The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dogs
Redrum at Fort Fringe

Remaining performances:
Sunday, July 19th, 12:00p.m.
Friday, July 24th, 9:30p.m.
Saturday, July 25th, 9:30p.m.
Sunday, July 26th, 12:00p.m.

They say: This funny, political satire about language explores how we communicate and ‘mis-underestimate’ each other. Guided by works of Lewis Carroll and Donald Rumsfeld and inspired by messages of fear and hope, the play reveals the ’sub’ and ‘con’ of ‘text.’

Brett’s take: This is the thing. The thing that stirs the hearts and minds of true Americans. We who hold these times in our hands, we who face hardships from the fruited plains to the mountains’ majesty, we must rise to the challenge of the thing. You know the thing, right? Of course you do, because like all Americans, you believe in something patriot forefathers economic recovery hope.

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The Terrorism of Everyday Life
Warehouse Next Door

Remaining performances:
Saturday, July 18th, 11:30p.m.
Sunday, July 19th, 6:00p.m.
Saturday, July 25th, 9:00p.m.
Sunday, July 26th, 3:00p.m.

They say: Winner of the presitigious Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Ed Hamell combines storytelling, comedy and songs into a brilliantly outrageous theatrical event covering the Beatles, odd jobs, his son’s birth and the shocking death of his parents.

Brett’s take: Phew. Wow. Okay: When, at the end of the show, Mr. Hamell says, “It ain’t for everybody,” he ain’t kidding. It was for me; I think it should be for you; but there is definitely a demographic or two for whom this ain’t. Political conservatives are one. Neat-clean-PC liberals are another.

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Life in Death: An Opera Electronica
Redrum at Fort Fringe

Remaining performances:
Saturday, July 18th, 1:00p.m.
Sunday, July 19th, 5:00p.m.
Friday, July 25th, 11:30p.m.

They say: A one-act opera based on Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Oval Portrait” about an artist who becomes so obsessed with his painting of his bride that he does not realize she is wasting away as he paints her.

Brett’s take Poe and Fringe seem to go together. Maybe it’s something to do with the simplicity and universality of Poe’s tales that makes them easily producible and attractive; maybe it’s the bloody, romantic weirdness that makes them Fringey; but whatever it is, we have in “Life in Death” yet another small gem built on the poet’s words.

The plot is essentially all there in the blurb—a lovely young wife, despite the advice of her father, marries an artist, and then withers and dies as he attepts to capture her beauty on canvas. This is a classic Poe story in the beautiful-women and disturbed-men vein (it would be misogynistic if it were written by anyone but Poe). The point is, like most operas, not the revelation of plot, but rather the indulgence in the passions involved, and in Gregg Martin’s chamber opera version, those passions come across, for the most part, beautifully.

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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Redrum at Fort Fringe

Remaining performances:
Thursday, July 23, 10:00p.m.
Saturday, July 25, 7:00p.m.

They say: Are you lost? Confused? Lacking motivation? Ros & Guil have your answer: certain death and rhetoric! The characters from Hamlet are back as Tom Stoppard’s classic wit and wordplay explore the one thing that will eventually unite us all: death.

Brett’s take As it happens, I love this play; this is third version I’ve seen. I’ve very much wanted to take in a production that cut back on the high-budget excesses of the Centerstage (Baltimore) one I saw—especially since R&G Are Dead was the original Fringe gem. Thus I was fully prepared to adore this show; kindly bear that in mind.

This version is cut-down to one hour, the better to fit the modern DC Fringe’s expectations (the original runs 2 1/2 hours with two intermissions). If ever there was a script that seemed like it could bear a few nips and tucks, but really can’t, it was this one; in fact I almost believed it could. For those unfamiliar, the play concerns the nonadventures of the titular secondary characters from Hamlet, oft confused with one another (even by themselves), borne along by a fate they do not understand, destined to have their casual offstage death related in a single line near the end of Shakespeare’s master tragedy. The pair stay on stage the whole time, debating probability, rhetoric, fate, purpose, death, and the nature of waiting offstage for Hamlet to come do his one big scene with them.

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The Elephant Man – the Musical
The Baldacchino at Fort Fringe

Remaining performances:
Saturday, July 18 at 4:00p.m.
Sunday, July 19 at 8:30p.m.

They say: “The Elephant Man sings and dances his way to Broadway in this hysterical parody of, and love song to, the American Musical. And why not? After all, everybody wants their life to be a musical!”

Brett’s take: Oddly enough, in this day and post-Urinetown age, the parody-musical musical has become a cliché in itself. Take a small cast playing broad archetypes (sleazy carnival owner! self-absorbed doctor! fabulously gay Broadway producer!); add a tight band; tack on an ultra-familiar plot structure (the “I Want” song! the friends split apart, their dreams dashed! the friends reunited, their dreams achieved!); and finally the key element, broad humor mostly derived from the contrast between the shopworn plot and the ridiculousness of the specifics. It’s like a mad lib — [identity of hero] yearns for [dream] but [obstacle]. Insert serious words, and you get a serious musical; insert silly ones – in this case, [the Elephant Man] yearns for [Broadway stardom] but [he’s the friggin' Elephant Man] – and you get a parody-musical.

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Soup!
The Shop at Fort Fringe

Remaining performances:
July 16 at 8:45p.m.
July 18 at 7:30p.m.
July 19 at 2:30p.m.
July 24 at 7:30p.m.

They say: “Come taste Soup! SF’s Trio arrives to DC with a tasty blend of swine flu, trans-fats, and a dash of downward dog. This original concoction of dark comic shorts is guaranteed to induce abdomen-strengthening belly laughs. Served hot!”

Brett’s take: Soup is a good title for this show: like the typical dish of that culinary category, this comedy program provides satisfaction, but is not likely to deliver gastronomic ecstasy. Or to put it less floridly: it’s not bad (nod and smile).

The “six course meal” (as the program presents it) of short sketches debuting here is in the style of latter-day Saturday Night Live—high on conceit and character humor, low on repartee or big punchlines. Though the tagline claims the sketches are “dark comic,” there’s very little actual darkness here; rather, a certain topicality pervades. All six pieces are somehow related to the processes of the body—cooking, childrearing, medicine, yoga, and a certain part of the female anatomy. The thematic unity gives the show a neat modernity and provides more cohesion than the average sketch show, even if the topical musings rarely rise above the level of cleverness to actual insight. (It is not, for example, a revelation that a vast majority of people are medicated nowadays.)

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Leave a Tone After the Message!!!
The Trading Post – The Apothecary

Remaining Performances:
July 12 at 2:00p.m.

They say: Check your mirrors. Where’s True North? Five journeys to find the secret. You can’t get there from here. Who has the key? Where’s the lock-box? Talismans everywhere leading us forward and astray simultaneously.

Brett’s take: “My friend often asks me, ‘What is modern dance? Isn’t it just a bunch of people running back and forth across the stage?’”

That is not overheard gossip outside of this show; rather it is a quote from the first of four modern dance pieces that compose this hour-long show. What follows that quote: the dancers running back and forth across the stage.

With that cheeky self-awareness “Magnetic East” begins, but the promisingly winking tone is, alas, not sustained. The dancers are simply neither talented nor committed enough to blow the cliches up to humorous oversize. And so goes the rest of the hour: watching, I frequently wished to see the same concept performed by more capable dancers, or at least more capable actors: often, even when the movement grew interesting, the dancer’s faces were blank or strained, shattering the illusion (the exception being the pixieish Adrian Moore, whose expressive face showed what might have been).

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4.48 Psychosis
The Bodega at the Trading Post

Remaining Performances:
Friday, July 11 at 4:15p.m.
Sunday, July 12 at 7:30p.m.
Wednesday, July 15 at 8:00p.m.

They say: Awakened by the shock of her own suicide, a woman is driven to reassemble the fragments of a life plagued by unsuccessful therapies and endless medications. Playwright Sarah Kane’s final play before committing suicide at the age of twenty-eight.

Brett’s take: Sometimes the most depressing and harrowing stories can give cause for hope. In the case of 4.48 Psychosis, there are two less-than-joyous tales: the one told inside the play, and the meta-story of Sarah Kane’s decline and suicide. More than perhaps any other play I have ever seen, it is crucial to come into this one with context—which is why this company has, wisely, placed it in their blurb.

From some nameless or unknown author, we might dismiss this play as pretentious. But Kane’s backstory does more than give the show credibility; it makes it definitive. Sitting in the sweltering, cramped new Fringe space called the Bodega (rarely has seeing theater in such a dilapidated chamber been more appropriate), we think, this is the final word on the subject of terminal depression.

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Name: Brett Abelman
Hometown: Born and raised in the D.C. area (Gaithersburg to be specific)
Years in D.C.: All 25 so far
First CapFringe? No, this is my third attending, and my second reviewing.
Shows I’m Seeing: Ha! I Fringe like crazy. This weekend, I am scheduled to attend: Thursday – Cover Me in Humanness, 4.48 Psychosis; Friday – The Escapades of Farty Johnson, Annabel Lee, Leave a Tone After the Message!!!; Saturday – Fictitious the Musical, Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s The Saints, Soup!, Freakshow, A Tactile Dinner; Sunday – Slow News Day, Titus X, Please Listen A Musical Chaos, Elephant Man the Musical, Closet Land. And I’ve got plans with friends Friday and Saturday nights. Sleep? What’s sleep?
Random Thing You Might Find Revealing About My Sensibilities: As a fiction writer/playwright on my own, I count among my influences Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Our Town, Tom Stoppard, David Lynch, Blade Runner, Watchmen (the graphic novel) and the Final Fantasy series of video games. Also Ibsen, Flannery O’Connor, Kafka, and Lord of the Flies.
Shameless Plug: DC Fringe Guide, my opinionated and comprehensive guide to picking and choosing your Fringe tickets.

The 70% Club
Social Hall, Trinity University, 125 Michigan Avenue NE
(Note: The performance changed rooms within the Main Hall at Trinity; they have signs to direct you.)

Remaining Performance:
Saturday, July 26 @ 7:30 PM

They say: “Can a woman find lasting love these days — especially a black woman? Can two people stay together “’til death do us part”? As a couple prepares to say “I Do”, these issues are explored. Will Cynthia and Chris save their marriage? Will Deanna make it out of the 70% Club?”

Brett’s take: Deanna and Jackson are about to get married, but he might have cold feet, or possibly a secret that he’s worried will ruin their marriage.  Chris is not sure he wants to stay with Cynthia after five years of marriage.  Deanna’s friends, including a backstabbing roommate, her sassy mother and a gay man, are preparing for the big event.

You might be able to see from the synopsis, but “The 70% Club” is not a play.  It is a Hollywood romantic comedy on a stage.  That’s not a judgment; the play follows the familiar structures and keeps with the tropes almost exactly.  Considering romantic comedies usually take several Hollywood screenwriters and script doctors to put together, it is impressive that Mary McCallum constructed this on her own – and more so that she then puts in a necessarily likeable appearance playing Deanna, a lead role.

Actually, the script occasionally dips its toes into darker waters, as at the end of each act.  The title is a reference to a New York Times article which reported 70% of black women are without a spouse; although producing company Sista Style Productions “prides itself on providing quality and relevant theatre” only during a scene at Deanna’s bachelorette party (the overall highlight of the evening) does the play actually tackle the subject with any interest.

The actors all acquit themselves well, particularly Jene India who effecitvely plays against her apparent youth to portray Deanna’s mother.  If not for the awkwardness of the musical cues covering transitions, this could very well be filmed and put on screen as part of TInseltown’s menu of romantic comedies.  The play is performed in a massive, echoey ballroom; the sumptuous decor actually matches the plush set (no set designer is credited), although the venue has no place for lighting whatsoever, and thus overhead lights remain on the whole time.  The actors effectively project above their own echoing and the din of an air conditioner.

See it if: You like romantic comedies.

Skip it if: You don’t.  (Sometimes these things are simple.)