The Teacher’s Lounge or One Child Left Behind
The Shop

Remaining Performances: July 22 at 7:30 p.m.; July 26 at 1:45 p.m.

They say: The personal is political. First-year teacher Carli negotiates the pressures and personalities of an urban charter school. But when a student’s questions put her personal and professional lives in conflict, will she sacrifice her ideals to save her career?

Suzyn’s take: First off, I have to note that the question asked above isn’t ever actually answered.   At one point, it seems clear what the first-year teacher intends to do—but events intercede.   And despite the play’s consistent tone and level of energy throughout, it nevertheless left one asking, “Wait, what?” when it was over.

That sounds like an unsatisfying ending, and maybe it was a bit.  Also, the show begins with someone rattling the doorknob on the theater’s fire exit to find it locked, which is frankly not something anyone wants to see in these theaters.  But between that beginning and the ending, this is a very strong and well-acted show that’s very much worth a look.

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The Girls Inside
Bodega

Remaining Performances:
Jul 19th 12 pm
Jul 25th 3:15 pm

They say: You didn’t even know we existed. But now? Now. You do. A new play that tells the spirited stories of four ‘juvie’ girls living on the inside

Suzyn’s take: “The Girls Inside,” Leayne C. Freeman’s new play about teenage girls in juvie, is memorable and exciting from the first moments as the four girls run around in darkness with flashlights, soon getting caught by the police.  The much-maligned Bodega, with its stifling heat and peeling paint, is the perfect venue.

This is not so much a play as a 45-minute slam poem, and the directing—the best I’ve seen at the Fringe Festival this year—is more like choreography.   There are snippets about the girls’ lives; one girl deals with the drug-addicted mother she adores, another was essentially made to sign adoption papers that she couldn’t read.  But mostly there is a sort of anonymity to the characters that the girls play, which allows lines like “The world didn’t want us the first time, so why would it change its mind if we got out?” to speak for everyone.

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This Is NOT My Life
Redrum

Remaining Performances:
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
Saturday, July 25, 2009 @ 11:30 am

They say: Emily figured it out: run away to France, meet the perfect guy, leave everyone behind. But, upon her homecoming, to be the maid-of-honor at her mother’s fifth wedding, it becomes glaringly obvious — this is NOT her life.

Suzyn’s take: This is NOT a fun evening at the theater.

What gets me is that the playwright knows the problem.  He writes in the program that his script is full of “stupid, selfish asses.”   However, it is really hard to make a play about “stupid selfish asses” work—to say nothing of a musical.

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Is There Anybody out There?
Mead Theatre Lab

Remaining Performances:
July 17th 8pm
July 17th 10pm
July 18th 8pm
July 18th 10pm

They say: How do we communicate and what the hell do we have to say? Join a group of disabled and non-disabled performers as we wrestle with this simple question with song and sign. Is there anybody out there?

Suzyn’s Take:

“I didn’t know this was a cabaret performance,” the guy in the row behind me said.

I agreed.  I hadn’t known either.  Given the description in the guide, I’d been expecting something a bit more philosophical than a chain of popular songs, most of them sort of relating to the touted theme, some not at all.   That said, a cabaret performance is what I got and this was a pretty good one.

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Let’s Sing Gospel 101!
Goethe Mainstage

Remaining performances:
Saturday, July 11, 2009 @ 7:15 pm
Sunday, July 12, 2009 @ 3:15 pm
Saturday, July 18, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 5:30 pm

They say: YES YOU CAN! Sing gospel! In this interactive show, you are the cast and choir as you learn to sing gospel music. All ages, races, and voices are invited to sing, clap and move to Rosita’s piano beats. Only enthusiasm is required!

Suzyn says: One of the lovely things about the Fringe Festival is that you can be sitting in Georgetown University Law Center’s Williams Library at 5:30 and be a gospel singer by 6:05.  That pretty much sums up my Friday evening.

I abandoned the paper I was writing and attended this show on a whim, and was actually a couple of minutes late.  Three minutes into the show Rosita Mathews was already leading the audience in song.   As I guiltily made my way to the so-far-empty Soprano section, she finished out the verse and addressed me.

“You’re a soprano?” she asked

“A second soprano” I mumbled. “Sort of.”

“Well, we only have one other Soprano, so you can stand next to her in front of the altos.”

And so my gospel singing career began.

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Closet Land
Redrum at Fort Fringe

Remaining Performances:
Jul 12th 8:45 pm
Jul 18th 7:30 pm
Jul 19th 9:15 pm
Jul 26th 4:45 pm

They say: “A government interrogator escalates psychological and physical torture against a children’s author on grounds that her book Closet Land is politically subversive. Produced by the winners of the 2008 “Best Overall” and 2007 “Best Comedy” Pick of the Fringe Awards.” This show contains foul language.

Suzyn’s take: Six people walked out.  I counted.   But I’m confident that none of them left because of the quality of the show.

This is a very intense experience, y’all.

On a basic level, Closet Land is the story of the interrogation and torture of an innocent woman.  Jessica Hansen, playing the woman, sets just the right tone from the beginning, when her character insists the arrest is a mistake.  Hansen sounds more like someone who has been in line at the post office than someone expecting to be jailed and tortured.  She has a whiny, tiresome quality that beautifully sets up what is to come.

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Name: Suzyn Smith Webb
Hometown: McLean, Va
Years in D.C.: 23, non-consecutively
First CapFringe? Nope: Been attending shows for three years, and blogging for two.
Shows I’m Seeing: I’m reviewing ‘Closet land’ and ‘Is there anybody out there?” and will see  ‘May 39th/40th’ just for fun. And then there’s NEXT week… I’m dying to see the musical about the monkey.
Random Thing You Might Find Revealing About My Sensibilities: My husband and I are naming our cats in alphabetical order. “Agatha” and “Boris” are no longer with us. Our current cats are “Cool Disco Dan” “Dr. Frank-n-furter” and “Esperanto.” I’m voting for naming the next cat “Ned Flanders”

The Passion of Persephone

Remaining performances:
Friday, July 25 @ 6 PM
Saturday, July 26 @ 11 PM

They say: “Hades has captured the Goddess Persephone and tied her up to keep her from leaving the Underworld. When her mother Demeter discovers why Zeus won’t rescue Persephone, Demeter wreaks a terrible vengeance . . . Greek myth updated to modern times: A work-in-progress, presenting the last two scenes of Act I.”

Suzyn’s take: As the blurb notes, Passion of Persephone is still a work in progress, so perhaps it’s appropriate that it has the feel of something that’s still deciding what it wants to be. The advertising materials play up the S+M focus, suggesting those mediocre Anne Rice S+M novels about Sleeping Beauty. There’s some of that in this show, which is also a rock opera, and at times there is a bit of winking farce.

Primarily, however, the show seems to exist as a vehicle for the leading lady/librettist/composer/instrumentalist/producer Rosanna E. Tufts. Tufts plays Persephone, and is at the center of the show. Tufts’ performance showcases her voice, which is indeed very good. That said, her acting leaves something to be desired. She has little chemistry with Hades and they frequently sing about how attracted they are to each other, yet have bored-looking expressions while doing so. At one point Persephone sings about Hades when he’s offstage and she achieves a quiet fire in that scene that was absent when Hades was actually there. It is as if she finds the idea of Hades more striking than the reality, which in a sense is the most accurate part of Tufts’ portrayal of a naive young woman in love. Also, Tufts is a bit past the maiden stage. A male friend of mine described her as the “MILFiest Persephone I’ve ever seen.”

The music is fine, though the songs sound very much alike. I found myself wishing a little bit more had been done with the direction. The lights could have gone down a bit as Demeter sings about the sun fading, for example. Also, there’s a lot of standing in this opera. Some of that is because they have a large cast in a small venue, but even when individuals are on stage alone, the actors don’t move around much. A notable exception is Sara Stewart, whose Demeter moves very naturally. Stewart chewed the scenery in a satisfying way that suited her character, particularly after she took off a large goofy hat that obscured her face for much of her first scene on stage. Her voice was impressive as well, and I will look for her in future shows.

Michelle Mullany, Lily Fay Tufts Prothuro and Ayana Fenton do an excellent job as the dead children in the underworld, singing with charmingly sweet voices and appearing convincingly dour.

Again, the show is a work in progress. I suspect a lot of the problems will be ironed out by the time it is a full length show. I saw it with three friends and two of us were interested in coming back when the show is performed in full. Still, like Persephone’s Hades, right now this show is a lot better in theory than it is in reality.

See it if: You’re into Greek Drama, Rock Opera or the combination of the two, which works surprisingly well.

Skip it if: “Dick Cheney” is your safe word. The show takes itself a little too seriously for that.

They say: “A one man show that focuses on pioneering African American actors and athletes, B.A.D takes the audience on the journey as the artist tries to honor the struggles and challenges many African Americans faced. As he tries to do this, the spirits of Bill Pickett, Bert Williams, Paul Robeson, and Jack Johnson enter his body and speak through him to speak about their life, hardships, and accomplishments.”

Suzyn’s take: The concept of “edu-tainment” is like the concept of “dinner theater.” When the two elements are combined, one expects that neither of them will be particularly good. B.A.D (Black And Defiant) is a show all about overcoming stereotypes, and it defies this one as well. Stephan Collins-Stepney takes on the roles of rodeo cowboy Bill Pickett, comedian and actor Bert Williams, boxer Jack Johnson and singer, lawyer and all-around impressive guy Paul Robeson. He portrays each figure in turn and does a very good job giving them distinctive voices and ways of moving. He engages his whole body in the performance, which is particularly effective when he portrays Johnson. His transitions between the characters are obvious, yet smooth, giving the show a professional feel.

But Collins-Stepney is most striking in the role of Bert Williams, a vaudeville comedian whom W.C. Fields described as “the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew.” As Williams, Collins-Stepney sits at a table and talks about his life while putting on blackface, then performs some of the physical comedy Williams was known for as he talks about the obstacles Williams overcame. The humor was certainly funny, though the audience was too caught up in the pathos of Williams’ having to perform in blackface to laugh. It would have been easy to watch an entire play about Williams alone. The other three figures aren’t quite as fascinating, but still it is a solid show all around. A few technical issues were somewhat distracting, the audience participation elements were a bit clumsy, and Collins-Stepney’s voice wasn’t quite up to Paul Robeson’s deep bass. But on the whole it is a compelling look at four pioneers about whom I knew very little, and I left the theater considering the personal costs these men paid for their greatness.

See it if: You’d like to spend an hour with four interesting people who changed the world in subtle ways.

Skip it if: You prefer your tainment edu-free, or at least a little lighter.

Abe Lincoln: A One-Man Show
at Cole Studio

Remaining Performances:
Saturday, July 19 @ 3pm
Friday, July 25 @ 7pm
Saturday, July 26 @ 8pm

They say: “You probably know that Abe Lincoln was the 16th US president, but did you know he was a joke teller? See Abe tell his amusing anecdotes and relate some of his historical decision-making moments before your very eyes, moments before he leaves for Ford’s Theatre to meet his fate.”

Suzyn’s take: I’m fairly new to theatrical reviewing, but I’m certain it’s never a good thing when a reviewer of a comedy act has “Fozzie Bear” underlined multiple times in her notebook. Regrettably, this is the case for my notes on Scott Renz’s “Abraham Lincoln: A One-Man Show.” From the first minutes of the show, when Renz told a joke about how a lady with a feathered hat who fell down reminded him of a duck because she had “feathers on her head and was down on her behind,” I was exchanging what-the-fuck looks with everyone else in the room under the age of forty.

The old people, however, laughed consistently throughout the entire show.

I was sitting in front of a cranky-sounding couple in perhaps their late fifties. Moments before the show, the husband had looked around the performance space, which is essentially a room with chairs and benches, and observed:

“We could turn our sub-basement into a theatre.”

His wife blandly responded “They’d have a heck of a walk from the metro.”
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