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.

Language is some f***ed up s***. Between Orwell and Obama, Lewis Caroll’s Humpty Dumpty, and George W. Bush’s State of the Union, it can prove as often a deadly trap as a means to inspire a nation. In the 13 varied vignettes that wry writer Matt Marrino Michael Merino has alertly assembled and ferried to Fringe after its appearance at Page-to-Stage, the uses, misuses, abuses, disabuses, ruses, muses, tenses and tensions of language and its rocky on-again off-again relationship with the truth are explored and exploded for our entertainment and edification.

It’s the most fun and enjoyable hour of having your very concept of everyday life and communication knocked down and spat upon since David Ives’ All in the Timing.

“Come on,” you say. “Do I need to watch a show about these things?” Sure you do. These things are your life. You’re using these things right now. Right here, on this thing right in front of your things! I’m using them to try and get you to see the show, because I probably think you will be entertained and therefore I will use these things to try and get you to go be entertained! “We all know Bush and Rumsfeld said some weird things,” you say. Ah, but this show has multiple targets in its sights. In gets in digs at corporate logic. A dig or three at the language of playwriting itself. Some nice subtle digs at Obama (maybe)(no)(yes). Even some digs at me, the respondent trying to review this show “afterward.” You are reading something right now that was dug at by the thing that the thing you’re reading was written about. What does that make you?!

Also, the actors are good and the direction is good and the lighting is doubleplusgood except sometimes the cues are like totally off.

See it if: You hvae eevr mrleaevd at the conuvelotd lngagaue of cphrgoiyt ntoecis, lgael dlicesmairs, or tivsleioen avsmrtendeeits, and jsut had to lgauh.

Skip it if: You have understood every word ever said to you and are never swayed by even the most skilled use of rhetoric.

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.

“But wait,” you say; “then who’s left?” My friends, in this day and age we can sometimes forget there are more than just those two groups. Hamell is a representative of an oft-forgot type: the vulgar, in-yer-face, sex, drugs, rock n’ roll liberal. An original glam rocker from the early 70’s, Hamell has not yuppie-ized or lost his edge whatsoever. He looks and dresses like a snazzy jazz man, or a Beatnik, or your cool uncle who can drop references to the Lovin’ Spoonful as quickly as to Wilco. He plays one heckuva mean amped-to-11, beat-up ‘37 Gibson acoustic punkabilly guitar and sings and talks in an unexpectedly high-pitched, fluid voice which somehow makes him seem much more honest than if he sported the gravelly thirty-years-of-booze voice you might expect.

There’s little plot: Hamell races back and forth like a jackrabbit on speed from tongue-twisting observational spoken blues song to racy jokes to unapologetic politicking to surprisingly honest confessions. Although Hamell has a script, he constantly deviates from it, even cutting himself off mid-song to tell us something he was just reminded of; invariably, his extemporaneous aside is hilarious or insightful or both. He informs us that Martin Scorsese is more rock n’ roll than Maroon 5. He sings a song about his love for part of the female anatomy, in which the chorus sounds like a play for the attention of a cat. He lets us know the show was originally based largely on anti-Bush diatribes (which is why the title no longer has much signficance), but now that the Presidency’s changed hands we’ll have to do with a dirty-yet-somehow-flattering Michelle Obama joke. He cuts immediately from his most hilariously off-color song to a blunt and shocking account (and it truly is) of the death of his parents—before going into a second song that almost celebrates it.

How often do you get the chance to absorb the wisdom of a guy who’s seen it all (crack bars, John Lennon, a happy marriage and parenthood) and still retained both his anarchistic political convictions and his raunchy sense of humor? Judging by the award he received from the extremly picky Edinburgh Fringe—not so often indeed.

See it if: You need to get yourself shocked, thought-provoked, enlightened, entertained, challenged, or tickled pink. Or  you’d like to shout “Fuck it!” in chorus with an audience full of young and old.

Skip it if: When Hamell says, “I know my demographic,” he’s not talking about you—i.e., you can’t deal your sensibilities towards Bush, euthanasia, feminism, casual drug use, Obama or music being offended.

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.

Don’t let the “electronica” scare you away; only the occasional synth-wash crops up—the score is largely strings and keys, augmented by a live violinist and percussionist. Only that percussionist’s blip-y drum pad sounds out of place (a more natural timbre would be easy to achieve); otherwise, the music is gorgeous, full of foreboding, recalling in its Gothic grandeur the best in film and video game music. The singers are in fine form; Tad Czyzewski, in particular posseses a velvety, seductive tone as the Painter. One member of the cast, Young Emily, doesn’t sing, but rather dances, and is played by different women on each night. I saw Mary Werntz, whose only other appearance is July 18; and while I can’t speak for the other performer, I can say Werntz was utterly fantastic, capable of conveying more emotions in a single glance than some actors can do with a monologue. Set designer Rick Lenegan deserves mention for his evocatively simple setup: a triangular seat for Emily (the Wife), mirrored in a triangular frame for the Painter’s easel, both painted the sanguine color of Redrum’s walls.

The show is not without flaws. Although I haven’t seen Magnum Opus, I can tell you nearly everything Brian said in his review of it holds true here; besides that both pieces are pocket operas and both feature Czyzewski, “Life in Death” is occasionally a little plainly staged, the singing outshining the acting. Redrum swallows much of the sound; I could discern few of Bridgidt Eversole’s words as Emily when she hit the top of her register. Finally, the play ends on an almost dismissive note, the tragic buildup nearly undone. Inthe end, though, it adds up to an occasionally lovely—albeit occasionally perfunctory—cameo delight.

See it if: You saw Magnum Opus and liked it; or you can savor the thrill of a suspenseful, doomy setup sans a powerful payoff.

Skip it if: You’re looking for 1) plot 2) laughs 3) sex 4) rock n roll 5) techno 6) blood or 7) a crash cymbal played with a violin bow. Oh wait, see it if you you’re looking for that last one.

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.

Therein we have the first problem with this production. In a play about two men waiting, cutting two whole acts into forty minutes removes all the sense that they’ve actually been waiting very long. The magic of the play lies in watching the pair get tied up in philosophical knots, in seeing a couple of ‘little people’ like ourselves try and make some sense out of the empty gaps of time between fateful encounters; instead, this production comes off like Stoppard’s greatest hits (and not even all of them—no “We’re actors; we’re the opposite of people!”) sans the connective tissue of gloriously, methodically mounting tension. The pacing becomes more natural in the well-staged final act (on the boat to England), but even then, a most important death scene is rushed.

The other problem lies in the execution. What I had hoped for was a stripped-down approach to the play, in which the words were allowed to stand on their own. However, the performances too frequently undermine Stoppard’s text. This was the third performance of five; stepping on cues and forgetting lines can no longer be chalked up to early-run stumbles—particularly when the lines being quashed are some of Shakespeare’s most famous (Hamlet says “Except my life” three times, folks). The most egregious offender in this regard—and the most disappointing, because her tough-yet-weaselly characterization was otherwise so entertaining—was Prairie Griffith as the Player, who needed at least one reminder of her lines onstage. Likewise, Aubri O’Connor and Tiffany Garfinkle are temperamentally well-cast as the hapless title clowns (I’ll pause to mention that this is an all-women production; the gender-switching neither adds nor detracts), but too often do not grasp that in order to sell Stoppard’s (and Shakespeare’s) lines, they must play them as if they believe what they are saying, even when their characters are being incurably thickheaded. This was evidenced in many of Stoppard’s most reliable metaphysical twisters and laugh-lines (”Eternity’s a terrible thought, I mean where’s it going to end?”) falling flat. The pair was better at selling the emotional lives of the characters and capturing the competitive-but-codependent relationship between them.

Do not get me wrong; for frequent stretches of the play, O’Connor and Garfinkle held me with Stoppard’s wit. The problem was inconsistency. On the other hand, the young lady who claimed to “hate going to theater” sitting behind me loved it; so with that in mind I will venture the See-and-Skip-It-Ifs:

See it if: You’ve no familiarity with the play, and don’t think you could ever sit through more than 60 minutes of wordy theatre.

Skip it if: You want to know what all the fuss with this play is about; or, you do know what all the fuss is about.

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.

If you understand what I mean and are familiar with the form, you already know what this show is going to be like. It’s a competent example; no Urinetown, to be sure, nor even a Xanadu or a Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical, but the performers are skilled, with particular kudos to Roger Mulligan (as John Merrick) for managing punchlines while burdened with a giant packing-tape-and-plastic-cup head. The jazzy trio plays catchy tunes in familiar styles (“He’s the Elephant… MAN! The Elephant… MAN!”). The humor is irreverent, and while funny, it is nevertheless often predictable: the plucky heroine tells the loveless Elephant Man that she likes him because he treats her like a human being, while all those other guys just ogle her breasts (she demonstrates her bosom), ass (she demonstrates) and legs (she demonstrates), and oh, “did [she] mention her full and buoyant breasts?” “They are rather buoyant,” he replies.

In a Fringe festival, a show that rests upon playing loose and vulgar with musical clichés might, oddly enough, be too conservative in its own way to really fit. (Or maybe it’s just at the Capital Fringe, because this show was well-received in New York.) At this Fringe, there are musicals weirder than this being played without the audience-winking that emerge all the funnier for it. Up against bloody punk rock Shakespeare, a robots-vs-farmers melodic musical and… well, Dizzy Miss Lizzie, something like this just seems… plain.

See it if: Hearing the original Elephant Man quote “I sometimes wonder if my head is so big because it is so full of dreams” twisted into “I sometimes wonder if my head is so big because it is so full of Jim Beam” makes you chortle.

Skip it if: A Fringe show picking on Broadway seems to you like it’s missing the point.

Soup!

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.)

Around here, I would usually like to quote a joke or two to give you a sample of the style of humor, but I strain to recall any. The show’s main flaw is that it’s just not that hilarious. Performer-writers Gabrielle Fisher, Noah Kelly, and Pardis Parsa are high-quality character actors, and the topical focus keeps the pieces engaging, but each ten-minute sketch only generates about… oh, two audience-size belly laughs plus the occasional chuckle. At their best, the sketches sustain a mild amusement; take the one called “Baby Rent-a-Center,” in which a horribly irresponsible woman attempts to, yes, rent a baby, while her husband devolves into an overgrown child whining on the floor.

These folks have some considerable talent as performers; with some improvement as writers, they could put on one heck of a smart comedy show.

(Note of full disclosure: I ran a little late and missed the first few minutes of the first sketch [shh, don’t tell the box office about the late seating]. However, I don’t think all of the laughs were packed in that fraction of the show.)

See it if: You are especially tickled by the idea of a woman talking to her vagina, even if no actual jokes are uttered in the process.

Skip it if: You’ve only got a few Fringe tickets and want to squeeze maximum laugh-to-dollar value out of them.

Leave a Tone After the Message!!!

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).

The second piece, “Roma,” is a whimsy about two travelers in the Italian capital. It succeeds in creating gentle tension through a sine-wave-like oscillation between the dancers first matching exactly and then one echoing the other; but the individual moves are not always inspired. The multi-sectioned final piece, “Ice Cold Melt,” concerns a passage over a freezing mountain. Throughout the show, original music is performed live on instruments organic and electronic, and is often a highlight (the music is composed in the rehearsal process with the company), and in “Ice Cold Melt,” the standout movement is the one wherein Gary Rouzer plays on a series of found percussion objects. He transcends “some guy banging on stuff” and reaches “a musician conveying the sense-experience of iciness by differentiating between the timbres of wood on tin and plastic on aluminum.” But the choreography lacks creative force; too much arm waving-like-a-bird, too much fall-and-get-up.

However (for those playing the home game), I’ve skipped the third piece, and that is because it is perhaps, on its own, worth the price of admission. Choreographer/performer Chris Dohse (not part of the company) plays a sort of pajama-wearing lout, or perhaps a tragic W.C. Fields, captivating us with his haughtiness one moment and then surprising us with vulnerability the next. The performance is not perfect – as with the other dancers, he could use a good artistic shot of mime training – but it is interesting and somehow works with the bits of Alice Through the Looking Glass quoted therein.

The answer to the question about modern dance is this: it is movement freed from classical restraints, capturing emotions, ideas and moments. Dance Performance Group have freed their minds from typical subject matter; but their terpsichore does not live up to their conceptualizing.

See it if: You’re a glass-half-full type, who’ll forgive some flaws for the achievements; AND you’re an intuitive type, who can enjoy evocations without storylines.

Skip it if: You’ve ever been that friend ‘quoted’ above.

4.48 Psychosis

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.

If calling it “the final word” seems a little, well, jokey, than be assured that it’s in keeping with Kane’s vision. Several fine actors stand on chairs, representatives of different aspects of “the collective consciousness of a suicidal mind” (as the program puts it), and wrestle with themselves. This one is vulnerable and needy; that one responds harshly. This other one is pissed off; that one soothes it. And this one (yes) makes a joke, and that one twists the punchline. You might be surprised, but more than once the actors had to pause for the audience’s surprised laughter. Gallows humor indeed.

The play was written by Kane almost as a free verse poem, sans stage direction; it is up to any production to decide who says what, moves where, and even how many actors there are; ten in this production, as few as one in others. Under John Moletress’s masterfully intuitive direction, each of the actors stakes a claim to his or her own personality, and each personality is multi-dimensional; no “I play Anger, you play Despair” crap. Having multiple, believable voices interacting with each other turns out to be the best method to represent our thought process—swirling, colliding, backpedaling, teasing, agreeing, and disagreeing. Reading someone’s diary could not be more personal; you can only read one word at a time, and that is not how we think.

I want to dispel any notion that this play is just a formless outpouring of emotions. The scene is anchored by Sara Barker, the nominal lead, registering and funneling the other aspects, and doing an impressive job of looking like a beautiful, happy 30-year-old one moment, and a defeated, sickly 80-year-old the next. The story has two forces which both pull it forward and save it from repetition. First is the effort of a doctor (or the suicidal mind’s memory of a doctor) to get through to the mind; and the second is the suicidal mind’s love. It is up to you to figure out who the “love” is, but believe that it is a love of a kind no less real than the kind you or I experience.

And there we have the hope that I mentioned. The great tragedy of the play is to learn that the suicidal person’s death—Kane’s death, or the character’s—is the death of a vast and relatable intelligence, and an even vaster heart. It is the sole flaw of that intelligence that it tried to fight against a nihilism that cannot be defeated with reason; and it is, we may perhaps realize at the play’s quietly shattering climax, our own flaw that we could not provide that heart with the love to sustain it. The hope? We see, as the character does at the titular 4:48 o’clock, not psychosis, but rather that in a different situation, the love could prevail.

See it if: Whether or not you have experience with depression—you want to be reminded that even the most downtrodden are still human beings capable of a joke.

Skip it if: You want your entertainments to consist only of entertainment—you want a good time after a hard day of work, not some sort of “emotional journey!”

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.)