Author Archive
Hip Shot: ‘Concord, Virginia’
Concord, Virginia: A Southern Town in Stories
Goethe Institut
Remaining Performances:
Jul 23rd, 7:30 pm
Jul 24th, 6 pm
Jul 25th, 6:30 pm
Jul 26th, 1 pm
They say: “Neofotis performs stories from his prize-winning book, newly published by St. Martin’s Press. With tales of night-swimming lovers, moon-shining old ladies, and gay trials, come witness the 28 year-old love child of Truman Capote and Eudora Welty! (NYC’s Next Magazine)”
Brian’s take: I’ll not mince words: Concord, Virginia, has too many words.
When I’m writing prose, I read my sentences aloud so that I can hear all the over-wrought language I need to banish from the pages. Here, as Peter Neofotis performs aloud two short stories about a small Virginia town, I couldn’t help but wish he’d taken a machete to his manuscript, pruning what are otherwise perfectly compelling stories of thorny phrases like, “She wistfully walked by,” “Helen pointedly replied,” and, thorniest of all, “They ambulated out the door.”
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Hip Shot: ‘They Call Me Mr. Fry’
They Call Me Mister Fry
Goethe Institut
Remaining Performances:
July 25, 4 p.m.
July 26, 5 p.m.
They say: “Welcome Back Kotter vs. COPS, King Arthur vs. No Child Left Behind. Watch this suburban white boy from Indiana battle the students, the establishment, and himself in a South Central classroom. Laughter, tears and extra credit provided. A true story.”
Brian’s take: All right, so I walk out of They Call Me Mister Fry, and here’s my first thought: “Mister Fry Is The Patch Adams Of Education.” (It appears in my mind just like that, with all the capital letters.) Genius, isn’t it? I’m happy, I’m whistling, I’m skipping, I’m handing out Now and Laters to babies, I’ve got the first line of my review.
Not so fast. Turns out I wouldn’t be the first to make the Jack Freiberger-Robin Williams connection.
Shucks.
Hip Shot: ‘The Real Adventures of Tom Mix’
The Real Adventures of Tom Mix
Warehouse – Next Door
Remaining Performances:
July 22, 6 p.m.
July 24, 8 p.m.
July 26, 1 p.m.
They say: “The glamour of Hollywood meets the glory of the Old West in the real life, death-defying adventures of Tom Mix, the first western movie star.”
Brian’s take: Your grandmother’s armpits. The British Open. An assortment of mildly fragrant cheeses. All of these things are wilder than the West portrayed in The Real Adventures of Tom Mix.
Hip Shot: “Deconstructing the Myth of the Booty”
Deconstructing the Myth of the Booty
Warehouse – Mainstage
Remaining Performance:
July 19, 2:15 p.m.
They say: “Sara Baartman? In 1810, she became ‘Hottentot Venus’, toured as a sideshow, her large buttocks displayed. When she died, pieces of her were displayed in a museum. In 2009 the booty is STILL on display! Deconstructing creatively explores body politics.”
Brian’s take: I’m a white guy. For all the jeers I got as a chubby kid on the Skins side of the grade school soccer field, my body has never significantly influenced the way I feel about, perceive, or comport myself. So when the cast of Deconstructing the Myth of the Booty asked audience members to yell out our first impressions after the performance, unlike the woman in front of me, I didn’t quite feel the urge to shout, “Familiar!”
Showmen Showdown: The Controversy Over ‘The Lost Ones’
Thespians have a rich history of bickering. My favorite dramatic duel happened in 1830, at the opening night of Victor Hugo’s Hernani in Paris. Hugo, a romantic, had blatantly ignored a number of theretofore sacred theatrical conventions — a plot that takes place over the course of a single day, for example, and in a single location — things that those of the neoclassical persuasion held dear. So dear, in fact, that at the premiere a brawl erupted between the two theoretical camps, classicists hissing and spitting at romantics, bohemians bludgeoning the bourgeoisie with mockeries, food, even fists. The fighting went on for weeks, forcing Hugo to enlist volunteer bodyguards. If this is what you got after a few infractions of Aristotle’s rules, imagine what those classicists would’ve thought of, oh I don’t know, Bare Breasted Women Sword Fighting, or My Fabulous Sex Life?
I tell this anecdote to broach an unfortunate matter which warrants only brief mention on this blog — a percolating dispute between two Washington theater companies over a production of The Lost Ones that I reviewed (quite positively) this week.
The current production comes courtesy of Spooky Action Theater. Directed by Robert Richard Henrich, performed by Carter Jahncke, it’s an adaptation of a short story by Samuel Beckett called Le dépeupleur. Between 1999 and 2004, SCENA Theater mounted several productions of a similar piece, also called The Lost Ones‚ in D.C. and in Europe, directed by Robert McNamara, also starring Jahncke (and at one point showing in the same space it currently occupies, The Warehouse).
Hip Shot: ‘The Lost Ones’
The Lost Ones by Samuel Beckett
Warehouse – Next Door
Remaining Performances:
July 15 at 8 p.m.
July 19 at 1:30 p.m.
July 23 at 7:15 p.m.
July 24 at 11:45 p.m.
They say: “Closely held. A Beckett gem. Rarely permitted to be played. With scores of tiny puppets, actor Carter Jahncke enacts a mesmerizing text. Beckett’s haunting vision reaches out, enfolds us in a chamber far outside, and deep within the mind.”
Brian’s take: You may want to take a cab home from The Lost Ones, an extended soliloquy so intoxicating that Carter Jahncke, who as The Aged One is the stage’s only breathing player, has to literally shake the scraggly character out of his body before he’s able to bow. Even after the self-exorcism he still seems a tad afflicted — like a shaman returning from a vision quest, or a child who has just seen his grandpa’s ghost.
WANTED: General Comments
All right, fringeguy, you needn’t ask us twice. If people are looking for a place to slap some general comments, do it here, do it hard. We’re certainly not ubiquitous, so tell us about the stuff we’ve missed.
Also, I’m curious what people think so far of this year’s more densely situated venues. I work in the Mount Vernon Square-Convention Center node, and it definitely strikes me as more vibrant than last year, when the venues were spread out across northwest. Then again, maybe it’s just the swarms of middle school tour groups going to my head. (They wear name tags; we wear buttons.)
Leave a comment after the beep. (BEEP!)
Hip Shot: ‘Magnum Opus’
Magnum Opus
Warehouse – Mainstage
Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 12 at 4:15 p.m.
Thursday, July 16 at 5:30 p.m.Saturday, July 18 at 2 p.m.
Saturday, July 25 at 8:30 p.m.
They say: “Robert, a struggling playwright, undertakes a Faustian bargain of inspiration in return for his sanity. Driven by his desire to please his wife Claire and succeed as a writer, he risks his life in return for his Magnum Opus.”
Brian’s take: When he was a kid, my little brother refused to eat eggs. And I remember one morning when, despite his protestations, my mother kept on cajoling him to take a bite — just one bite — until finally he explained, “I like eggs, I just don’t like the taste!”
That’s pretty much how I’d describe my feelings about Magnum Opus, a new opera by the Alterna Opera company. It’s a predictably well-made tragedy: You’ve got your struggling playwright, his casually flirtatious wife, the composer charming her into casual flirtation, and a pair of muses (though they behave more like sirens) whispering some nefarious solutions in the playwright’s ear.
Fringe Blogger Profile: Reed
Name: Brian Reed
Hometown: Shelton, Conn. — proud and glorious home of the Wiffle Ball.
Years in D.C.: Going on one-and-a-half, with a short sojourn in Seattle.
First CapFringe? I may or may not have edited this blog last year. All right, I’m pretty sure I edited this blog last year.
Shows I’m Seeing: Magnum Opus, The Strong Ones, Deconstructing the Myth of the Booty, &c, &c, and so on, so forth.
Random Thing You Might Find Revealing About My Sensibilities: When I was a kid I loved Peter Pan. My fifth birthday party was a Peter Pan party, replete with pirate ship and ticking clock, and not long thereafter I tied my belt loops to the ceiling with a piece of yarn and jumped off a chair in an attempt to fly.
Hip-Shot: ‘If You See Something…’
If You See Something Say Something
Woolly Mammoth Theatre
Remaining Performances:
Saturday, July 26 @ 4 PM
Saturday, July 26 @ 8 PM
They say: “Master storyteller Mike Daisey’s new comic monologue takes aim at the history of the Department of Homeland Security. Combining eye-opening research and witty autobiography, he bores into the dark heart of America to discover the meaning of security and the price we are willing to pay for it.”
Brian’s take: Got some free time this weekend? Oooh, I’ve got an idea–you should pay $20 to let a man sit at a table and talk to you for two hours about the history of American security!
You might think I’m being sarcastic (two hours of a man sitting at a table, you say?), but I shit you not. That is actually what you should do, as long as the man’s name is Mike Daisey, the creator and comic purveyor of the exquisitely conceived If You See Something Say Something. I’ll leave the sarcasm up to him.
There may be no metaphor in security, as Daisey astutely notes, but he certainly injects metaphor (and simile, and irony, and synecdoche, and peripetea, &c, &c) aplenty into this series of monologues–stories, really–which he weaves with enthralling dexterity of voice, tone, gesture, and expression. The show is billed as the story of the Department of Homeland Security, but much of the focus is on the history of the atomic bomb. The piece is obsessively researched, and by interlacing the straight history with his own anecdotes and observations, Daisey is able to infuse a somewhat sterile topic with a folksy, around-the-campfire sensibility. In some of the most disturbing but memorable moments, Daisey is even able to turn the monologue into something of a ghost story–one minute you’re laughing at the foibles of Bernard Kerik, the next minute Daisey is describing in unsettling detail what would happen if Cohen’s neutron bomb were detonated above the theater, and you feel just a bit sick for joking around only moments earlier.
Daisey is one of those people (I’ve seen him before) who can make anything scintillating, so even if you proclaim to be uninterested in neutrons and bombs and the Cold War and deserts and Tom Ridge and that kind of thing, go if only to spend some quality time with Daisey. It’s like taking one of your favorite nonfiction authors–I’ll use Ian Frazier but you can fill-in-the-blank–crossing him with your favorite stand-up comedian–let’s say, oh, I don’t know, Robin Williams–and hunkering down in a bar for a few hours to discuss a subject about which he’s read every book possible.
See it if: You’ve ever been frisked ever-so-scandalously by a security guard.
Skip it if: You are overly paranoid about getting radiation poisoning.
