For our last stop on the Fringe Festival venue tour, newly-shaven producing artistic director Scot McKenzie tells us about Apothecary, a former pharmacy and retail store devastated by fire in D.C.’s Civil Rights-era riots. Today the space is host to art galleries, fashion shows, and—with the help of an improvised sprung floor—Fringe’s more dance-oriented productions.

Once an antebellum print shop dating back to the 1830s, the spooky, airy Wonderbox now serves as a good backdrop for post-apocalyptic fantasies. Navid Azeez — venue manager, 9:30 Club lighting director, and emcee with local band Whole Damme Delegation — tells us a little about it.

Shot and edited by Matt Bevilacqua.

The Baldacchino Gypsy Tent Bar, 607 New York Ave. NW

Remaining performances:

Wednesday, July 13 at 7 p.m.
Friday, July 15 at 8:30 p.m.
Sunday, July 17 at 3:30 p.m.
Thursday, July 21 at 9:30 p.m.

They say: “Twisted is the hilarious true story of greeting card writer Tom T. and awkward weddings, improbable crushes, and sheep. In real life, Hallmark moments don’t turn out like they do in greeting cards!”

Matt’s Take: At age 11, Twin Cities native Tom Tiding convinced his mother to let him take a year off from school and tag along on her truck-driving job. Together they traveled the Midwest and South of Reagan-era America, encountering rednecks, drug addicts, and all kinds of wayward souls. As his compassionate but cocaine-addled mother pursued marriage after marriage and divorce after divorce, Tom developed his first crush on an underage prostitute while listening to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.”ť

In other words, Tom Tiding has seen and done some interesting shit. And it’s fortunate for us that he can also tell about it so masterfully.

Twisted—True Stories of Greeting Card Moments Gone Bad! sounds like some sort of crude Flash animation your aunt would link to in a chain email. Even the show’s tagline reads like a folksy gimmick. It turns out that in addition to performing in his one-man show, Tiding also helms a company called Twisted Tidings, which sells mock greeting cards. A sample from his Mother’s Day selection: “Dear mom, I just wanted to finally give you a special day like those all special days you’ve given us. Filled with embarrassment, cheap alcohol, and unintentional humor.”ť

Tiding likely draws much of his material from the bizarre, baffling, and sometimes downright ugly personal messes that filled his early life. Perhaps this is why he feels he must frame his storytelling gig with the same “real-life-isn’t-like-a-Hallmark-moment” angle. But Tiding is such a promising raconteur to begin with that anything extra seems at best superfluous (and at worst distracting, like when the accompanying slideshow failed to line up with what he was saying).

Instead, Tiding works strongest when he simply recounts his dark but often intensely funny memories of drunk evangelical stepfathers and depressing bachelor parties in St. Paul. His rapid-fire delivery conveys an appropriate sense of urgency for the many situations in which he finds himself. He has an ear for how people speak and act—he does accents especially well, but doesn’t coast on impressions as would, say, Frank Caliendo.

Most importantly, Tiding infuses his stories with the sort of humanity that could only have come from witnessing them himself. Each of his seven brief vignettes has the makings of a larger narrative: weak but sympathetic characters, contradictory impulses, complex needs and desires. One minute he has you laughing at some poor schlub’s misfortune; the next has you wishing you could’ve been there to help. He’s funny, he’s heartfelt, and after the show you’ll want to meet him for a drink in the hopes of hearing more.

See it if: You agree that one can both laugh and cry at unfortunate circumstances.

Skip it if: You think comedy should be only an escape from misery, and not a tool for understanding it.

Remaining Performances:

Wednesday, July 13^th, 8 p.m.
Thursday, July 14^th, 10 p.m.
Saturday, July 23^rd, 12 p.m.

They say: “How do you escape an invisible cage? A princess and a little bird find the answer together in this captivating shadow puppet fairy-tale. Adapted from the picture book by Alma Flor Ada and performed in Spanish and English.”

Derek’s Take: If your thoughts on “shadow puppetry” conjure disfigured recreations of “rabbits” and “dogs” sprung from inept hands, this elegant adaptation of The Malachite Palace will reset your expectations for the form. The story, a parable on matters of kid-freedom and companionship, tracks the bubbly wanderings of a bird – no, pajaro! – as it flits between a lonely princess’s chamber and the world of children and play beyond.

The crisp, 35-minute production deftly blends the shadow-boxed goings-on within the castle with “exterior” scenes performed with marionettes onstage. This contrast between the flat, largely black-and-white world of the palace, where the child’s minders smother her in material comfort but deprive her of life’s simple joys, and the three-dimensional, all-color puppet-utopia outside, highlight the princess’s crummy life. A window provides her only glimpse into an alternate existence, one punctuated with the sights and sounds of laughter, horseplay, and birdsong.

But the queen and her henchwomen object! That window exists not for wistful voyeurism, but to carry fresh air – para la salud! – into the home. So they plant shrubs to obstruct the view and muffle the sounds of childhood from afar. It’s a downer, sure, but soon a canary breezes into the palace, piquing the girl’s hopes for a playmate and a break from her daily routine. Her excitement triggers the play’s most beautiful and disquieting sequence, in which the castle’s snobby worrywarts surround the little bird and imprison it. With this the story heightens its central, if familiar question… Does the caged bird sing?

The puppetry isn’t always flawless, but the show’s few Dolemite moments – where shadowy fingertips pop unintended into view – hardly detract from the illusion on screen. In a sense, those wayward digits, on top of Wendy Nogales’s distinctive voice characterizations, lend an extra layer of humanity to a story that preaches sensitivity and inclusiveness. The effort’s all the more impressive, actually, when you consider that the four puppeteers are working in an area not much larger than a bath tub. Their movements, combined with the intricate cutouts backed by bright white light, bring life to the action in classic fashion.

The result is a simple, pretty production that, shockingly for Fringe, is suitable for the entire family. And if you manage to sneak into the Spooky Universe through its 16th Street entrance, past no discernible ticket booth, and down the stairs to a door labeled “Keep Doors Closed,” a curative to overwrought, high-concept summer entertainment awaits. But I recommend that you take the alleyway over to the official entrance and buy a ticket – The Malachite Palace is a show worthy of your patronage.

See it if: Your overstimulated rugrats need both a timeout and an introduction to Spanish.

Skip it if: You take your Fringe fare laced with sex and obscenity.

In the upper recesses of Fort Fringe is a room where Jack Torrance could have very well hacked someone to death with an axe. So naturally, the good folks at the Capital Fringe Festival saw it as an ideal space to put on plays.

Shot and edited by Matt Bevilacqua.

Headscarf and the Angry Bitch by Zehra Fazal

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.

After strummbling through a spotlit ballad about the displeasures of navigating airport security in Muslim garb, Headscarf introduces herself to her fake/real audience as the new employee of a generic-sounding Islamic cultural group whose job it is to talk up the Good Kitab on a tri-county lecture circuit (her first!). Lesson no. 1 is that Fazal, who disappears offstage after her introduction and returns with a dusty Koran that she blows off to nervous laughter, has no intentions of skirting the controversy that defined her 2007 show, My Friend Hitler.

Lesson no. 2 introduces the tension that Fazal whips out whenever Headscarf’s Inside Islam jokes fall flat: Haraam vs. Halal, the bizarre dichotomy that continues to frame the experiences of so many Muslim-American women.

Headscarf defines haraam as something bad, sinful, or unclean, and contextualizes it thusly: “Dude, it wasn’t kosher when you gave my mom a rimjob–that was haraam.” She defines halal as something appropriate, or prepared in accordance with Islamic law, though in all fairness, it’s really just a catch-all for the fun things that would make a jihadist happy if only he could get his mind–and mouth–around a fuzzy navel. (The use-it-in-a-sentence example for halal is much better when Headscarf says it.)

The show is broken up into lectures, at the end of which Headscarf invites her audience to return to the next lecture, and the stage goes dark. When the lights come up seconds later, Headscarf has the look of well, a Muslim woman who has just been scolded by her imam for talking about how much she loves eating pussy. The pattern of apology, diversion, song, and escalation to obscenity provides an easy and enjoyable sense of structure. Due to the close quarters of the Warehouse and my propensity for sweating, however, I can say that 55 minutes may have been 10 minutes too long for me. It’s tight in there, after all, and an hour is just long enough to recognize, applaud, and then tire of Fazal’s affinity for repetition.

Fans of dramatic one-person shows be warned: Headscarf and the Angry Bitch borrows liberally from narrative standup comedy, and much less so from, uh, people who do really serious one-person plays–almost to the point that I forgot I was watching theatre. If she could only trim some of the dead weight from her script and learn how to play that acoustic guitar that she’s always wailing on, Fazal and her show–dark and stormy social commentary included–wouldn’t be out of place on Comedy Central. Like Maria Bamford without the pugs or Zach Galifianakis without the leotard.

See it if: You want to hear someone sing about Pakistani papas bemoaning their daughter’s sexual orientation to the tune of Smooth Criminal.

Skip it if: You are a terrorist.