Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
A Dialogue: ‘Captain Squishy’s Yeehaw Jamboree’
Captain Squishy’s Yeehaw Jamboree
The Baldacchino at Fort Fringe
Remaining performances: Saturday, July 25 (tonight!) at 5 p.m.
They say: From the writers of last year’s hit I Like Nuts! comes a ridiculous new musical about a comedy variety show, with a murderous ingenue, a WWI German spy, and of course, bacon!!! It’s Captain Squishy’s Yee Haw Jamboree!
Brian says: Hey Teddyo, you ever been to the American South?
Ted says: Nah man. It’s too silly down there for me.
Brian: That’s true. You are really serious. Well it’s a good thing you didn’t see Captain Squishy’s Yeehaw Jamboree then. It would’ve sillied your poor little brains out.
Ted: But I did see Captain Squishy’s Yeehaw Jamboree. In fact, you and I saw it together.
Brian: Wait a secorino—that’s right! You were that guy sitting behind me ticklin’ my earlobe all night.
Ted: If you say so.
Brian: Well listen, you were so good at ticklin’ that I forgot to ask what you thought of the show.
Ted: No time like the present….
Brian: So what’d you think of the show?
Hip Shot: ‘Hopelessly Devoted’
Hopelessly Devoted
Goethe Institut Mainstage
Remaining performances: Thurs., July 23 at 9:30 p.m.; Fri., July 24 at 9:45 p.m.; Sat., July 25 at 2 p.m.; Sun., July 26 at 3 p.m.
They say: Chicago Improvisers/Catholics Vincent Lacey and Natalie Sullivan offer up scenes, songs and secret confessions of being devout fish in a sea of pessimism. Bursting with guilt…err…love Christ, Hopelessly Devoted is a comedy even Saint Peter couldn’t deny.
Ted’s take: “In the unlikely event of the Rapture,” Natalie Sullivan advises the audience at the opening of Hopelessly Devoted, “please pray for your own sins before praying for those around you.”
The chance of rapture here? As advertised, unlikely. The chance of mild amusement courtesy of two talented comedians? Much higher.
Sullivan and Vincent Lacey, two funnypeople of the unrepentant Catholic persuasion, have mounted a pleasant diversion over at the Goethe Institut, a zany, ADD-style compendium of sketches, one-liners, a song or two, and even a borderline-charming hip-hop number about the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, which is hemorrhaging believers and whose few remaining parishioners call it the “Church of the Blessed Sack.” There’s a lot of biography going on here, too: Lacey adapts winning character sketches of his reluctantly devout father and of his dean at Catholic University. Sullivan, meanwhile, steals one of the shows’ more uncomfortable scenes, in which she remains the confirmation sponsor of the ex-boyfriend she convinced to convert, even after dumping him. True story! So, yes: not your run-of-the-mill Christian lampoonery here; this is been-there, still-there, ain’t-never-recanted Christian lampoonery.
Hip Shot: ‘Concord, Virginia’
Concord, Virginia: A Southern Town in Stories
Goethe Institut
Remaining Performances:
Jul 23rd, 7:30 pm
Jul 24th, 6 pm
Jul 25th, 6:30 pm
Jul 26th, 1 pm
They say: “Neofotis performs stories from his prize-winning book, newly published by St. Martin’s Press. With tales of night-swimming lovers, moon-shining old ladies, and gay trials, come witness the 28 year-old love child of Truman Capote and Eudora Welty! (NYC’s Next Magazine)”
Brian’s take: I’ll not mince words: Concord, Virginia, has too many words.
When I’m writing prose, I read my sentences aloud so that I can hear all the over-wrought language I need to banish from the pages. Here, as Peter Neofotis performs aloud two short stories about a small Virginia town, I couldn’t help but wish he’d taken a machete to his manuscript, pruning what are otherwise perfectly compelling stories of thorny phrases like, “She wistfully walked by,” “Helen pointedly replied,” and, thorniest of all, “They ambulated out the door.”
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Hip Shot: ‘They Call Me Mr. Fry’
They Call Me Mister Fry
Goethe Institut
Remaining Performances:
July 25, 4 p.m.
July 26, 5 p.m.
They say: “Welcome Back Kotter vs. COPS, King Arthur vs. No Child Left Behind. Watch this suburban white boy from Indiana battle the students, the establishment, and himself in a South Central classroom. Laughter, tears and extra credit provided. A true story.”
Brian’s take: All right, so I walk out of They Call Me Mister Fry, and here’s my first thought: “Mister Fry Is The Patch Adams Of Education.” (It appears in my mind just like that, with all the capital letters.) Genius, isn’t it? I’m happy, I’m whistling, I’m skipping, I’m handing out Now and Laters to babies, I’ve got the first line of my review.
Not so fast. Turns out I wouldn’t be the first to make the Jack Freiberger-Robin Williams connection.
Shucks.
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.
Hip Shot: ‘The Escapades of Farty Johnson’
The Escapades of Farty Johnson
The Shop at Fort Fringe
Remaining performances:
July 23 at 6 p.m.
July 25 at 2:30 p.m.
They say: A physical comedy gestation!!! Join Harold P. Johnson, esq. (aka Farty J.) on a messy, manic, dreamy, hilarious dancin’ romp that may land you SPLATT! inside the soft spot in your heart. Door Prize: Can O’Beans.
Ted’s take: Patricia Krauss has found the perfect venue for her one-woman “physical comedy gestation,” in which the irrepressible Tooty Johnson—a metaphysically unmoored character played with the halting muggery of a Dana Carvey—sweats her way through an audition that never happens. Let’s do the math: It’s a 1.) self-referential piece of character acting that 2.) engages the question of how a terminally weird, delusional thespian goes about the agony of self-promotion without 3.) much of a gameplan but with 4.) a mystical reverence for the transmogrifying possibilities of the proscenium. Really, then, this is a show about the fringe (and the people who live there)—if not about Fringe itself.
Hip Shot: ‘The Real Adventures of Tom Mix’
The Real Adventures of Tom Mix
Warehouse – Next Door
Remaining Performances:
July 22, 6 p.m.
July 24, 8 p.m.
July 26, 1 p.m.
They say: “The glamour of Hollywood meets the glory of the Old West in the real life, death-defying adventures of Tom Mix, the first western movie star.”
Brian’s take: Your grandmother’s armpits. The British Open. An assortment of mildly fragrant cheeses. All of these things are wilder than the West portrayed in The Real Adventures of Tom Mix.
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: “Deconstructing the Myth of the Booty”
Deconstructing the Myth of the Booty
Warehouse – Mainstage
Remaining Performance:
July 19, 2:15 p.m.
They say: “Sara Baartman? In 1810, she became ‘Hottentot Venus’, toured as a sideshow, her large buttocks displayed. When she died, pieces of her were displayed in a museum. In 2009 the booty is STILL on display! Deconstructing creatively explores body politics.”
Brian’s take: I’m a white guy. For all the jeers I got as a chubby kid on the Skins side of the grade school soccer field, my body has never significantly influenced the way I feel about, perceive, or comport myself. So when the cast of Deconstructing the Myth of the Booty asked audience members to yell out our first impressions after the performance, unlike the woman in front of me, I didn’t quite feel the urge to shout, “Familiar!”
Hip Shot: ‘Jamaica Farewell’
Jamaica Farewell
Goethe Institut
Remaining Performances:
July 18, 9:30 p.m.; July 19, 1 p.m.
They say: “Jamaica. Revolution. Visa. Impossible. CIA. Seduction. Desperation. A dream. Heartbreak. Handsome. American. Customs. Million dollars. Duffel bag. Machetes. Goats. Prostitutes. Bullets. Adrenaline. Kerosene. Run for your life. Based on a true story.”
Annie’s take: No doubt you have at least a couple of friends, relatives, etc. who are known for their proclivity for extensive and often exhaustive storytelling. Whether these stories sprout up during your dinner conversation, your lunch break or your experience of that third dirty martini, they hold the potential to lull you to the brink of unconsciousness or inject you with a hearty dose of insight into the human condition. You can almost smell an “extensive and exhaustive” story from its opening words: take, for example, “Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus,” or, if it’s been a while since high school Lit, “This one time, at band camp…” Whether the yarn-spinner be Homer or American Pie’s red-haired hussy-in-disguise, there exists a dangerously fine line between compelling and mind-numbing storytelling.
