Archive for the ‘Fringe Performers’ Category
Hip Shot: “The Sin Show”
The Sin Show
The Mountain at Mount Vernon Square UMC
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.
The Injured List: Fringe Casualties
Let’s face it, people. This is some full-contact theater, up in here. The Fringe muse can inspire, but she can also slap your ass around.
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.
Hip Shot: “Missing Pages”
Missing Pages
Fort Fringe – Redrum
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.
Hip Shot: “She Moved Through the Fair”
She Moved Through the Fair
Warehouse – Next Door
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.
Hip Shot: “Headscarf and the Angry Bitch”
Headscarf and the Angry Bitch by Zehra Fazal
Warehouse – Next Door
Remaining Performances:
Jul 17th at 8:30 p.m.
Jul 18th at 3:30 p.m.
They say: “Join Zed Headscarf on a tongue-in-cheek romp through faith and growing up Muslim in America. Featuring hits like ‘The Only Thing I’ll Do Five Times a Day is You’ and ‘I Lost My Virginity During Ramadan.’ This beef ain’t halal!”
Mike’s take: The future of American-Islamic relations could hinge on this one-woman show. Before Muslim folk-rocker Zed Headscarf (Zehra Fazal) got involved, America’s most memorable depictions of Islam were a.) Lil Kim sporting a hijab and not much else on the cover of One World and b.) that episode of Southpark wherein the boys travel to Afghanistan to return a mail-order goat to its starving family. (And to kill Osama bin Laden, who, in the words of Cartman, “has a small penis.”) No wonder those pious clerics up and declared America’s objectification of women and obsession with dick jokes as deserving of–dare I say it?–jihad! Zed Headscarf, infidel-licking lesbian though she be, really could change all that.
Hip Shot: “The Devil’s Christmas Carol”
The Devil’s Christmas Carol
The Mountain at Mount Vernon Place UMC
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.)
Fringe Previews at RFD’s: Sex, Lies, and Duplicitous Robots from Space
Last night, 23 Fringe groups converged on a makeshift stage in the backroom of RFD’s for the fourth annual Fringe Previews. (Video, methinks, forthcoming.) The beer was abundant, the crowd somewhat rowdier and less attentive than last year’s, and the performances less…well, performative than declarative. That is to say: it was a lot more tell than show.
Not without its highlights, though, and certainly replete with the requisite Fringe-isms. Fake breasts? Check. Um, more fake breasts? Double-check. Duplicitous robots from space? Indeed. Desultory allusions to Beckett, Wilde, Shakespeare, et al. wielded with the weight of a French tickler? Duh.
Below the jump, a telegraphic rundown on last night’s 23 previews.
Deep breath!~ Here we go:
Photos: A Touch of Fringe
Video: Pick o’ the Fringe!
Dig it.
Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube version.
Hip-Shot: “Bee Man”
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 and spiritual worlds. His 1851 invention of the modern beehive changed agriculture forever.”
Glen’s take:Let’s get the bona fides out of the way: writer/performer Marc Hoffman is a Director of the Maryland State Beekeepers Association. Okay? The man knows an Apis mellifera from an Apis cerana. That’s probably why Bee Man is at its best in those moments when Hoffman’s expressing Langstroth’s — and presumably his own — enthusiasm and admiration for the li’l buggers. Hoffman seems confident and completely at home discussing the finer points of apiculture, as when he proudly walks the audience through the design and construction of Langstroth patent beehive.
That’s the stuff that takes up most of Act I, and it’s never less than interesting. Acts II and III, however, move away from wide-eyed bee-geekery to concern themselves with Langstroth’s later years, when he was fighting over his patents and his legacy. Hoffman’s less on his game here: he seems always to be searching for his next line, and indicates Langstroth’s emotional difficulties by shouting a bit. The founder of modern apiculture was a man of many facets, and the script duly hits each one — minister, scientist, manic-depressive, etc. — but it does so in a perfunctory, whistle-stop manner that never quite resolves into a three-dimensional picture.
What it feels like, of course, is the stuff of school assemblies and on-the-hour performances at your local science museum. That’s not a dig — as a dutiful profile of an interesting historical figure, Bee Man succeeds. But as a piece of theater — much less fringe theater? Bee Man … is a dutiful profile of an interesting historical figure.
See it if: You were going to anyway, given the subject matter.
Skip it if: You appreciation for the one-man biographical show has been forever tainted by Bob Odenkirk’s Lincoln (”I was born in a log cabin. MADE OF LOGS!”).
