We live-tweeted them here: http://twitter.com/FringePurge. And we’ll be back, eventually, with some closing thoughts on CapFringe 2009.

For now, the party’s still on, so come on down to the tent:

D.C. singer-songwriter John Bustine and Rose (yup, just Rose) sing ‘The Wreck of the Good Ship Lollipop’ — from Bustine’s album “Waltzes and Pleas” –while a fan dances. 6:38 pm under the Baldacchino

Not much time left, but plenty of shows.  I’m doing three today (Children of Medea, Riding the Bull, and Irish Authors Held Hostage) and four tomorrow (The Quick Brown Fox …, Herbie: Poet of the Wild West, FlagBoy, and Dorks On the Loose). Hey, gotta make up for some of the time I spent away last weekend — and besides, we haven’t reviewed a couple of those, so I thought I’d check ‘em out.

Meanwhile, Fringe diversions, Never-Know-Who-You’ll-Run-Into department: That was activist and brother-annoyer Candace Gingrich at this afternoon’s performance of Children of Medea.

And the street was abuzz about the Secret Service-fueled delay at today’s closing performance of Peace Warriors. The First Lady? The Boss Himself, even, ducking the beer-with-Gates buzz for a bit?

Nope: Apparently it was Rahm Emanuel, whose daughter (so the word on the street had it) was in the show.

So: Y’all seen anybody fun?

Bad Hamlet
The Bodega – at The Trading Post
1013 7th St. NW

Remaining Performances:
Friday, July 17 at 10:30 p.m.
Sunday, July 19 at 4:45 p.m.
Wednesday, July 22 at 7 p.m.

They say: “Two Be Or Not Two Be! Hamlet was published twice: a 1604 bootleg ‘Bad’ edition and the familiar 1623 version. BAD HAMLET is an hour-long mashup of the two texts, where the various differences illuminate and deepen Shakespeare’s masterpiece.”

Trey’s take: OK, look: I’m a giant text geek. When it comes to straight plays — especially serious, ambitious, landmark plays — I’m almost always about the words and the ideas as much as the staging and the acting. (Sorry, Mr. Keach.) So while your mileage may vary, John Geoffrion’s … what do we call this, a collation? … struck me as a Fringe must-see from the start.

The good news is that while Bad Hamlet might have been just an interesting exercise in dramaturgy — honestly, I wondered if it would come off like a staged reading of a Word document, with Track Changes set to the “On” position — it turns out to be a pretty slick little one-hour’s traffic. (Yes, I said one hour — it’s two versions of a four-hour play, but Geoffrion has cut the crap out of it, and it moves briskly.)
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So Do You Love Me Yet?
The Bedroom @ Fort Fringe
612 L St. NW

Remaining Performances:
Saturday, July 18 at 2:30 p.m.
Saturday, July 25 at 6:30 p.m.

They say: “‘I love you’ or ‘I lust you’? What’s the difference? A young black woman tries to find out. Experience the beauty and horror of love and dating in this one-woman show that features spoken-word poetry and storytelling.”

Trey’s take: There’s more beauty than horror here, and not just because writer-performer Farah Lawal is an ingratiating presence onstage. (Though she’s certainly ingratiating — lovely, with a smile that’s sunny and sly by turns, and a talker confident enough to suggest some time spent on slam-poetry stages.) And not just because the evening’s string of matte-finish performance poems (no coincidence that Lawal calls her poetry blog Pearls from Pain) offers more meditations in the mode of hopeful — of happy yearning around the topics of love and loving, couples and coupling — than it does in the key of despair.

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“So I’m going to build a political machine, and then I’ll run for Congress.”

- muscle-bound bald guy, intensely discussing marginal tax rates and Congressional committee machinations, while monkey noises from “Please Listen: A Musical Chaos” waft from the Baldacchino

What’s on your mind, Fringepeople? Excited about a show we haven’t weighed in on? Cranky about the dearth of Diet Coke at the Baldacchino bar, or curious about exactly how Julianne defines “air-conditioned,” for the purposes of that “All Fringe venues are air-conditioned” claim? Aghast about the brewing press-release battle over that Beckett show?

The comments await: Light it up, people…

Saturday, 5:55 p.m.: An audience gathers for Journey #8 in the rough-finished space at The Apothecary, 1013 7th St. NW. It’s one of several new venues at Capital Fringe.

The Saints
The Baldacchino at Fort Fringe

Remaining Performances:
Thursday, July 16 at 9:45 p.m.
Friday, July 17 at 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, July 19 at 1:15 p.m.
Wednesday, July 22 at 9:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 26 at 12:30 p.m.

They say: “Saints, sinners, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Imagine Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, St. Augustine and a bevy of virgin martyrs singin’ songs around a celestial campfire. DMLRR Presents The Saints. Virtue and vaudeville. Burlesque and the blessed: Where the revival tent meets the carnie tent.”

Trey’s take: I’m inclined to agree with the buddy who sat next to me at this noisy, cheeky vaudeville — a handful of electroacoustic hagiographies from the crew what brought you last year’s smash-hit 70-minute Oresteia: “I think it’s constitutionally empirically impossible to dislike this bunch these guys,” said my friend.

Roger that: Led by singer-songwriter Steve McWilliams and actor-director Debra Buonaccorsi, the outfit calls itself Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue, but they’d have done just as well namewise if they’d gone with The Platonic Ideal of Artists Who Fringe for the Sheer Joy of Performing.
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“I like ‘hobbit,’ because the hobbits saved the world, and I’m down with that.”
- actor/director Suzanne Richard, explaining under the Baldacchino that ‘midget’ isn’t the preferred term for little people like her