Remaining Performances:

Sunday, July 10, 2:30 p.m.
Tuesday, July 12, 7:45 p.m.
Saturday, July 16, 4:45 p.m.
Saturday, July 23, 10:30 p.m.

They say: “Do you like Oscar Wilde? Do you like dirty jokes? Well, David Mamet wrote a play just for you! Come see the raunchy tale of two Victorian women with a romantic “understanding” that’s about to become much more complicated.”

Aaron’s take: It’s true: If you’ve always found Oscar Wilde just a bit too tame, this show’s for you. Or if you’ve always thought Waiting for Godot needed more of an Aaron Sorkin touch. Or if you’ve wished Fringe shows had proper lighting and stage direction.

Among the more polished works of the festival, Boston Marriage—the title derives from a turn-of-the-century term for two women cohabitating without financial support from a man—opens on a dispute between lovers Anna and Claire, and for 75 minutes pretty much stays there. Anna has found a new “protector,” a male benefactor who can, in a typical carnal barter, provide for the two women to the end of their days. Except that Claire has scored a new, scandalously young female lover, who is, in true Wildean fashion, inconveniently (if unbeknownst to our heroines) related to the protector.

And so the sharp-tongued protagonists hash it out, and out, and out, until the witty dialogue starts to lose its flair. Thankfully, we’re offered an occasional respite from their banter by the wonderfully acted comic relief, in the form of a Scottish maid named Catherine (the Lucky character, if we’re to keep up the Godot analogy). Of course, Godot himself—here, the protector and the young love—never actually appears, and so the three actresses are left to prop up the show with performances that are energetic enough to fuel the play for its duration, even if they were slightly rough around the edges on opening night. The result is at times delightful, at times a bit trying, but ultimately satisfying.

See it if: You like your dialogue salacious, sultry, spicy, scandalous, and so forth.

Skip it if: You take your tea and crumpets with jam, not anachronistic vulgarities.

Tactile Dinner Car

Fort Fringe – The Baldacchino Gypsy Tent Bar

Remaining Performances:
Saturday, July 9, 3 p.m.
Thursday, July 21, 7 p.m.
Friday, July 22, 7:15 p.m.
Saturday, July 23, 7 p.m.
Sunday, July 24, 2:30 p.m.

They say: The ’09 Fringe Festival gastro-performance HIT is back! and MOBILE! and dishing up bite-sized portions of our “daringly interactive meal-like extravaganza” (WashPost)! Get tickets now to enter this hybrid-art experience, and order from a menu of futuristically reckless, playfully audacious “food.” Book a reservation slot at 15 minute intervals during dinner car operating hours & determine your own run time. Tickets are $12 with Fringe Button.

Aaron’s take: Fringe is a festival of firsts, and on the sixth annual Capital Fringe Festival’s opening night, I experienced my first four-course meal that saw me bound, blindfolded, and noseplugged. This was, of course, to be expected. The menu handed to me with my ten meal tickets explained that Futurist cuisine seeks to separate the experiential art of food from its more prosaic nutritional and satiating elements. Moreover, I’d been here before, at banished? Productions’ suspiciously similar 2009 Fringe show, A Tactile Dinner. So what separates Tactile Dinner Car from its predecessor? In a word, the car — a retro-futuristic pseudo-vehicle out of which the food was (mostly) served, an apparent symptom of the city’s food truck fever. Also quite a bit of added chaos, as the tables were ditched in favor of a gather-round-and-shout-out-your-orders approach.

My meal began with an aperitif of a high-decibel heavy metal song that could only have been called “My Vagina” (coming from the stage next door, through no fault of the tacticians, but not entirely out of place), followed by a first course served via a violent pounce on the floor by one of my two doting (if mostly mute) servertrons, and a second injected directly into my mouth with a syringe by the other. (I won’t reveal which menu item is which, as that would kill the surprise, and the surprise is three-quarters of the fun. The other quarter? Watching the nose-scrunching squeamishness of some of the diners, and I suppose the food itself.) As you’re being subjected to cruel and unusual treatments, it’s hard to escape the sense that the show’s being aggressively avant-garde just for avant-garde’s sake. But it’s just as hard to escape having a good time in the process.

See it if: You’ve always thought you suffered from inadequate prelabial workouts.

Skip it if: You prefer a dinner that includes tables, chairs, and dinner.

Redrum – at Fort Fringe

Remaining performance:

Sunday, July 25 at 5 p.m.

They say: Steeped in tea party hysteria? Try sipping facts. THE TEA PARTY PROJECT exposes the truth behind the tricorn hats – the funny, the bizarre, and the downright horrifying.

Aaron’s take: I’ll say right off the bat that most of the audience on Thursday evening really enjoyed this show. If, in fact, “show” is the right word for it. It is, in some ways, much more of a dramatic lecture, or even a political rally, than a true work of theater. Most in attendance seemed prepared for this, and ready to eat it up. I was not.

I also have to confess that when I’m not Fringing and Purging — which, let’s admit it, is about 99.9% of my life — I spend my days working at a newspaper that covers the Tea Party movement ad nauseam. I am not, then, predisposed to regard a pedantic rundown of the hypocrisy and racism of Tea Partiers as entertainment. But some people are! Maybe you’re one of them! After all, while I shifted in my seat, nearly everyone around me groaned in appreciative disgust as the show’s narrators barked “Fact!” and rattled off statistics about Tea Partiers’ predilection for gun violence and ignorance of our president’s true nationality and religion. And they were grateful when, upon exit, they were handed pamphlets urging them to “TAKE ACTION.”

The Tea Party Project’s performers are clearly very talented and passionate about their cause. But that cause is not theater.

See It If: Your DVR is devoted exclusively to The Ed Show.

Skip It If: You are yourself a Tea Partier. Trust me, this ain’t the show for you.

Goethe Institut Mainstage, 812 7th St. NW

Remaining Performances:

Wednesday, July 14, at 10 p.m.
Friday, July 16, at 8 p.m.
Sunday, July 18, at 9 p.m.
Tuesday, July 20, at 10 p.m.

They Say: ‘Chai’ = ‘Life’ in Hebrew. Based on his award-winning PBS special, Slash Coleman, the son of a Holocaust survivor, creates a profound and engaging storytelling experience that reaches to the core of Jewish Identity and Jewish Life.

Aaron’s Take: Let’s clear a few things up first. Starting with our throats. Now say “identity,” and you’ve got the name of the show. This ain’t about spiced Indian tea — it’s about Jewish people, and one Jewish person (and his family) in particular.

That Jewish person calls himself Slash Coleman, although as with many of the details in his one-man show, it’s hard to know for certain whether that’s one of those poetic-license things. His mother survived the Holocaust as a girl and moved to Virginia, where she met his father, a carjacking gentile. Out came our protagonist, who over the course of his childhood suppressed and then embraced his Jewish identity.

“Attempting to lighten the darkness with humor is a very Jewish thing,” Coleman tells us. “Attempting” is the right word. Coleman gives us nasal Jewish voices, he gives us musical numbers (including semi-mocking renditions of “She Loves You” and “All You Need Is Love” with — Beatles snob here — a few misplaced chords), he gives us wildly implausible stories from his youth. But ultimately, the show feels like something of an apology. “Hey God,” he seems to be saying. “Haven’t always been a great Jew, have I? But check this out: I’ve convinced an audience to listen to me riff on my Jewish identity for an hour. Cool trick, huh?”

If you happen to think so–well, he does Bar Mitzvahs.

See It If: You keep Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul on your nightstand.

Skip It If: You just didn’t get the Coen Brothers‘ A Serious Man.

FlagBoy

Remaining performances:
Sunday, July 26 at 5 pm

They say: FlagBoy, a true and authentic coming-of-age story about family, friends, and HIV. Cornelius Jones Jr., a young southern black boy, explores his sexual identity as he navigates from the urban worlds of Virginia and D.C. to NYC.

Aaron’s take: It takes a good deal of courage to open up one’s life to an audience of strangers. And in some ways, Cornelius Jones’ life is a profile in courage. But I doubt he would describe it that way. More than anything else, FlagBoy is about coming to terms with who you are—and what’s impressive is Jones’ ability to transform that self-awareness into a frank, funny, and revealing one-man show.

There’s no overarching narration or exposition in FlagBoy. Rather, we’re treated to a series of vignettes that take place over the course of Jones’ life. He plays, at various times, his parents, his marching band teacher, his romantic interests, and the anonymous boys who snicker at his homosexuality. But most of the time, he’s himself: a five-year-old budding diva singing in front of the mirror with his mother’s makeup on; a ten-year-old experiencing his first sexual encounter; a fifteen-year old venturing wide-eyed into a gay club; and, finally, a young adult coping with an HIV diagnosis and a volatile sense of self-worth.

By simply being himself, Jones manages to avoid the pitfalls of moralism and self-righteousness. His light tone keeps things fun, but it also holds the audience at arm’s length. You probably won’t leave FlagBoy with a deep sense of indignation over prejudice or a burning desire to change the world—it’s just not that kind of play. Instead, you’re likely to walk away appreciating the guts it takes to lay it all on the line after so many years of frustration and confusion.

See it if: You never tried on your mother’s bra as a kid and admired yourself in the mirror. That’s just wrong. But, uh, it’s sort of comforting to know that some other people did too and turned out okay.

Skip it if: You found the “See it if” in any way disturbing. This isn’t the show for you.

The A Cappella Party

Remaining performances:
Wednesday, July 22 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, July 25 at 4 p.m.
Sunday, July 26 at 12 p.m.

They say: Young lovers, Tony & Julie, get caught up in the competitive world of college a cappella. Both audition for Timbuktu University’s most prestigious (and rival) groups. Will the intense rivalry and hatred between the groups be enough to tear young love apart?

Aaron’s take: Before I begin, I should confess that I entered this show with my fair share of biases. I sang a cappella throughout my time in college — all five years of it. I have participated in the genre at its most orthodox and its most subversive. I have serenaded royalty and national television audiences, and I have performed sans sartorial constraint in front of — well, too many people to count.

The point is, I expected “The A Cappella Party” to strike a chord with me — or, more likely, to hit a nerve. And it did a little of each. It was a stroll down that grimy stretch of Memory Lane that you try to avoid past a certain hour but that still has its charms. All the old familiar places were there: the endless auditions where you pray for decent singers but secretly prefer the comically tone-deaf ones; the intra-group incest and its peculiar aftermath; and the age-old inter-group rivalries (though lacking in the one-sided hijinks to which I’m accustomed).

And so it’s not easy for me to step back and assess the reactions a non-a cappella (read: normal) person might have to this show. An all-a cappella musical is an intriguing concept, and the cast pulls it off impressively, complete with harmonized ditties during set changes. But an a cappella show about a cappella is another story indeed, and one for which many people will have little patience.

So what’s the show like? Think West Side Story — only replace the racial strife with a bitter singing group rivalry and the rumble with an A Cappelloff. Oh, and the orchestra with some doo-wop. But keep most of the strengths: the elegant singing (particularly from the two leads), the colorful characters, and that mischievous sense of fun.

This is a show that manages to trump an uninspired script and uneven songwriting by riding high on its talented performers and refreshing energy. It’s not the kind of singing experience I would have wanted in college, but it was still an hour well spent.

See it if: You don’t have a gag reflex for beat boxing. I sorta do.

Skip it if: You prefer singers with the fashion sense of these dapper gents (yup, shameless self-promotion again):

Pepe! The Mail Order Monkey Musical

Remaining performances:
Saturday, July 18 at 5:30 pm
Wednesday, July 22 at 5:45 pm
Friday, July 24 at 10:30 pm
Saturday, July 25 at 8 pm

They say: “Broadway-style musical based on an infamous true tale: In the spring of 1968, two young brothers test suburban conventions when they order a live monkey from a comic book. The work is a unique collaboration by artists, composers, theater and film professionals.”

Aaron’s take: Ever wonder what would happen if you took The Stepford Wives and added a shit-flinging mail-order monkey? Strain your imagination no longer — Pepe holds all the answers.

Here’s the gist of it: In the seventh circle of suburbia, where routine is king, the mailman serves as entertainer-in-chief, and stifled housewives take solace in the bottle, two brothers — one rebellious and overmedicated, the other so exaggeratedly nerdy that he appears to have suffered from severe prenatal drug abuse — decide, out of boredom, to order a live monkey advertised in a comic book. Of course, the aforementioned (literal) shit hits the (proverbial) fan when the monkey, named Pepe, bursts in on the boys’ mother’s bridge game and abuses her terrifyingly Stepfordian friends.

But oh, what a monkey he is! Brilliantly acted by Rick Hammerly, Pepe only gets to open his mouth once, and it’s the hands-down highlight of the show. The poor primate finds himself trapped in a delivery box and launches into song, lamenting his constrained existence and the lack of suitable spots for defecation. (Yeah, fecal humor comes up more than once in this show. Deal with it.)

Despite consistently strong performances and rousing music, Pepe is far from polished. There are plenty of opening-night timing kinks to be worked out, and a number of the vocal lines seem to have one syllable too many. Plus, there’s a thoroughly dispensable character listed in the playbill as the “Wisdom Tree” who steals valuable time and attention from an act that’s a bit rushed as it is. (The show’s listed at 60 minutes, but in reality it’s considerably shorter.)

Still, this is Fringe as Fringe should be: rowdy, rough around the edges, and unabashedly peculiar.

See it if: You’ve been needing a Pepe-themed sippy cup. Seriously, they sell them at the door.

Skip it if: You don’t want to get hit in the face with stage-poop. Or just sit at least three rows back.

May 39th/40th
The Bodega at The Trading Post

Remaining performances:
Saturday, July 18 at 4 pm
Sunday, July 19 at 6:30 pm
Friday, July 24 at 11 pm

They say: “MAY 39th takes a voyeuristic ride through the morning after Sam and Louisa’s first date. In MAY 40th, Jim takes creative steps to heal Roya’s blindness. It’s 3009 AD: dating still blows chunks, and playing doctor is way more creepy.”

Aaron’s take: Okay, first of all, I’m pretty sure that description is just plain wrong. Unless I completely misinterpreted everything I saw (and there’s not much room for interpretation), Jim’s the one with the eye problems (though not blindness), and Roya’s the doctor who’s fed up with his whining. But no matter. Let’s get to the crux of it.

Every story, play, song, or artwork must on some level answer the question, “Why do we care?” And sometimes “Because it takes place in the future” just isn’t a good enough answer. That Louisa needs to kick Sam out so that she can “log on” rather than “go to work” doesn’t change the fact that we’ve heard this story a thousand times before, and it generally doesn’t interest us unless we’re the ones in bed.

It’s sort of like Brave New World with all the cool stuff taken out. Instead of soma, they have coffee pills. Instead of an alpha-epsilon caste system, they have clones who are known to engage in the occasional pillow fight. And instead of a struggle to break free from the system, they have a “dude’s into chick who’s not into dude” trope played out in two unrelated vignettes.

I don’t mean to imply that the show doesn’t have some legitimate strengths, nor do I doubt that the cast and crew could have put on an impressive performance had the script given them a bit more to work with. But if you like your romances feisty and your dystopias, well, dystopian, you’ll likely find May 39th/40th to be little more than — to borrow Sam’s favorite adjective — cute.

See it if: You want to know how your twelfth-generation clone will woo members of the opposite sex. (Hint: oranges will evidently be instrumental.)

Skip it if: A future that looks like it was created with a “find/replace” tool doesn’t appeal to you.

Remaining performances:
Saturday, July 11 at 6 pm
Sunday, July 12 at 5:30 pm
Wednesday, July 15 at 9:45 pm

They say: “Step into a black hole. The Greek experiment – Prometheus gave fire to mankind. Present – The Large Hadron Collinder searches for the God particle. Big Bang, Ancient Babylon, subatomic particles, tofu, Tuesdays, apples, boxes, Schrˆdinger. How far is too far?”

Aaron’s take: Got that? Me neither.

The difference between you and me, of course, is that I just sat through the damn thing. Somehow, the purplish amoebae squirming across the white backdrop; the pulsating trance music; the vaguely Southern drill sergeant who apparently represented Prometheus and babbled incessantly about Nimrod; and the random invocations of the periodic table didn’t really clear things up for me. Neither did the haphazardly flying and falling objects or the interminable bouts of shouted nonsense that invariably seemed to give way to exercises in conjugation.

But I’ll do my best to describe the plot, briefly: An unconscionably bad reporter interviews a scientist who’s created a Large Hadron Collider that will soon bring about the end of the world as we know it (and yes, they do quote R.E.M.). For reasons unknown to the characters or the audience, this Prometheus fellow enters, spewing pompous drivel that induces his companions to scream and do push-ups and run circles around him backwards. Finally, the universe comes to a merciful end, and we’re treated to an inexplicable dance number.

To its credit, the play does feature the occasional line of humanoid dialogue before succumbing entirely to entropy. Still, I never imagined I’d be so indifferent to Armageddon.

See it if: You need a good mind fuck. Like, really need one.

Skip it if: You haven’t gotten around to the Friday crossword puzzle yet. Or last week’s sudoku. Or that kidney stone you’ve been meaning to pass. Seriously, find something else to do. I hear there’s a theater festival going on…