Remaining Performances:  Friday, July 24th at 8:30 p.m.; Sunday, July 26th at 6:30 p.m.

They Say:  “The fifteen year high school reunion of the Fighting Eagles brings out the teenager in 7 former friends. But as the drink count rises and secrets are revealed, will they manage to stay that way?”

Glen’s Take: The above description promises — or threatens, I suppose, depending on your point of view — a tried and true reunion-sparks-shattering-revelations drama in the That Championship Season mode.  Which is essentially what Late Bloomers and Glory Days delivers — you’ll know you’re on rails from beginning to end, but the track runs pretty smooth.

Local playwright Allyson Currin knows that we ‘ve seen this all before, and plays with those expectations a bit.  That shattering revelation is deliberately anti-climactic, and — mercifully — has nothing to do with anyone coming out of the damn closet because that shit is, can we all agree, A) not particularly shattering, and B) SERIOUSLY tired, already.

But Jessica North Macie’s direction doesn’t seem to be coming at Currin’s script from any particular angle.  True, this  allows us a clear, unobstructed view of the performances.  It doesn’t, however, give us much else to hang onto, and the evening starts to seem more like a tag-team actor showcase than a narrative about which we’re supposed to care.  This feeling is underscored at the close of the play, which calls for characters to make a symbolic gesture that, in this production, comes off more capital-S-Symbolic/on-the-nose/writerly than real.

But if this show’s intent is simply to introduce us to some actors, let’s play along.  All the performers are graduates of DC’s National Conservatory of the Dramatic Arts, and they do solid work.  Oh, there’s some stiffness, some rushing through lines.  And with the notable exceptions of Leigh Anna Fry and Michael Harris, there’s also a vague but pervasive reluctance to commit to the script’s comic touches, to really hit the jokes.

But again: You can go into Late Bloomers and Glory Days confident that you’ll get out of it … pretty much what you imagine you’ll get out of it.  Which, people tell me, is what going to a high school reunion feels like.

(Note: Harris is not scheduled to appear in Sunday’s production; Fry will not appear in tonight’s.)

See it if: You’re on Facebook to reconnect with high school friends.

Skip it if:  You’re not on Facebook, because you see very little daylight between the phrase, “You can reconnect with people from high school!” and the phrase “You can get spastic colon!”

Remaining Performances: Wednesday, July 22nd at 10 p.m.; Friday, July 24th at 8 p.m. [SOLD OUT]; Sunday, July 26th at 2 p.m.

They say:  “Riding on the sold-out success of last year’s Chocolate Jesus and Revenge of the Cat-Headed Baby, SpeakeasyDC presents yet another sure-to-be-Fringe-fave, THE SIN SHOW featuring true stories about pride, greed, envy, sloth, gluttony, lust, and wrath.”

Glen’s take:  Look, the SpeakeasyDC guys don’t need our help — they’ve a proven record at Fringe as both vets and all-stars, they’re selling out shows, they got a rave in the paper blog of record.  So they really don’t need us to tell you the show’s pretty great, but they’re getting it anyway, because, turns out? The show’s pretty great.

It’s great for the reasons their previous Fringe outings were:  With seeming effortlessness, these stories, and these storytellers, provoke precisely what they mean to — gasps, laughter (raucous and rueful, in turn),  along with quieter, more introspective reactions.

That seeming effortlessness is part of the game, because it’s clear that all seven performers — though they may evince varying degrees of comfort in front of an audience, or at least an audience this size — have worked over their stories,  shaped them, honed them into the versions they present to us.

This is particulalry true of the two tales that bookend the evening:  John Kevin “Gluttony” Boggs’ sardonic account of quitting cigarettes, and the emporkening that ensued; and Seaton “Envy”  Smith’s blisteringly funny screed against an old college classmate, which is nothing less than a master class in comic timing.

So, yeah, it’s great.  But let’s just note that their previous Fringe outings featured fewer performers (Chocolate Jesus: Four, Revenge of the Cat-Headed Baby: Five) in more intimate spaces, so those evenings felt satisfyingly cohesive.

The Sin Show is looser, and considerably longer, and more uneven.  With seven performers, it’s easier to discern those who still need to work on their confidence, and those — like Saurabh “Lust” Tak, whose spin on the line “a warm TICKLE ran through my body” reduced the dude in front of me to boar-like snorting  — who’ve got it going on.

See it if: That Spalding-Gray-shaped hole in your heart? Yeah, it’s still there.

Skip it if:  “Shaped? Crafted?  That’s bullshit — Fringe means fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants!  First-thought-best-thought!  Boy, I’m angry about how unfair that is, but I will use this anger to inform my blowetry.”

Yes, the venues are hot; we’ve all watched drops of persperation fly from performers’ noses every time they turn their heads, describing graceful, albeit funky, arcs over the footlights. Let’s just remember that as uncomfortable as you feel — sitting there in the dark, fanning yourself with your program like a pasha — the performers have it worse, by an order of magnitude.  Or at least, once you factor in costumes, lights and physical exertion, by a good 10 degrees Farhenheit.

But that comes with the territory.  Herewith, we honor those who’ve given their lives, or at least their ability to thumb-wrestle for a while, to Fringe.

Our first honoree is hardcore, people.

Who: Lynn-Jane Foreman, actor

Show: Missing Pages

How: Scripted onstage tussle becomes unscripted onstage fall. A nasty one.

Didn’t have room for it in the review, but wanted to honor Foreman’s grit.  She takes a spill, landing on her tailbone, smacking her head against the stage.  Does she take even a beat to gather herself?  To take a breath, to shake it off?  She does not.

She’s back in the scene immediately — delivering her lines sitting up on the floor until getting helped to her feet.  Play goes on for a bit, during which time she shows not a trace of discomfort.  Has some difficulty leaving stage after the curtain call, and the call goes up for a doctor.  She is driven to the emergency room.

Diagnosis:  Concussion, broken thumb.

I am reliably informed that she’s doing all right, and will be back for tonight’s performance and the others.  (I am also informed that Fringe has added a second air conditioner to the Redrum venue, which will be a relief to her fellow performers, especially poor Christopher Guy Thorn, who spends the show in a heavy army jacket.)

You got a nomination for the Fringe Hall of Ouchy Fame?  Someone faint from the heat, slip in a pool of their own sweat, or just spill your beer at the Baldacchino?  Tell us about it below.

Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 19th at 6:45 p.m.; Thursday, July 23 at 5:30 p.m.;  Saturday, July 25th at 4:30 p.m.; Sunday, July 26th at 2:15 p.m.

They say: “A World War II hero, his daughter and Vietnam veteran son confront the secrets that haunt and divide them. This powerful new drama, lightened with laughter, was inspired by the author’s father, whose war diary she discovered after his death.

Glen’s Take:  ”Emerging” local playwright Susan Austin Roth is a well-known and highly successful writer of gardening books, so should you see other reviews of Missing Pages busting out a lot of cheap gardening puns, you’ll know why.  Not here, though.  No, faithful F and P reader, here you will find no references to grafting, cutting or pruning;  that is my solemn vow.

A play that revolves around Alzheimer’s has a tough row to hoe.

Senile dementia is characterized by repetition, and that needs to be conveyed; one of Roth’s subjects, here, is the frustration that accompanies caring for aging parent.  For that frustration to register, we have to feel a bit of what is felt by her characters, doting Charlotte (Lynn-Jane Foreman) and taciturn Vietnam vet Andy (Joe Peck) as they struggle to deal with George, their alternately sweet and belligerent father (Robert Leembruggen).

That their father repeats himself so often is dramaturgically fraught, because in drama, repetition good, repetitiveness bad.  Those  moments when Leembruggen’s proud WWII-vet becomes lucid enought to chastise his son for being a deserter, coward and traitor feel real, all right, but they don’t move – they hit such similar dramatic beats that it begins to feel as if whole scenes have been cut-and-pasted throughout the script.

That would be a bigger problem if Leembruggen weren’t so appealing an actor — and one confident enough to convey George’s disease without broad, movie-of-the-week strokes.

Roth is on to something, here; she’s crafted some interesting parallels between father and son.  At this point, she’s still pushing them at us instead of letting us find them, which which is why, I think, the scene in which one of the father’s WWII memories combines with the son’s ‘Nam flashbacks feels as needless and over-the-top as it does.

Director Diana Denley tries to make it work, and is elsewhere quite nimble at the kind of low-fi stagecraft Fringe demands, but it’s no use.

Even so, Roth’s ending is satisfying and legitimately moving. Once her script loses its rhetorical training wheels, and she excises from her dialogue the kind of pre-digested bits of language more apt to crop up on TV than in real life (viz: “And what about what I need?” “He’s your father, too!” and “I know, Dad. I know.”) Missing Pages will be get leaner, tighter, and more effective.  If this current Fringe staging feels a litle shaggy and unkempt, well [GARDENING REFERENCE REDACTED.]

See it if:  You approach Fringe like a theater workshop, and are looking to discover a serious, rough but promising work.

Skip it if: You approach Fringe like last call at Camelot. (Woo!  Boobies!)  Or the phrase “My war was different than your war” sets off alarm bells.

Remaining Performances:
Saturday, July 18th, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, July 19th, 3:45 p.m.

They Say: “The romantic life of a contemporary Irishwoman is illuminated in bittersweet, often comic tales of coming of age, illicit love affairs gone wrong, an unforgettable plan for revenge, and its surprising aftermath.”

Glen’s Take:  Scheinman’s preview precis sheds a bit more light:  ”One-woman show; reminiscences of a brandy-swilling Irish lass delivered in a soupy brogue.”

The one woman in question, possessed of both brandy and brogue, is one Polly MacIntyre, whose show takes the form of four brief slice-of-life monologues — each one, in this case, sliced neatly from the life of a character named Kathleen.

We first meet her as teenager as she recounts to us — in hushed, embarrassed whispers — the tale of her decidedly unromantic deflowering.  A quick backstage change of hairstyle later, and a slightly older Kathleen shares with us the tale of her abortive romance with a pompous musician.  Next, she finds herself thrust into the role of mistress, afloat in a romantic limbo that’s beginning to wear at her nerves, and finally we come upon a middle-aged Kathleen waiting in a Paris cafe, attempting to figure out just how she ended up there.

MacIntyre has given the thing a crisp narrative shape, and each monologue is flecked with lovely bits of language and the kind of small, telling detail that turns anecdote into art.  Tonally, however, the evening never moves off the starting block — each vignette covers the same, smallish patch of emotional terrain;  perhaps inevitably, MacIntyre’s performance keeps hitting the same beats, and the emotional delineations between the stages of Kathleen’s life blur together.

“Bittersweet?” Well, sure — but unvaryingly so;  I found myself wishing for MacIntyre to connect more directly with the audience, to let us feel the bitter, and the sweet, more plainly.  In the closing monologue of She Moved Through the Fair, Kathleen arrives at an interesting, introspective place – and if what preceded it had evinced a cleaner dramatic arc, we might have arrived there with her.

See it if:  Emotional arc, schmemotional arc:  You’re just up for some stories in which men are revealed as the slags and weasels you know them to be.

Skip it if:  The interstitial Celtic music will give you brown acid Enya flashbacks.

Remaining Performances: Wednesday, July 15th at 5 p.m.; Friday, July 24th at 8:00 p.m.; Saturday, July 25th at 10:30 p.m.

They Say: “This (sic) satirical musical comedy. Hugh Diffindoffer, a young immigrant from ‘Nonexzistia’ comes to America. His journey leads him to become The Number One Bodybuilder in the World, Movie Star in the World and finally, Leader of the Free World.”

Glen’s Take: They also say: “127 Minutes.”  So yeah; know that.

Look, the songs by Tom Hyndman are solid, the harmonies both precise and euphonious, and the band, led by Mary Sugar, is tight.  They sound great — yes, grampa, they’re loud (amplifiers + teensy space = scowls from the Olive-Garden early-bird contingent) — but they’re great.

The music itself is pleasingly catchy;  it’s lyrically that the songs underperform.   Many of Hynder’s most hummable tunes dispense with the verse as quickly as possible so they can head straight for the chorus and homestead there, but that’s par for the Broadway course.

The problem — and it gets to be a big one, after the first hour — is that those choruses, in true “The Song That Goes Like This” fashion, tend to consist of a given song’s title, repeated and repeated and repeated.  That’s a good way to pump up a song’s earworm potential, certainly (you’re not gonna forget that “Across the Bay” refrain anytime soon, pal), but it serves to makes Hyndman’s songwriting seem flatter, thinner, than his agreeable melodies would indicate.

What’s filling the gaps between the songs is a lot of Schwarzenegger jokes, which come off more than a little dated and more than a lot corny-as-hell. (Number of times, by my count, that the script goes to the “I’ll be back” well: Five.)

But you can’t say that Harv Lester, as the Schwarzenegger stand-in, doesn’t commit himself to the Ah-nuld impression that hacky stand-ups have been doing since, oh, the late Jurassic. And Gillian Shelley, as the ersatz Maria Shriver, knows that she can get a laugh with even a lousy joke by delivering it with a quick tilt of the head downstage and a faraway expression.

But the hour-and-change running time (they must have done some cutting; they need to do more) and broadside-of-a-barn satirical targets (video clips parodying Entertainment Tonight bring the proceedings to a screeching halt, every time) make for slow, and only fitfully entertaining, going.

See it if: You’ll gladly suffer some tired puns for some catchy ditties, and believe cheesiness to be its own reward.

Skip it if: You reached for the remote whenever “Pumping Up with Hanz and Franz” came on. TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO.

The Bedroom at Fort Fringe

Remaining Performances:

Just the one:  Wednesday, July 15 at 8:00 p.m.

They Say: “The fifth century meets the twenty-first when Lance-Corporal Pellinore is shipped off to Baghdad.  It’s Arthur’s story…as you’ve never heard it before.”

Glen’s Take: Well, that doesn’t really cover it.  No, if you want to know what to expect, there’s a few lines from the program that’ll do the job better.

I’m not talking the extensive bibliographic exegesis of source texts, or the quotes from Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Sir Thomas Malory and Dennis (”You can’t expect to weild supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!”) the Peasant.

No, it’s this bit, from the cover:  ”The Rise of General Arthur, an original presentation of stories from a theatrical work-in-progress by phillip andrew bennett low”.

Got that?  Here’s the take-home:  1. Stories. 2. Work-in-Progress. (And okay, 3. Name in lowercase. Pretension threat level: orange.)

What Low is up to here is a staged reading of his original prose poem.  It’s never anything less than interesting, but neither is it theater — not quite, not yet.  Theatricality, yes:  There’s some props, and Low does step away from the reading stand now and again to give particular scenes some added dimension.

He’s also brought some serious scholarship to bear on this Gulf War iteration of the Arthur myth. (Technically the Pellinore myth, I suppose, as Arthur and Merlin don’t really show up for a while.)  Maybe you’ll feel, as I did, the dead weight of all that scholarship pressing down on the evening, but you likely won’t mind, as Low has a hell of an ear for language. Those are some downright beautiful sentences he’s uttering up there, and if they sound too written, and inextricably bound to those pages he’s turning so carefully, well, big deal: the guy gives good aural.

He seems to know this, and can’t help a bit of preciousness from leaking in to his delivery — he clearly loves this work, these words. Once he begins to love them enough to stop reading them and start really performing them, I daresay we’ll love them too.

See it if:  The whole go-for-broke, slapped-together nature of Fringe has begun to pall, and you’re in the mood for something that has clearly been wrought – carefully, meticulously (and, yeah, okay, a little over-) wrought.

Skip it if:  You used to chafe at storytime.

Remaining Performances:
Sunday, June 12 at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday, June 19 at 3:45 p.m.; Saturday, June 25 at 10:00 p.m.

They Say: “Expect the unexpected in this musical story about lost souls condemned to perform A Christmas Carol in Hell until they get it right. If the show is REALLY good, some souls might get out …. HONEST!”

Glen’s Take: Hoo boy.

Okay. One of the great things about Fringe is the way it gives artists a chance to perform before audiences they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. Let’s not forget that allowing less-than-seasoned performers, directors and writers a chance to ditch the floaties and test themselves in open water is a Really Big Deal.

In return, we Fringe audiences get the chance to make exciting new discoveries. The price we pay for that opportunity, of course, is risk of disappointment. Serious disappointment.

Crushing, soul-sickening, is-this-thing-really-two-hours, Jesus-fuck-I-need-a-beer disappointment.

But we have a responsibility, too. When we see something we love, we must needs tell others about it. And when we see something which gives rise to that particular species of disappointment delineated above, we are charged with the responsibility not to be complete dicks about it. (That’s right, I’m calling you out, continuously sniggering skinny-jeaned hipsters two rows behind me. I mean, I understand where you’re coming from — trust me — but c’mon.)

So let’s not be complete dicks and merely note that The Devil’s Christmas Carol, Greenbelt’s OutoftheBlackBox (all one word, they insist) Theatre Company’s world-premiere musical, evinces more “hey-gang-let’s-put-on-a-show” gumption than discernible craft. The acting’s mostly of the saw-the-air-too-much-with-your-hand variety, the book repeats and repeats and repeats its points, and the songs tend toward listless, dirgy, unmelodic plaints, like the first act’s “Little Mistakes”, sung by an obstetrician who’s botched a delivery: (”Little mistakes/Little mistakes/Everyone makes/Little mistakes”) or the the third(!) act’s “Chains (or, What the Dickens?)”: (”Shake your chains/Shake your chains/Shake your cha-aiiiins.”)

A note about the notes: The actors sing along to pre-recorded music, which is a tremendously difficult thing for veteran performers to pull off, so it’s no suprise when most of the cast keeps coming in too late or too early. The reason it’s so noticeable is that the melody track, which is perhaps intended to guide the vocals, overpowers them instead; you can only hear the words being sung when the cast’s timing is off, which is dismayingly often.

The blessed exception: Kayla Dixon, an 8th grader at Hyattsville Middle School, has the pipes — and the chops — to hold her own against the Casio Tone’s atonal oppression. She’s a natural, a diamond in the (really, no kiddng, you have no idea how) rough. Young Zachary Pinkham, as a quick-to-anger infernal potentate, seems equally at home onstage; get this kid something more substantive to play with.

So, yeah. Some sparks of light, so it would be a mistake to call The Devil’s Christmas Carol completely inept.

But, good Lord, it isn’t ept.

See it if: You are enlightened enough to find pleasure in witnessing a group of perfectly nice people who clearly love the theater throwing themselves in with both feet. Or you are a black-hearted, tiny-souled, skinny-jeaned hipster looking for a Guffman fix.

Skip it if: You are anyone else.

Vincent

Remaining Performances:
All shows at 7:30 p.m.:
Friday, July 10th; Saturday, July 11th; Sunday, July 12th; Thursday, July 16th; Saturday, July 18th; Sunday, July 19th; Wednesday, July 22nd;Thursday, July 23rd; Friday, July 24th; Saturday, July 25th; Sunday, July 26th

They Say: “Paris 1890. In a moving effort to rescue his brother’s legacy, Theo van Gogh revisits Vincent’s turbulent life, offering insight into the world of the tormented artist. The world of the misunderstood genius is recreated in this poignant and intimate meditation.”

Glen’s Take: Yeah, pretty much. Especially the ‘intimate’ part.

In a tiny space tucked behind the DC Arts Center (up the stairs, then down the stairs, turn right), Theatre du Jour founder B. Stanley’s delivering a precise, finely modulated performance as a heartsick Theo Van Gogh.

It’s barely a week after the passing of his beloved brother Vincent, and Theo just wants to clear up a few things, okay? As he paces Vincent’s abandoned studio (neatly evoked by a stark blank canvas and scattered tubes of paint), Theo addresses some lingering misconceptions—and outright lies—spread by ignorant townsfolk and that bastard, Paul Gauguin.

It might sound as if we’re in unreliable narrator territory here, but that’s not a game that playwright Leonard Nimoy (I KNOW, right?) seems much interested in playing. No, we’re meant to see Theo’s passionate protestations as straightforward testaments to just how much he loved his brother. After a while, you might find yourself hankering for things to get a bit more juicy, a bit more shaded with unspoken meaning, but Stanley’s performance is so grounded and sincere you can’t help but take the guy at his word.

See it if: You need a break from the hurlyburly, and are looking to sample some things from down on the quieter, more contemplative end of the Fringe salad bar.

Skip it if: You were kind of hoping this write-up would have some Spock jokes in it.

(Although to be honest, it was touch and go, right up to the end.)