers' bodies and moves so breathtaking, it all sort of assaulted your senses and seduced you from whatever angle you were willing to meet it. The yearning for connection was both aural and visual, the one constantly reinforcing the other until you almost couldn't bear it (in a good way.)
I now need to go online and purchase Marty Winkler's music. And take a cold shower.
If the first half of the show is about striving for connection, then the second half is all about getting it - and release. Phew.
"Thinkingaview" was the portion of the show I'd seen in a previous incarnation at the Bryant Lake Bowl, so I knew it was going to be good. But I'd forgotten just how joyful it was. The dancers from "CorresponDance" were joined by Megan Bridges, Bryan Gerber and Susanne Grochett, for choreography by Jeffrey Peterson. The live musical treats continued, taking a lot of old Etta James standards and giving them the Marty Winkler treatment (along with Ferguson, Bordeaux and Harwood again, with the occasional dancer picking up an instrument and playing along).
The three part overarching structure of this piece was the Etta James classic "At Last" - opening, then repeated twice, once in the middle and once again at the end - each time with a different pairing of dancers. A roll of the die before each show determines the order in which the audience gets to see them. The same moves, three very different and beautiful physical duets to a romantic ballad (which I just mistyped as ballet - Freudian slip). We got it in the following order - two men (Gerber & Klitzke) to open, a man and a woman (Jeffrey & Penrod) in the middle, two women (Bridges & Jabar) to close the show. When the two men came out, magnificently naked from the waist up, I knew I was in trouble. (I was, after all, sitting next to my mother for the entire show. It was a relief to realize she was just as transfixed for the entire hour as I was.)
The pansexual kissing festival began early, right after the first "At Last" with the jaunty Winkler ditty "What Would You Do?" The whole company of dancers, now in white shirts, colorful briefs, and that's it, folks. The men's shirts were often open and flowing in the breeze besides so, enjoy, everyone! And everyone was certainly enjoying everyone else. The couplings and triplings and quadruplings going on, and the contortions into which they were tangling themselves were more comical than sensual. You got the clear sense however, that everyone was having a lot of fun. And when one of the dancers broke off to wander into the audience and find herself a willing female partner to smooch, well, somebody fan me, please, it's hot in here.
We would return periodically to the kissing dancer and her new friend throughout the evening. And lights would come up in other parts of the audience as well. In response, several audience members felt it must be all right to get a little frisky with their seatmates, too. Some were more vigorous than others. But I caught even a more mature couple in a quick, cute little smooch later in the evening.
Whether it was the bouncy "Two Sides To Every Story" with Bridges and Gerber playfully grabbing each other, or launching into one another's arms to be carried; or Gerber again, this time in a long flowing dress to the tune of "A Sunday Kind of Love," gender roles were constantly being tweaked. And though the audience started out giggling at Gerber in a dress, which he encouraged, once that body of his got moving, the leaps and twirls and undulations quickly pushed laughter aside, replacing it was appreciation for the human form in motion - regardless of what it's wearing.
Laughs again, when Grochett appeared wearing the same dress, sending Gerber off in a huff. Grochett then had a great turn of her own while the singer crooned "Fool That I Am," alternating being done with a faithless lover, and not quite being able to let the thought of them go. A dance of empowerment, with an undercurrent of sadness.
The Otis Redding tune "Security" found Grochett again, this time to more comic effect, trying and failing to inject herself into the midst of each of the three happy couples who would be dancing to "At Last" over the course of the evening. Try as she might, she couldn't split any of them up. They all were enjoying each other way too much to be parted.
The thing I think I appreciated the most about all the dancers is that they weren't just executing moves, they were connecting, touching each other, and looking at each other. God, the way they looked at each other. Phew. These were remarkably athletic human beings, but it wasn't a bloodless series of twirls and leaps. They were full-blooded humans in search of other full-blooded humans, and they were might happy to find one another.
I know I've used the word sexy (and variations of the word sex) a lot in this review, but honestly, you go and see it and then try to describe it to someone else without using the word sexy. Or fun. Because it's both. A whole lot of both.
I always get a little nervous when I make something #1 on my Top 10 List, thinking "Have I overestimated them? Will I really like it that much? Will other people like it that much?" Not only did I not overestimate Thinkingaview/CorresponDance, I think I may have underestimated it. It got a well-deserved, whooping standing ovation from a large enthusiastic crowd for its opening performance. I'm not alone on this one by a long shot.
Trust me. Treat yourself. Thinkingaview/CorresponDance is an easy Fringe show to love.
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 8:30pm
(Then Monday 8/9 at 5:30pm, Friday 8/13 at 10pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 8:30pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #6 - Friday, 8/6 7pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Thinkingaview/CorresponDance - Southern Theater
Jeffrey Peterson Dance (choreographed by Jeffrey Peterson/Rebecca Katz)
I knew it was going to be good. I just had no idea it was going to be *this* good.
I don't think I have words to adequately describe how much fun this was. Or how sexy it was.
When you combine a group of dancers as lithe and limber as Sarah Jabar, Patrick Jeffrey, Jordan Klitzke and Ashleigh Penrod, with choreography by Rebecca Katz Harwood, and the music of Marty Winkler (backed by Tate Ferguson on guitar, and Kate Bordeaux and sometimes Harwood as well on vocals), well, damn. That's "CorresponDance."
A friend in the audience commented afterward that for a while they weren't sure if it was a dance piece accompanied by amazing music, or a live concert that included dance. And I almost think it doesn't matter. The music was so languid and lush, the the dancers' bodies and moves so breathtaking, it all sort of assaulted your senses and seduced you from whatever angle you were willing to meet it. The yearning for connection was both aural and visual, the one constantly reinforcing the other until you almost couldn't bear it (in a good way.)
I now need to go online and purchase Marty Winkler's music. And take a cold shower.
If the first half of the show is about striving for connection, then the second half is all about getting it - and release. Phew.
"Thinkingaview" was the portion of the show I'd seen in a previous incarnation at the Bryant Lake Bowl, so I knew it was going to be good. But I'd forgotten just how joyful it was. The dancers from "CorresponDance" were joined by Megan Bridges, Bryan Gerber and Susanne Grochett, for choreography by Jeffrey Peterson. The live musical treats continued, taking a lot of old Etta James standards and giving them the Marty Winkler treatment (along with Ferguson, Bordeaux and Harwood again, with the occasional dancer picking up an instrument and playing along).
The three part overarching structure of this piece was the Etta James classic "At Last" - opening, then repeated twice, once in the middle and once again at the end - each time with a different pairing of dancers. A roll of the die before each show determines the order in which the audience gets to see them. The same moves, three very different and beautiful physical duets to a romantic ballad (which I just mistyped as ballet - Freudian slip). We got it in the following order - two men (Gerber & Klitzke) to open, a man and a woman (Jeffrey & Penrod) in the middle, two women (Bridges & Jabar) to close the show. When the two men came out, magnificently naked from the waist up, I knew I was in trouble. (I was, after all, sitting next to my mother for the entire show. It was a relief to realize she was just as transfixed for the entire hour as I was.)
The pansexual kissing festival began early, right after the first "At Last" with the jaunty Winkler ditty "What Would You Do?" The whole company of dancers, now in white shirts, colorful briefs, and that's it, folks. The men's shirts were often open and flowing in the breeze besides so, enjoy, everyone! And everyone was certainly enjoying everyone else. The couplings and triplings and quadruplings going on, and the contortions into which they were tangling themselves were more comical than sensual. You got the clear sense however, that everyone was having a lot of fun. And when one of the dancers broke off to wander into the audience and find herself a willing female partner to smooch, well, somebody fan me, please, it's hot in here.
We would return periodically to the kissing dancer and her new friend throughout the evening. And lights would come up in other parts of the audience as well. In response, several audience members felt it must be all right to get a little frisky with their seatmates, too. Some were more vigorous than others. But I caught even a more mature couple in a quick, cute little smooch later in the evening.
Whether it was the bouncy "Two Sides To Every Story" with Bridges and Gerber playfully grabbing each other, or launching into one another's arms to be carried; or Gerber again, this time in a long flowing dress to the tune of "A Sunday Kind of Love," gender roles were constantly being tweaked. And though the audience started out giggling at Gerber in a dress, which he encouraged, once that body of his got moving, the leaps and twirls and undulations quickly pushed laughter aside, replacing it was appreciation for the human form in motion - regardless of what it's wearing.
Laughs again, when Grochett appeared wearing the same dress, sending Gerber off in a huff. Grochett then had a great turn of her own while the singer crooned "Fool That I Am," alternating being done with a faithless lover, and not quite being able to let the thought of them go. A dance of empowerment, with an undercurrent of sadness.
The Otis Redding tune "Security" found Grochett again, this time to more comic effect, trying and failing to inject herself into the midst of each of the three happy couples who would be dancing to "At Last" over the course of the evening. Try as she might, she couldn't split any of them up. They all were enjoying each other way too much to be parted.
The thing I think I appreciated the most about all the dancers is that they weren't just executing moves, they were connecting, touching each other, and looking at each other. God, the way they looked at each other. Phew. These were remarkably athletic human beings, but it wasn't a bloodless series of twirls and leaps. They were full-blooded humans in search of other full-blooded humans, and they were might happy to find one another.
I know I've used the word sexy (and variations of the word sex) a lot in this review, but honestly, you go and see it and then try to describe it to someone else without using the word sexy. Or fun. Because it's both. A whole lot of both.
I always get a little nervous when I make something #1 on my Top 10 List, thinking "Have I overestimated them? Will I really like it that much? Will other people like it that much?" Not only did I not overestimate Thinkingaview/CorresponDance, I think I may have underestimated it. It got a well-deserved, whooping standing ovation from a large enthusiastic crowd for its opening performance. I'm not alone on this one by a long shot.
Trust me. Treat yourself. Thinkingaview/CorresponDance is an easy Fringe show to love.
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 8:30pm
(Then Monday 8/9 at 5:30pm, Friday 8/13 at 10pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 8:30pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #6 - Friday, 8/6 7pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Fringe 2010 - A Nice Guy's Guide To Awkward Sex - 5 stars
A Romantic Comedy That's Actually Funny, and Romantic (almost in spite of itself)
A Nice Guy's Guide To Awkward Sex - Mixed Blood Theater
Ben San Del
Never has a fistful of confetti pulled out of someone's pants been so romantic, funny, and painfully sad all at the same time.
I laughed out loud, a lot, during A Nice Guy's Guide To Awkward Sex. And I am not a person who laughs out loud in public, especially during plays (which often makes me a problematic audience member for a comedy). I do a lot of smiling and nodding instead. So if you can get an audible chuckle out of me, that's a major accomplishment. Full-on laughter or guffawing is almost unheard of. And I did all of those things during this play. This, despite the fact that I know both the co-authors - Ben San Del and Phillip Andrew Bennett Low - in real life, so they shouldn't be able to surprise me so much that I actually laugh out loud. But clearly these guys have been holding out on me, because they surprised me at almost every turn in this romantic comedy.
"How did I suddenly kill a kitten?"
They're going to hate me, of course, for calling it a romantic comedy because that genre has been (so often rightly) vilified in recent years for being lightweight entertainment. Well, this is a romantic comedy that's romantic almost in spite of itself. For instance, never has swearing been quite this adorable (thank you, Natalie Rae Wass as Sarah). Nervousness here is almost unbearably cute (thank you, every one of the neurotic cast of characters). Word play for these characters is foreplay, and banter is heavy petting. The brain is as much of an erogenous zone as any other body part for these four stand-up comedians looking for companionship, sex and love (if they can just clear the enormous hurdle of that first date).
"That's why I always carry popsicle sticks and duct tape."
Frank (Low), Charlie (San Del), Sarah (Wass), and Audrey (Amber Preston, who contributed all her own hilarious standup material to the proceedings) are all aspiring stand-up comedians. Sarah can't get up the nerve to actually take the stage at an open mic, though she's been trying to get up her nerve for weeks. She's also been trying to get up the nerve to ask Frank out on a date. Amber, meanwhile, is determined to bed Charlie, even if it means promising him sex along with an assurance that she will dump him later before things get too strange between them.
"'Nice' is the measly, two-faced, inbred cousin of 'kind'."
Sarah does date Frank, and it goes surprisingly well. Sarah also finally steps up to the mic, which goes less well. Amber and Charlie manage to navigate "friends with benefits" quite handily, until Charlie accidentally spills the fact that he loves her. The thing that makes all this "who's kissing who" stuff work like gangbusters is all four of the actors embody their characters with so much humor and heart. Each one of them in their own way is so smart and funny and yet completely incapable of appreciating themselves as such (or thinking anyone else might find them interesting), that you just want to give them a hug. And then shake them. They so utterly win you over that you can't help rooting for them to be happy, and happy together, and you ache for them when they stumble.
"Your grandmother seems like a wise and strangely arousing woman."
These characters are funny in their lives both on and off stage, but the reason they're so consistently funny is that all the laughs are based in character. Even when they're telling jokes and deflecting the barbs of hecklers, you know it's coming from a place of personal experience. The audience doesn't get the feeling that the writer is out there, pulling the strings and forcing the jokes. Also, because this is written by a couple of comedians, they understand the structure of jokes - set ups, payoffs, callbacks - and apply that structure to the overall play. "Normal" playwrights should see this and take notes. The nuts and bolts of the thing are so meticulously calibrated it's almost not fair to the rest of us who are stumbling around in the dark trying to throw a few words against each other to see if anything sticks. Learn from a couple of clowns.
"Most people think I come off as creepy when I try to act civil."
Oh, and learn from a mime. Mime is played at first for laughs, but the mime will always have his day. That's all I'm saying. If he can't sling the insult himself, he'll pull someone from the audience to do it for him.
"You want me to call you Tarzan you better learn to play in the jungle."
Ben San Del is a returning favorite who's always tops on my list for a reason. He delivers. He's never satisfied with repeating something he did before. He's constantly trying something new. And the Fringe provided him with the safety net to go out and try something potentially terrifying - writing and directing his first play. Damn if he didn't get it right the first time out of the box. (With ample support from Low and Preston and Wass, of course. This is one kickass writing/acting ensemble, probably one of the best in the Fringe this year.)
"I like to live like very day is my second to last. Which means I've gotta go home and take a nap because tomorrow is going to be very busy."
There's a lot of laughs. A lot of tenderness. A lot of bruised hearts and egos. And just a whole lot to love here. It's nice when something that so clearly deserves to be a hit, looks like it's going to get what it deserves. The crowds are big and enthusiastic, so make your reservations or get there early. A Nice Guy's Guide To Awkward Sex is gonna pack the house. And so it should.
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 1pm
(Then Tuesday 8/10 at 8:30pm, Friday 8/13 at 5:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 10pm)
His Fringe page
Fringe show #5 - Friday, 8/6 5:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
A Nice Guy's Guide To Awkward Sex - Mixed Blood Theater
Ben San Del
Never has a fistful of confetti pulled out of someone's pants been so romantic, funny, and painfully sad all at the same time.
I laughed out loud, a lot, during A Nice Guy's Guide To Awkward Sex. And I am not a person who laughs out loud in public, especially during plays (which often makes me a problematic audience member for a comedy). I do a lot of smiling and nodding instead. So if you can get an audible chuckle out of me, that's a major accomplishment. Full-on laughter or guffawing is almost unheard of. And I did all of those things during this play. This, despite the fact that I know both the co-authors - Ben San Del and Phillip Andrew Bennett Low - in real life, so they shouldn't be able to surprise me so much that I actually laugh out loud. But clearly these guys have been holding out on me, because they surprised me at almost every turn in this romantic comedy.
"How did I suddenly kill a kitten?"
They're going to hate me, of course, for calling it a romantic comedy because that genre has been (so often rightly) vilified in recent years for being lightweight entertainment. Well, this is a romantic comedy that's romantic almost in spite of itself. For instance, never has swearing been quite this adorable (thank you, Natalie Rae Wass as Sarah). Nervousness here is almost unbearably cute (thank you, every one of the neurotic cast of characters). Word play for these characters is foreplay, and banter is heavy petting. The brain is as much of an erogenous zone as any other body part for these four stand-up comedians looking for companionship, sex and love (if they can just clear the enormous hurdle of that first date).
"That's why I always carry popsicle sticks and duct tape."
Frank (Low), Charlie (San Del), Sarah (Wass), and Audrey (Amber Preston, who contributed all her own hilarious standup material to the proceedings) are all aspiring stand-up comedians. Sarah can't get up the nerve to actually take the stage at an open mic, though she's been trying to get up her nerve for weeks. She's also been trying to get up the nerve to ask Frank out on a date. Amber, meanwhile, is determined to bed Charlie, even if it means promising him sex along with an assurance that she will dump him later before things get too strange between them.
"'Nice' is the measly, two-faced, inbred cousin of 'kind'."
Sarah does date Frank, and it goes surprisingly well. Sarah also finally steps up to the mic, which goes less well. Amber and Charlie manage to navigate "friends with benefits" quite handily, until Charlie accidentally spills the fact that he loves her. The thing that makes all this "who's kissing who" stuff work like gangbusters is all four of the actors embody their characters with so much humor and heart. Each one of them in their own way is so smart and funny and yet completely incapable of appreciating themselves as such (or thinking anyone else might find them interesting), that you just want to give them a hug. And then shake them. They so utterly win you over that you can't help rooting for them to be happy, and happy together, and you ache for them when they stumble.
"Your grandmother seems like a wise and strangely arousing woman."
These characters are funny in their lives both on and off stage, but the reason they're so consistently funny is that all the laughs are based in character. Even when they're telling jokes and deflecting the barbs of hecklers, you know it's coming from a place of personal experience. The audience doesn't get the feeling that the writer is out there, pulling the strings and forcing the jokes. Also, because this is written by a couple of comedians, they understand the structure of jokes - set ups, payoffs, callbacks - and apply that structure to the overall play. "Normal" playwrights should see this and take notes. The nuts and bolts of the thing are so meticulously calibrated it's almost not fair to the rest of us who are stumbling around in the dark trying to throw a few words against each other to see if anything sticks. Learn from a couple of clowns.
"Most people think I come off as creepy when I try to act civil."
Oh, and learn from a mime. Mime is played at first for laughs, but the mime will always have his day. That's all I'm saying. If he can't sling the insult himself, he'll pull someone from the audience to do it for him.
"You want me to call you Tarzan you better learn to play in the jungle."
Ben San Del is a returning favorite who's always tops on my list for a reason. He delivers. He's never satisfied with repeating something he did before. He's constantly trying something new. And the Fringe provided him with the safety net to go out and try something potentially terrifying - writing and directing his first play. Damn if he didn't get it right the first time out of the box. (With ample support from Low and Preston and Wass, of course. This is one kickass writing/acting ensemble, probably one of the best in the Fringe this year.)
"I like to live like very day is my second to last. Which means I've gotta go home and take a nap because tomorrow is going to be very busy."
There's a lot of laughs. A lot of tenderness. A lot of bruised hearts and egos. And just a whole lot to love here. It's nice when something that so clearly deserves to be a hit, looks like it's going to get what it deserves. The crowds are big and enthusiastic, so make your reservations or get there early. A Nice Guy's Guide To Awkward Sex is gonna pack the house. And so it should.
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 1pm
(Then Tuesday 8/10 at 8:30pm, Friday 8/13 at 5:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 10pm)
His Fringe page
Fringe show #5 - Friday, 8/6 5:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Fringe 2010 - Aardvark Fandango - 5 stars
A Choreographer Takes Center Stage For A Different Kind of Fringe Dance Showcase
Aardvark Fandango - Southern Theater
Third Rabbit Dance Ensemble
Many a time I have lauded John Munger for opening my eyes to the world of dance, and helping make me a more adventurous audience member when it comes to dance at Fringe time (heck, I've got two dance shows in my Top Five this year and another three physical theater shows scattered among my Top 20. That's largely John's influence at work.) Mom marvels at John continuing to dance at his age (no, that's not a backhanded insult, it's all admiration). Both of us look forward to seeing his Fringe shows whenever they come along. Aardvark Fandango is no different.
No different for us, but quite different for John Munger. Traditionally, John has been joined onstage by multiple other dancers in a variety of combinations, often yielding the stage to other dancers entirely. Sometimes the other dancers are doing his steps, sometimes he is showcasing the work of other Fringers in the festival, giving them a chance to be seen by his audience and promote their show on his time. There is still a moment for a guest artist to strut their stuff (at this performance it was Ben McGinley, giving us a taste of CSI: Ben McGinley - which Mom and I will be seeing later this weekend anyway, but it was fun to get a preview). There is also one other segment built into show that is all guest dancers (from Xenon Dance School) doing John's choreography (The Pupil Of My I), to give the man a break.
Otherwise, eight of the ten dance segments of the evening are all John, solo. And I just have to say, wow.
John shared that he is developing a suite of dances which dealing with (as he said in the introductory segment) the joys and terrors of aging. This Fringe show is part of that developmental process, and we're getting a great evening of entertainment out of being a part of that process.
"Workaholic" is set to a piece music by Bach. John shifts through a variety of abstract movements, invoking thoughts of an assembly line, climbing or descending stairs, shrugging, circling, reaching and jumping. Ultimately, this figure ends up flat on his back, exhausted.
Greek Syrtaki music backs up "Craving" - a solo in which John has his focus fixed on a point far downstage of him on a diagonal. The striving to reach that goal downstage, as he constantly gets set back again, is the meat of the piece. Striding, twirling, finally crawling. Even in reaching the goal, it eludes him again.
"How It Feels" is a devilish bit of whimsy, because Elvis croons "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" as a man dances with a liquor bottle. Try as he might, he cannot set himself free. It borders on slapstick, but the more you think about it, the darker the comedy gets. Particularly when he's able to set himself free, and then comes right back. Sure he's not stuck to the liquor bottle this time, sure he's "in control," but that bottle's still a part of his life.
Traditional Japanese music provides the foundation for "Tremor," in which a man haltingly walks, desperately trying to still the shaking of his arms and legs. Occasionally he is successful, though the tremor always returns in a new form.
Munger's naughty sense of humor gets a chance to take the stage, performing the poem "By The Lake" by Dame Edith Sitwell (who John introduced as a woman who unfortunately looked exactly like her name sounds, "but she's dead now, so it doesn't matter.")
"Obsession," set to the music of Chopin, finds a man locked in a small circle of movement, reacting to his confinement to a certain range of motion, but finding it hard to break out.
A circle of light takes the focus in "Where We Began." John starts on the outside of the circle of light and makes his way in, breaking free but ultimately circling back, again to the strains of Bach.
While I've seen "Trayage" before, it was good to see it resurface here at the end of the evening. "What Is Dance?" Well, hands can dance, and march, as well as feet, and with a table and a little John Philip Sousa, John Munger demonstrates as much. It delighted Mom a great deal, and was a great upbeat way to send the audience out into the night.
All this, and the man's fighting a cough, during the marathon that is Fringe week. It's good to see that some human beings are just unstoppable. It was a great way to end our first day of Fringing, and one of the two best things we saw in a pretty impressive day of theater. Fringe is off to a mighty good start this year.
(Oh, the aardvark. John's mentor once settled a debate about what animal each of her students would be, and John was deemed to be an aardvark. His mentor is gone, but her pupil is still going strong.)
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Tuesday 8/10 at 7pm
(Then Wednesday 8/11 at 8:30pm, Friday 8/13 at 5:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 4pm)
His Fringe page
Fringe show #4 - Thursday, 8/5 10pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Aardvark Fandango - Southern Theater
Third Rabbit Dance Ensemble
Many a time I have lauded John Munger for opening my eyes to the world of dance, and helping make me a more adventurous audience member when it comes to dance at Fringe time (heck, I've got two dance shows in my Top Five this year and another three physical theater shows scattered among my Top 20. That's largely John's influence at work.) Mom marvels at John continuing to dance at his age (no, that's not a backhanded insult, it's all admiration). Both of us look forward to seeing his Fringe shows whenever they come along. Aardvark Fandango is no different.
No different for us, but quite different for John Munger. Traditionally, John has been joined onstage by multiple other dancers in a variety of combinations, often yielding the stage to other dancers entirely. Sometimes the other dancers are doing his steps, sometimes he is showcasing the work of other Fringers in the festival, giving them a chance to be seen by his audience and promote their show on his time. There is still a moment for a guest artist to strut their stuff (at this performance it was Ben McGinley, giving us a taste of CSI: Ben McGinley - which Mom and I will be seeing later this weekend anyway, but it was fun to get a preview). There is also one other segment built into show that is all guest dancers (from Xenon Dance School) doing John's choreography (The Pupil Of My I), to give the man a break.
Otherwise, eight of the ten dance segments of the evening are all John, solo. And I just have to say, wow.
John shared that he is developing a suite of dances which dealing with (as he said in the introductory segment) the joys and terrors of aging. This Fringe show is part of that developmental process, and we're getting a great evening of entertainment out of being a part of that process.
"Workaholic" is set to a piece music by Bach. John shifts through a variety of abstract movements, invoking thoughts of an assembly line, climbing or descending stairs, shrugging, circling, reaching and jumping. Ultimately, this figure ends up flat on his back, exhausted.
Greek Syrtaki music backs up "Craving" - a solo in which John has his focus fixed on a point far downstage of him on a diagonal. The striving to reach that goal downstage, as he constantly gets set back again, is the meat of the piece. Striding, twirling, finally crawling. Even in reaching the goal, it eludes him again.
"How It Feels" is a devilish bit of whimsy, because Elvis croons "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" as a man dances with a liquor bottle. Try as he might, he cannot set himself free. It borders on slapstick, but the more you think about it, the darker the comedy gets. Particularly when he's able to set himself free, and then comes right back. Sure he's not stuck to the liquor bottle this time, sure he's "in control," but that bottle's still a part of his life.
Traditional Japanese music provides the foundation for "Tremor," in which a man haltingly walks, desperately trying to still the shaking of his arms and legs. Occasionally he is successful, though the tremor always returns in a new form.
Munger's naughty sense of humor gets a chance to take the stage, performing the poem "By The Lake" by Dame Edith Sitwell (who John introduced as a woman who unfortunately looked exactly like her name sounds, "but she's dead now, so it doesn't matter.")
"Obsession," set to the music of Chopin, finds a man locked in a small circle of movement, reacting to his confinement to a certain range of motion, but finding it hard to break out.
A circle of light takes the focus in "Where We Began." John starts on the outside of the circle of light and makes his way in, breaking free but ultimately circling back, again to the strains of Bach.
While I've seen "Trayage" before, it was good to see it resurface here at the end of the evening. "What Is Dance?" Well, hands can dance, and march, as well as feet, and with a table and a little John Philip Sousa, John Munger demonstrates as much. It delighted Mom a great deal, and was a great upbeat way to send the audience out into the night.
All this, and the man's fighting a cough, during the marathon that is Fringe week. It's good to see that some human beings are just unstoppable. It was a great way to end our first day of Fringing, and one of the two best things we saw in a pretty impressive day of theater. Fringe is off to a mighty good start this year.
(Oh, the aardvark. John's mentor once settled a debate about what animal each of her students would be, and John was deemed to be an aardvark. His mentor is gone, but her pupil is still going strong.)
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Tuesday 8/10 at 7pm
(Then Wednesday 8/11 at 8:30pm, Friday 8/13 at 5:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 4pm)
His Fringe page
Fringe show #4 - Thursday, 8/5 10pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Fringe 2010 - Rachel Teagle Believes In Ghosts - 4-1/2 stars
A Ghost Storyteller Who Knows Her Ghost Stories
Rachel Teagle Believes In Ghosts - Rarig Xperimental
Rachel Teagle
"When a pretty woman dies a gruesome death, what do we do? We sing about it."
Rachel Teagle has pulled together a very accomplished Fringe showcase for herself. In fact, the only times it ever stumbles is because she is experimenting with yet another way to successfully tell a story. I'd much rather see a show that consistently tries and often succeeds, at swinging for the fences, than sit back and watch somebody just play it safe. Rachel Teagle never plays it safe, and we, and the show, are the better for it.
"Demons are meticulous interior decorators."
Rachel kicks off with a ghost story set in the Civil War era, then recounts her recent move down south, into an apartment that shows all the signs of being haunted. Also layered in are tales of her childhood obsession with the supernatural and her mother's encouragement. One additional thing threaded through the narrative are stories of the Winchester Mystery House, connected to Rachel through a skeptical friend who once served as a tour guide there. The show jumps back and forth nimbly among these different storylines. Rachel establishes them all so clearly that the audience doesn't get lost in the shuffle. Plus it helps keep us alert, and to never get too far ahead of where the storyteller wants us to be.
"Some could afford to move the bodies. Others could just afford to move the headstones. The town expanded over its dead."
Rachel also does a great job of executing several different types of storytelling cleanly, without letting one spill into the other. There are the ghost stories themselves. There is Rachel's personal story. There is the historical background of the various supernatural tales. There is even a use of repetitive movement that borders on physical theater. This last is sometimes successful, sometimes not. It works best when the repetitive movement is in concert with some recurring motif in the story she is telling. When the movement just seems layered on top of the story, rather than tying into and reinforcing it, it works less well.
"Watching the 'Chicken & Biscuit' and Pro-Life signs multiply like dandelions."
Another experiment that didn't pay off as planned was an extended, and I mean extended, sound cue, in which a phone message is played (I dare say in its entirety). While the person leaving the message certainly has her own distinctive personality, and tales of haunted hospitals are always welcome, I was reminded of what Hitchcock once said about making films - that movies are real life with the boring parts edited out. Rachel's friend on the phone could have used a bit more editing. Or better yet, we've seen Rachel take on many a character here, why not just portray her friend, so we can get the benefit of actual live theater? I applaud the experimental impulse behind trying this, but it's a moment that doesn't work in a show that otherwise largely does.
"Not all of these ghosts were the ghosts of architects."
And even though Rachel is in full control of the evening, even when she turns it over to her guest Fringe performer for a few minutes, the guest Fringer segment is only as successful as its guest Fringer. Sometimes they're going to dovetail nicely with the rest of the evening, sometimes not. Ben Egerman (of Do Not Kill Me, Killer Robots! - another show you should definitely see) brought his banjo to sing the song of "Pretty Polly." There is a line between intentionally dissonant for effect, and just plain out of tune. I love you, Ben. But I think you crossed that line. More than once. Still I love it when Fringers let other Fringers invade their shows and strut their stuff. So, better a mixed result than not to try at all.
Rachel Teagle is a returning favorite of mine for a reason. She's got a wicked sense of humor and she's not afraid to use it. But something I've learned from Rachel Teagle Believes In Ghosts is that she knows how to spin a yarn that'll raise the hair on the back of your neck as well as make you chuckle. These are spooky, as well as personal, stories even a skeptic can enjoy. Because Rachel acknowledges that it could all just as easily be nothing. But what if it isn't?
4-1/2 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 10pm
(Then Monday 8/9 at 7pm, Wednesday 8/11 at 8:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 2:30pm)
Her Fringe page
Fringe show #3 - Thursday 8/5, 8:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Rachel Teagle Believes In Ghosts - Rarig Xperimental
Rachel Teagle
"When a pretty woman dies a gruesome death, what do we do? We sing about it."
Rachel Teagle has pulled together a very accomplished Fringe showcase for herself. In fact, the only times it ever stumbles is because she is experimenting with yet another way to successfully tell a story. I'd much rather see a show that consistently tries and often succeeds, at swinging for the fences, than sit back and watch somebody just play it safe. Rachel Teagle never plays it safe, and we, and the show, are the better for it.
"Demons are meticulous interior decorators."
Rachel kicks off with a ghost story set in the Civil War era, then recounts her recent move down south, into an apartment that shows all the signs of being haunted. Also layered in are tales of her childhood obsession with the supernatural and her mother's encouragement. One additional thing threaded through the narrative are stories of the Winchester Mystery House, connected to Rachel through a skeptical friend who once served as a tour guide there. The show jumps back and forth nimbly among these different storylines. Rachel establishes them all so clearly that the audience doesn't get lost in the shuffle. Plus it helps keep us alert, and to never get too far ahead of where the storyteller wants us to be.
"Some could afford to move the bodies. Others could just afford to move the headstones. The town expanded over its dead."
Rachel also does a great job of executing several different types of storytelling cleanly, without letting one spill into the other. There are the ghost stories themselves. There is Rachel's personal story. There is the historical background of the various supernatural tales. There is even a use of repetitive movement that borders on physical theater. This last is sometimes successful, sometimes not. It works best when the repetitive movement is in concert with some recurring motif in the story she is telling. When the movement just seems layered on top of the story, rather than tying into and reinforcing it, it works less well.
"Watching the 'Chicken & Biscuit' and Pro-Life signs multiply like dandelions."
Another experiment that didn't pay off as planned was an extended, and I mean extended, sound cue, in which a phone message is played (I dare say in its entirety). While the person leaving the message certainly has her own distinctive personality, and tales of haunted hospitals are always welcome, I was reminded of what Hitchcock once said about making films - that movies are real life with the boring parts edited out. Rachel's friend on the phone could have used a bit more editing. Or better yet, we've seen Rachel take on many a character here, why not just portray her friend, so we can get the benefit of actual live theater? I applaud the experimental impulse behind trying this, but it's a moment that doesn't work in a show that otherwise largely does.
"Not all of these ghosts were the ghosts of architects."
And even though Rachel is in full control of the evening, even when she turns it over to her guest Fringe performer for a few minutes, the guest Fringer segment is only as successful as its guest Fringer. Sometimes they're going to dovetail nicely with the rest of the evening, sometimes not. Ben Egerman (of Do Not Kill Me, Killer Robots! - another show you should definitely see) brought his banjo to sing the song of "Pretty Polly." There is a line between intentionally dissonant for effect, and just plain out of tune. I love you, Ben. But I think you crossed that line. More than once. Still I love it when Fringers let other Fringers invade their shows and strut their stuff. So, better a mixed result than not to try at all.
Rachel Teagle is a returning favorite of mine for a reason. She's got a wicked sense of humor and she's not afraid to use it. But something I've learned from Rachel Teagle Believes In Ghosts is that she knows how to spin a yarn that'll raise the hair on the back of your neck as well as make you chuckle. These are spooky, as well as personal, stories even a skeptic can enjoy. Because Rachel acknowledges that it could all just as easily be nothing. But what if it isn't?
4-1/2 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 10pm
(Then Monday 8/9 at 7pm, Wednesday 8/11 at 8:30pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 2:30pm)
Her Fringe page
Fringe show #3 - Thursday 8/5, 8:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Fringe 2010 - Yvette - 5 stars
When A Man Loves A Chair
Yvette - Theater In The Round
Action Theater Project
Mom could not stop raving about this one. In fact, she wants to steal the role of the mother, Beatrice, from Sara Olson and play it herself. She proclaimed it was "good regular theater," by which she meant not a "performance" or an "event" but, you know, just a well-written script, well-directed, done by a cast of talented actors. All of which you think wouldn't be an enormous hurdle, but if you've been to a lot of Fringe, or just a lot of theater in general, you know getting any one of those elements in place can be tricky, two out of three is mighty impressive. But getting all three in going at the same time, sometimes that's nothing short of a small wonder.
Add to this the fact that Yvette had an additional challenge to meet, because Mom saw another Fringe show about a man in love with a chair on the first day of her Fringe adventure last year that was, shall we say, a bit more graphic in its depictions of man-chair loving. She was not expecting great things from this show, based on past experience, but great things she got all the same. In fact Mom was a bit more enthusiastic than I was at first, and we were trying to figure out exactly why.
"Things went sour with a Hungarian zither player and I had to leave France."
The basics are these - Morton (Michael Shannon O'Keefe) confesses to his mother Beatrice (Olson) that the house that has been in their family for generations is about to be foreclosed on. Morton also reveals to Beatrice that he is in love, with Yvette. And Yvette is a chair. Yvette, it turns out, can also solve their financial troubles and save the house. Two antiques dealers - Andrew (Josephe Bombard) and his sidekick Charlie (Patrick Kozicky) - arrive with designs on Yvette. She is a very special chair indeed, and the dealers will pay a lot of money to have her. But Morton, in love, cannot part with her. Add to the mix Morton's prodigal sister Maddie (Isabel Nelson), who knows a thing or two about rare books, and you have a most unusual romantic farce.
"There is no corner of the world that does not have wonderful wood, Charlie."
I think my reluctance to initially embrace Yvette is that frankly, I'm a reverse snob. I don't care about the problems of rich people. Someone who's never had to worry about money suddenly has to worry about money? Boo hoo. Welcome to my world, Daddy Warbucks. But if I set aside my own personal prejudice for a moment, there's a lot to love here. The script is sharply written, and directed, by Gemma Irish. The actors are all savoring the fact that they've got an intelligent funny script to rip into. The whole thing moves really cleanly from beginning to end. Everything in the text has its purpose. Even silly jokes...
"An illuminated manuscript."
"A book that lights up?"
...nonetheless move the plot forward. Ultimately, Morton's love for Yvette isn't the central engine driving the play that I expected it would be. Yvette is almost beside the point. Yes, everyone wants her, for their own reasons, but we don't really see a relationship here. It is, inevitably one-sided, because Yvette is a piece of furniture, not a human being. She doesn't interact or respond or do anything but sit there, and be sat upon. O'Keefe makes Morton's devotion seem genuine, if still sad and a bit creepy (this guy's been locked up on the family homestead for too long by himself). It's the human relationships here that count. Both the mother-son-daughter dynamic, and the unexpected blossoming of love between Andrew and Charlie, are what we care about as an audience. It's a tricky balancing act. Andrew and Charlie's romance threatens to hijack the whole play (not that I'm complaining - I'd almost like to see them get their own play).
Yvette ended up on my Top Ten list due to a Fringe-For-All preview that turns out to have been a bit of a bait and switch, but I really don't mind. It got me to see a quirky little play that was still one of the two best things Mom and I saw on a pretty impressive opening day of Fringing.
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 2:30pm
(Then Monday 8/9 at 10pm, Friday 8/13 at 10pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 7pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #2 - Thursday, 8/5, 7pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Yvette - Theater In The Round
Action Theater Project
Mom could not stop raving about this one. In fact, she wants to steal the role of the mother, Beatrice, from Sara Olson and play it herself. She proclaimed it was "good regular theater," by which she meant not a "performance" or an "event" but, you know, just a well-written script, well-directed, done by a cast of talented actors. All of which you think wouldn't be an enormous hurdle, but if you've been to a lot of Fringe, or just a lot of theater in general, you know getting any one of those elements in place can be tricky, two out of three is mighty impressive. But getting all three in going at the same time, sometimes that's nothing short of a small wonder.
Add to this the fact that Yvette had an additional challenge to meet, because Mom saw another Fringe show about a man in love with a chair on the first day of her Fringe adventure last year that was, shall we say, a bit more graphic in its depictions of man-chair loving. She was not expecting great things from this show, based on past experience, but great things she got all the same. In fact Mom was a bit more enthusiastic than I was at first, and we were trying to figure out exactly why.
"Things went sour with a Hungarian zither player and I had to leave France."
The basics are these - Morton (Michael Shannon O'Keefe) confesses to his mother Beatrice (Olson) that the house that has been in their family for generations is about to be foreclosed on. Morton also reveals to Beatrice that he is in love, with Yvette. And Yvette is a chair. Yvette, it turns out, can also solve their financial troubles and save the house. Two antiques dealers - Andrew (Josephe Bombard) and his sidekick Charlie (Patrick Kozicky) - arrive with designs on Yvette. She is a very special chair indeed, and the dealers will pay a lot of money to have her. But Morton, in love, cannot part with her. Add to the mix Morton's prodigal sister Maddie (Isabel Nelson), who knows a thing or two about rare books, and you have a most unusual romantic farce.
"There is no corner of the world that does not have wonderful wood, Charlie."
I think my reluctance to initially embrace Yvette is that frankly, I'm a reverse snob. I don't care about the problems of rich people. Someone who's never had to worry about money suddenly has to worry about money? Boo hoo. Welcome to my world, Daddy Warbucks. But if I set aside my own personal prejudice for a moment, there's a lot to love here. The script is sharply written, and directed, by Gemma Irish. The actors are all savoring the fact that they've got an intelligent funny script to rip into. The whole thing moves really cleanly from beginning to end. Everything in the text has its purpose. Even silly jokes...
"An illuminated manuscript."
"A book that lights up?"
...nonetheless move the plot forward. Ultimately, Morton's love for Yvette isn't the central engine driving the play that I expected it would be. Yvette is almost beside the point. Yes, everyone wants her, for their own reasons, but we don't really see a relationship here. It is, inevitably one-sided, because Yvette is a piece of furniture, not a human being. She doesn't interact or respond or do anything but sit there, and be sat upon. O'Keefe makes Morton's devotion seem genuine, if still sad and a bit creepy (this guy's been locked up on the family homestead for too long by himself). It's the human relationships here that count. Both the mother-son-daughter dynamic, and the unexpected blossoming of love between Andrew and Charlie, are what we care about as an audience. It's a tricky balancing act. Andrew and Charlie's romance threatens to hijack the whole play (not that I'm complaining - I'd almost like to see them get their own play).
Yvette ended up on my Top Ten list due to a Fringe-For-All preview that turns out to have been a bit of a bait and switch, but I really don't mind. It got me to see a quirky little play that was still one of the two best things Mom and I saw on a pretty impressive opening day of Fringing.
5 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Sunday 8/8 at 2:30pm
(Then Monday 8/9 at 10pm, Friday 8/13 at 10pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 7pm)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #2 - Thursday, 8/5, 7pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Fringe 2010 - Open & Affirming Fairy Tales - 4-1/2 stars
Fairy Tales With The Gentlest of Agendas
Open & Affirming Fairy Tales: The FaBUlous Fables of RainBeaU Bay - Rarig Arena
AWOL Productions
I almost hesitate to even mention this production has an agenda - because, honestly, what production doesn't? Any theater production that isn't trying somehow to prod you to think about something in a slightly different way than you had before isn't doing its job. But one of the things I admire most about this plucky little production is that it doesn't feel the need to beat you over the head with its overall point. What's the overall point? That it's no big deal. Gay kid, straight kid? Doesn't matter. A mom and a dad, two moms, two dads? Doesn't matter. Sporty or arty? Doesn't matter. We're all human, we all have things we enjoy doing, we all need love and family and friends and if we need a theater production to remind us of the basics, well, then our lives have become a bit too cluttered.
There are days when I'm a bit slow on the uptake, so I was puzzling this morning as I looked at the program at the extra capitalized letters B U whenever they appeared in the title. "B U. What's all the focus on B U? Did they all go to Boston University or something?" And then I saw the phrase, right there on the front cover "Just be you!" Wow. Staring right at me. I'm making this way too complicated.
And that, my friends, is their agenda. AWOL Productions just wants to strip away all the distractions and just tell a story or two. In "Fisher & The Fish," young Fisher (Derik Iverson) is getting grief from both his parents and his fellow students for being into photography and watercolors rather than football. He bellows at his camera, "Why do I like you? You bring me nothing but pain!" and tosses it into the water, where a rapping magic fish (don't cringe, just go with me here, a rapping magic fish - Andrew Waldron) is so delighted to receive a camera, that he grants Fisher his wishes to become more and more what everyone else wants him to be, and less and less himself. Of course, we know this will all turn around somehow, and it does. But the point isn't that Fisher is gay, he's just different. The sporty kids who torment him (Rachel Piersdorf, Kari Steinbach, and Becky Zierke) aren't a bunch of lesbian softball players, they're actors playing the jock/bully role.
I have to admit I drifted just a bit during "The Frog Princess" story. I'm not entirely sure why. Same set of actors, same style of storytelling. Not sure why I wasn't as focused on that one but it didn't grab and hold my attention in the same way. Here again, though, it was just a simple switching of genders, not a lesbian love story for the ages. Yes, a girl is kissing a girl to break a magic spell, but again, no big deal.
The script adaptation also makes a big deal of trying to overcome the whole "once upon a time" method of storytelling, but I don't think they really needed to. It seemed to burn up a lot of time around the edges of the four stories that might have been better spent just telling the stories. Ultimately, they give in and use the tried and true opening and closing lines, and they still satisfy. So what's the big deal? There's no need to reinvent the wheel if the story you're telling inside the conventions is new, and here it was. Sometimes being that self-conscious takes away from the task at hand. But the show overall works so well that it's a minor quibble.
Another thing Mom and I both admired a lot about the production was just how smoothly it ran. (This, even though we started the evening needing to air out the theater because someone had started a fire in the dumpster outside of the Rarig Center, causing a lovely smell and some smoke to waft through the many levels of the building. Added bonus - firemen!) AWOL Productions had bundles of simple but effective costumes and props, most of them tucked away inside colorfully painted trunks with images from the stories, that enabled them to tell the tales without getting bogged down in scene shifts. Everyone was decked out in T-shirts of primary colors that got accessorized in simple but effective ways (a hat with a stuffed animal fish on it, a sparkly cape, a pair of glasses, a baseball cap).
They also handled audience participation in a smart fashion. Before the show, the cast perused the crowd and chatted up potential participants. Upon enlisting them, they gave them a postcard with their lines before the show even began. So no one was put on the spot in the middle of the show, no one had to be nervous. And since the audience participation portion didn't happen until the last story, "The Mayor Who Outlawed Jellybeans," several audience members had a little extra anticipation to carry them through.
My favorite story was the third, "The Golden Goose," probably because it was the gayest, if only in the gentlest of ways. Taylor (Derek C. Waller) comes into possession of the title goose, which other people want, well, for the gold, of course. But their greed just ends up getting them all stuck together in some kind of ridiculous daisy-chain of limbs that turns into its own unintentional parade. The whole thing comes to the attention of the palace, and amuses the very glum prince (Waldron again), which pleases the queen (Zierke again) who had tried everything to get him out of his funk. The person who amused the prince gets to take him on a date, but the queen isn't sure about Taylor dating her son. She invents a few extra hurdles which he clears. And even though she's still not OK with it, the boys both shyly assure her that they are. Totally fine with it. And they're both so adorably nervous and flirty with each other that you can't help smiling. This could have been done purely for laughs, or with the actors winking at the audience as if to say, "I'm not really gay, I'm just acting." But they didn't. And good for them. That way of embracing the characters and their circumstances throughout all four stories, more than anything, drove their message home.
Mom was asked by someone later if the show was just for kids and she responded no, both kids and adults would get something out of it and be entertained. I agree. It didn't feel like it was dumbed down, or over anyone's head. Simple stories, well told, filtering the fairy tale conventions of the past through the way we live now. During their Fringe-For-All preview, I was wondering how this concept would work. Would it really be a "kids show"? Would non-kids enjoy it? Turns out the answer is a resounding yes on both counts. The enthusiastic whoops and applause from the audience at the end will back me up on that.
4-1/2 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Saturday 8/7 at 1pm
(Then Sunday 8/8 at 2:30pm, Thursday 8/12 at 7pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 2:30pm - all very family friendly times. Enjoy!)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #1 - Thursday 8/5, 5:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Open & Affirming Fairy Tales: The FaBUlous Fables of RainBeaU Bay - Rarig Arena
AWOL Productions
I almost hesitate to even mention this production has an agenda - because, honestly, what production doesn't? Any theater production that isn't trying somehow to prod you to think about something in a slightly different way than you had before isn't doing its job. But one of the things I admire most about this plucky little production is that it doesn't feel the need to beat you over the head with its overall point. What's the overall point? That it's no big deal. Gay kid, straight kid? Doesn't matter. A mom and a dad, two moms, two dads? Doesn't matter. Sporty or arty? Doesn't matter. We're all human, we all have things we enjoy doing, we all need love and family and friends and if we need a theater production to remind us of the basics, well, then our lives have become a bit too cluttered.
There are days when I'm a bit slow on the uptake, so I was puzzling this morning as I looked at the program at the extra capitalized letters B U whenever they appeared in the title. "B U. What's all the focus on B U? Did they all go to Boston University or something?" And then I saw the phrase, right there on the front cover "Just be you!" Wow. Staring right at me. I'm making this way too complicated.
And that, my friends, is their agenda. AWOL Productions just wants to strip away all the distractions and just tell a story or two. In "Fisher & The Fish," young Fisher (Derik Iverson) is getting grief from both his parents and his fellow students for being into photography and watercolors rather than football. He bellows at his camera, "Why do I like you? You bring me nothing but pain!" and tosses it into the water, where a rapping magic fish (don't cringe, just go with me here, a rapping magic fish - Andrew Waldron) is so delighted to receive a camera, that he grants Fisher his wishes to become more and more what everyone else wants him to be, and less and less himself. Of course, we know this will all turn around somehow, and it does. But the point isn't that Fisher is gay, he's just different. The sporty kids who torment him (Rachel Piersdorf, Kari Steinbach, and Becky Zierke) aren't a bunch of lesbian softball players, they're actors playing the jock/bully role.
I have to admit I drifted just a bit during "The Frog Princess" story. I'm not entirely sure why. Same set of actors, same style of storytelling. Not sure why I wasn't as focused on that one but it didn't grab and hold my attention in the same way. Here again, though, it was just a simple switching of genders, not a lesbian love story for the ages. Yes, a girl is kissing a girl to break a magic spell, but again, no big deal.
The script adaptation also makes a big deal of trying to overcome the whole "once upon a time" method of storytelling, but I don't think they really needed to. It seemed to burn up a lot of time around the edges of the four stories that might have been better spent just telling the stories. Ultimately, they give in and use the tried and true opening and closing lines, and they still satisfy. So what's the big deal? There's no need to reinvent the wheel if the story you're telling inside the conventions is new, and here it was. Sometimes being that self-conscious takes away from the task at hand. But the show overall works so well that it's a minor quibble.
Another thing Mom and I both admired a lot about the production was just how smoothly it ran. (This, even though we started the evening needing to air out the theater because someone had started a fire in the dumpster outside of the Rarig Center, causing a lovely smell and some smoke to waft through the many levels of the building. Added bonus - firemen!) AWOL Productions had bundles of simple but effective costumes and props, most of them tucked away inside colorfully painted trunks with images from the stories, that enabled them to tell the tales without getting bogged down in scene shifts. Everyone was decked out in T-shirts of primary colors that got accessorized in simple but effective ways (a hat with a stuffed animal fish on it, a sparkly cape, a pair of glasses, a baseball cap).
They also handled audience participation in a smart fashion. Before the show, the cast perused the crowd and chatted up potential participants. Upon enlisting them, they gave them a postcard with their lines before the show even began. So no one was put on the spot in the middle of the show, no one had to be nervous. And since the audience participation portion didn't happen until the last story, "The Mayor Who Outlawed Jellybeans," several audience members had a little extra anticipation to carry them through.
My favorite story was the third, "The Golden Goose," probably because it was the gayest, if only in the gentlest of ways. Taylor (Derek C. Waller) comes into possession of the title goose, which other people want, well, for the gold, of course. But their greed just ends up getting them all stuck together in some kind of ridiculous daisy-chain of limbs that turns into its own unintentional parade. The whole thing comes to the attention of the palace, and amuses the very glum prince (Waldron again), which pleases the queen (Zierke again) who had tried everything to get him out of his funk. The person who amused the prince gets to take him on a date, but the queen isn't sure about Taylor dating her son. She invents a few extra hurdles which he clears. And even though she's still not OK with it, the boys both shyly assure her that they are. Totally fine with it. And they're both so adorably nervous and flirty with each other that you can't help smiling. This could have been done purely for laughs, or with the actors winking at the audience as if to say, "I'm not really gay, I'm just acting." But they didn't. And good for them. That way of embracing the characters and their circumstances throughout all four stories, more than anything, drove their message home.
Mom was asked by someone later if the show was just for kids and she responded no, both kids and adults would get something out of it and be entertained. I agree. It didn't feel like it was dumbed down, or over anyone's head. Simple stories, well told, filtering the fairy tale conventions of the past through the way we live now. During their Fringe-For-All preview, I was wondering how this concept would work. Would it really be a "kids show"? Would non-kids enjoy it? Turns out the answer is a resounding yes on both counts. The enthusiastic whoops and applause from the audience at the end will back me up on that.
4-1/2 stars, Very Highly Recommended
NEXT PERFORMANCE - Saturday 8/7 at 1pm
(Then Sunday 8/8 at 2:30pm, Thursday 8/12 at 7pm, and Saturday 8/14 at 2:30pm - all very family friendly times. Enjoy!)
Their Fringe page
Fringe show #1 - Thursday 8/5, 5:30pm
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Fringe 2010 - Fringing with Mom - Thursday/Friday
Here's what Mom and I are seeing over the next 48 hours of Fringe Festival madness, otherwise known as Day 1 and 2, warming up for the monster weekend marathon of theater...
(sorry for the radio silence, no internet connection last night (argh), and spent the bulk of today dealing with the fallout from my dead car)
Thursday, August 5, 2010 - Fringe Day 1
5:30
Open & Affirming Fairy Tales (Top 10) - Rarig Arena
AWOL Productions
For all the reasons listed here
Their Fringe page
7:00
Yvette (Top 10) - Theater In The Round
Action Theater Project
For all the reasons listed here
Their Fringe page
8:30
Rachel Teagle Believes In Ghosts (returning favorite) - Rarig Xperimental
Rachel Teagle
For all the reasons listed here
Her Fringe page
10:00
Aardvark Fandango (returning favorite) - Southern Theater
Third Rabbit Dance Ensemble
"Nine succinct dances in jazz and modern styles. SAGE award-winning choreographer John Munger shows his versatility once again. Recommended for people new to dance. Guest artists from Fringe on each show."
John Munger has always been my ambassador to the dance world. He showed me that dance could be fun and enjoyable, and continues to introduce me to new dancers and choreographers, and expand my horizons to find new modes of movement I like to watch. It's why he was on my pre-Fringe Top 10 list in 2007, and why last year's My Body Made Me Do This was more in a long line of 5 star fun from his Third Rabbit Dance Ensemble. It's a great way to cap off our first day of Fringing, and a great addition to anyone's Fringe schedule.
Their Fringe page
********************************
Friday, August 6, 2010 - Fringe Day 2
5:30
A Nice Guy's Guide To Awkward Sex (returning favorite) - Mixed Blood Theater
Ben San Del
For all the reasons listed here
His Fringe page
7:00
Thinkingaview/CorresponDance (Top 10) - Southern Theater
Jeffrey Peterson Dance (choreographed by Jeffrey Peterson/Rebecca Katz)
For all the reasons listed here
Their Fringe page
8:30
My Mother Told Me (returning favorite) - Southern Theater
Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw, with phillip andrew bennett low and DRP Dance
For all the reasons listed here
Their Fringe page
10:00
ROBO-homa! A Territory Tale with a Technological Twist (returning favorite) - Rarig Proscenium
Rewired Theatre Company
"In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a desperate loner stumbles upon a tribe of robots programmed to recreate American musical theatre in an attempt to save humanity. As he learns their familiar ways, things take a turn for the deadly. . .
Or is it 'daid'-ly?
And why do they keep calling him Jud? and what's all this talk about a box social?
Are these musical androids pursuing the American dream, or are they intent on destroying the last of civilization?
Find out in ROBO-homa! A Territory Tale with a Technological Twist."
This is the brainchild of Mark Sweeney, another member of Perpetual Motion Theatre Company (responsible for some of my recent Fringe favorites like The Depth of the Ocean and One Night Only With Mike Mahony), striking out on his own for a mix of the classic musical "Oklahoma" and robots.
Do you really need more than musical, and robots?
I don't. Not with Sweeney involved.
Though I do keep making it a gay robot musical by mispronouncing it Robo-Homo all the time, but that's my problem.
Their Fringe page
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
(sorry for the radio silence, no internet connection last night (argh), and spent the bulk of today dealing with the fallout from my dead car)
Thursday, August 5, 2010 - Fringe Day 1
5:30
Open & Affirming Fairy Tales (Top 10) - Rarig Arena
AWOL Productions
For all the reasons listed here
Their Fringe page
7:00
Yvette (Top 10) - Theater In The Round
Action Theater Project
For all the reasons listed here
Their Fringe page
8:30
Rachel Teagle Believes In Ghosts (returning favorite) - Rarig Xperimental
Rachel Teagle
For all the reasons listed here
Her Fringe page
10:00
Aardvark Fandango (returning favorite) - Southern Theater
Third Rabbit Dance Ensemble
"Nine succinct dances in jazz and modern styles. SAGE award-winning choreographer John Munger shows his versatility once again. Recommended for people new to dance. Guest artists from Fringe on each show."
John Munger has always been my ambassador to the dance world. He showed me that dance could be fun and enjoyable, and continues to introduce me to new dancers and choreographers, and expand my horizons to find new modes of movement I like to watch. It's why he was on my pre-Fringe Top 10 list in 2007, and why last year's My Body Made Me Do This was more in a long line of 5 star fun from his Third Rabbit Dance Ensemble. It's a great way to cap off our first day of Fringing, and a great addition to anyone's Fringe schedule.
Their Fringe page
********************************
Friday, August 6, 2010 - Fringe Day 2
5:30
A Nice Guy's Guide To Awkward Sex (returning favorite) - Mixed Blood Theater
Ben San Del
For all the reasons listed here
His Fringe page
7:00
Thinkingaview/CorresponDance (Top 10) - Southern Theater
Jeffrey Peterson Dance (choreographed by Jeffrey Peterson/Rebecca Katz)
For all the reasons listed here
Their Fringe page
8:30
My Mother Told Me (returning favorite) - Southern Theater
Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw, with phillip andrew bennett low and DRP Dance
For all the reasons listed here
Their Fringe page
10:00
ROBO-homa! A Territory Tale with a Technological Twist (returning favorite) - Rarig Proscenium
Rewired Theatre Company
"In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a desperate loner stumbles upon a tribe of robots programmed to recreate American musical theatre in an attempt to save humanity. As he learns their familiar ways, things take a turn for the deadly. . .
Or is it 'daid'-ly?
And why do they keep calling him Jud? and what's all this talk about a box social?
Are these musical androids pursuing the American dream, or are they intent on destroying the last of civilization?
Find out in ROBO-homa! A Territory Tale with a Technological Twist."
This is the brainchild of Mark Sweeney, another member of Perpetual Motion Theatre Company (responsible for some of my recent Fringe favorites like The Depth of the Ocean and One Night Only With Mike Mahony), striking out on his own for a mix of the classic musical "Oklahoma" and robots.
Do you really need more than musical, and robots?
I don't. Not with Sweeney involved.
Though I do keep making it a gay robot musical by mispronouncing it Robo-Homo all the time, but that's my problem.
Their Fringe page
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Fringe 2010 - Top 10/Top 20 (2010 Edition)
The 2010 edition of my pre-Fringe Top 10 and Top 20 Lists...
If you held a gun to my head and I could only see 10 Fringe shows (that hadn't already been on a previous Top 10 list of mine) they would be...
#1 to #5
- Thinkingaview/CorresponDance (Jeffrey Peterson Dance)
- A Sad Carousel (Pommelhorse)
- O(h) (Casebolt & Smith)
- Missing: the fantastical and true story of my father's disappearance and what I found when I looked for him (Jessica Ferris)
- Can Michael Come Out And Play (Mahmoud Hakima)
#6 to #10
- Yvette (Action Theater Project)
- Open & Affirming Fairy Tales (AWOL Productions)
- Ballad of the Pale Fisherman (Isabel Nelson & Ensemble)
- I Remember You (Jess Dunne and Connor Molloy)
- The First Five Minutes Are Slow (Tamara Ober/Present State Movement)
If you removed that gun from my head and I could see 10 more Fringe shows, they'd be...
#11 to #15
- The Tragedy of Icarus (Joshua Caleb Larson, Suburban Cowboy Productions)
- Grind: The Musical (Theatre Undeclared)
- Sincerity Forever (Arbor Heavy Theatre
- The Squeaky Wheel Squeaks (Squeaky Wheel, Inc.)
- living traces, burning breath (Manhattan Experimental Theater Workshop)
#16 to #20
- The Failed Voyage of the Failed Ororo (Nicholas Clark)
- Naked Yoga (and Other Gay Love Stories) (No More Mr. Nice Gay Theater)
- Skiing On Broken Glass (Still Standing Productions)
- Condoleez's Rites (Tyehimba Leadership Center)
- James T. Wilson (Harold D.)
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
If you held a gun to my head and I could only see 10 Fringe shows (that hadn't already been on a previous Top 10 list of mine) they would be...
#1 to #5
- Thinkingaview/CorresponDance (Jeffrey Peterson Dance)
- A Sad Carousel (Pommelhorse)
- O(h) (Casebolt & Smith)
- Missing: the fantastical and true story of my father's disappearance and what I found when I looked for him (Jessica Ferris)
- Can Michael Come Out And Play (Mahmoud Hakima)
#6 to #10
- Yvette (Action Theater Project)
- Open & Affirming Fairy Tales (AWOL Productions)
- Ballad of the Pale Fisherman (Isabel Nelson & Ensemble)
- I Remember You (Jess Dunne and Connor Molloy)
- The First Five Minutes Are Slow (Tamara Ober/Present State Movement)
If you removed that gun from my head and I could see 10 more Fringe shows, they'd be...
#11 to #15
- The Tragedy of Icarus (Joshua Caleb Larson, Suburban Cowboy Productions)
- Grind: The Musical (Theatre Undeclared)
- Sincerity Forever (Arbor Heavy Theatre
- The Squeaky Wheel Squeaks (Squeaky Wheel, Inc.)
- living traces, burning breath (Manhattan Experimental Theater Workshop)
#16 to #20
- The Failed Voyage of the Failed Ororo (Nicholas Clark)
- Naked Yoga (and Other Gay Love Stories) (No More Mr. Nice Gay Theater)
- Skiing On Broken Glass (Still Standing Productions)
- Condoleez's Rites (Tyehimba Leadership Center)
- James T. Wilson (Harold D.)
***********************
And here's a handy index of links for all blog content on the 2010 Fringe!
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