Skywriter
The Shop at Fort Fringe

Remaining performances: July 25 at 9 p.m.; July 26 at 4:45 p.m.

They say: Frank Fletcher has a tough job as a DC public school teacher. He also thinks he’s a superhero. When another teacher uncovers his secret identity, Fletcher weighs whether his alter ego is a force for good or a dangerous delusion.

Annie’s take: It is tough to come up with more frustrating realities than the state of public education in American inner cities. One such reality, however, might be a poor attempt at satire of this problem. Set in a middle school that struggles to make Annual Yearly Progress, Angry Young Theater Company’s Skywriter posits that it takes a superhero to uplift the minds of the degenerate urban youth whom the school is struggling to serve. While the play’s resolution congratulates the hard-working and inspirational teacher (as well as an earnest principal with a letter of resignation stewing in a desk drawer), its trite portrayal of how one class-skipping, bad-mouthing pest can achieve academic transformation at the hands of an English teacher wearing superhero spandex under his tweed blazer comes off as mildly offensive.

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Jamaica Farewell
Goethe Institut

Remaining Performances:
July 18, 9:30 p.m.; July 19, 1 p.m.

They say: “Jamaica. Revolution. Visa. Impossible. CIA. Seduction. Desperation. A dream. Heartbreak. Handsome. American. Customs. Million dollars. Duffel bag. Machetes. Goats. Prostitutes. Bullets. Adrenaline. Kerosene. Run for your life. Based on a true story.”

Annie’s take: No doubt you have at least a couple of friends, relatives, etc. who are known for their proclivity for extensive and often exhaustive storytelling. Whether these stories sprout up during your dinner conversation, your lunch break or your experience of that third dirty martini, they hold the potential to lull you to the brink of unconsciousness or inject you with a hearty dose of insight into the human condition. You can almost smell an “extensive and exhaustive” story from its opening words: take, for example, “Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus,” or, if it’s been a while since high school Lit, “This one time, at band camp…” Whether the yarn-spinner be Homer or American Pie’s red-haired hussy-in-disguise, there exists a dangerously fine line between compelling and mind-numbing storytelling.

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Four Dogs and a Bone

Goethe-Institut Mainstage

Remaining performances: July 11 at 3 p.m.; July 12 at 1 p.m.; July 25 at 8:30 p.m.

They say: How many butts do you have to sniff to claim top dog in Hollywood? John Patrick Shanley’s fast past romp through Hollywood’s flea-bitten underbelly.

Annie’s take: Entering a play that paints a warts-and-all (quite literally—I’ll get to that later) portrait of four megalomaniacal Hollywood prototypes in a humble-ticket-prices-and-all Fringe Festival smacks, at first glance, of self-righteous finger-pointing. However, when the script is outstanding and the acting can do it justice, the production inspires a rather fresh rumination on both the craft of making theater and its participants’ often harebrained motivations for doing so. Throw a couple of tables, liquor bottles, makeup cases, and low-res, scene-establishing screen projections into a tiny theater, add four characters spouting metaphor-laden lines intended to screw one another over, and you’ve got yourself a pretty compelling show.

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Name: Annie Galvin
Hometown: DC, by way of Chicago
Years in D.C.: 15-ish
First Cap Fringe? Round two for me—last year I heard there were naked dudes onstage, and obviously I showed up.
Shows I’m Seeing: Four Dogs and a Bone, Jamaica Farewell, Skywriter, and Annabel Lee, among others.
Random Thing You Might Find Revealing About My Sensibilities: At age 11, I was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Award at my summer camp for my star turn in Christopher Durang’s The DMV Tyrant. My career—thespian and otherwise—has been pretty much downhill since then.