Perhaps drawing inspiration from this rather brilliant March installment of Amanda Hess‘ The Sexist column, the DC Theatre Collective has taken a clever approach to the crass business of self-promotion. The group’s CapFringe entry this year is The Tea Party Project, so it seems wholly appropriate that they’ve stolen a page from the Dittohead playbook, [...]
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. 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.
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.
No wonder those pious clerics up and declared the western objectification of women and glorification of dick jokes as deserving of–dare I say it?–jihad. Zed Headscarf, infidel-licking lesbian though she be, really could change all that.
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.
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 [...]
Some lovely photos below (and after the jump) courtesy of Aude Guerrucci!
7(x1) Samurai:
