Let’s face it, people. This is some full-contact theater, up in here. 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. 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.
Roth is on to something, here; she’s created some interesting parallels between father and son. She’s still pushing them at us, rather than letting the us find them — which is why, I think, that scene in which one of George’s dementia-fueled WWII memories combines with Andy’s Nam flashback feels as needless and over-the-top as it does.
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, and, perhaps inevitably, MacIntyre’s performance keeps hitting the same beats, and the emotional delineations between the stages of Kathleen’s life blur together.
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.
The Rise of General Arthur
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 [...]
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.
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.
In which your trusty Fringe bloggers disclose sundrie facts — some of which may prove revealing — about their sensibilities. And their sordid pasts. In this installment: ‘City Paper’ theater critic Glen Weldon.
A theater critic burns through memo pads at a fast clip. Mine get filled up with the stuff you’d imagine they would: bits of dialogue, a lighting cue, dashed-off descriptions of a set or a costume. For me at least, the notes are little more than mnemonic street lamps, each one lighting up a few [...]
Bee Man
Cole Studio
Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 20 @4pm
Thursday, July 24 @9pm
Friday, July 25 @9pm
Sunday, July 27 @2pm
They say: “Our food supply depends on bees. In this one-man play, Lorenzo Langstroth – scientist, minister, author, abolitionist, raconteur and manic-depressive – shares his experience of 19th-century life, his observations and love of bees, and insights into the natural [...]
