Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue: The Oresteia
The Baldacchino at Fort Fringe

Remaining Performances:
Thursday, July 24 @ 6:30 PM
Friday, July 25 @ 7:00 PM
Saturday, July 26 @ 2:00 PM

They say: “If the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus had gone on tour with Led Zeppelin, Woody Guthrie and a carnie troup, this is what he would have written. A tale of blood, guts and vengeance, Aeschylus’s Oresteia, re-charged. Rowdy, raucous, loud and literate: Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue presents The Oresteia.”

Trey’s take: Pretty much as advertised: Mostly raucous, intermittently musical, almost always fun. (And I’m on record as believing that brand-new Oresteia adaptations aren’t strictly necessary, so from me, “fun” is saying something.)

I had my doubts, too: Could the Revue crew really get through all three of the House of Atreus plays in the advertised 70 minutes? Turns out I’d underestimated the summarizing power of, for instance, the tart shorthand with which a vengeful Elektra, plotting the death of her marricide mother Clytaemnestra, sums up her thoughts about the long-banished brother she hopes will return to deliver the vengeful blow: “I hope he’s not a pussy.”

Also efficient: The stained-glass bluegrass choral number in which Elektra and her fundamentalist libation bearers pray piously for “the death of that vile whore.”

Read the rest of this entry »

McSwiggin’s Pub
Cole Studio – 1714 15th Street NW (Rear)

Remaining Performances:
Wednesday, July 16 @ 9:00 PM
Sunday, July 20 @ 2:00 PM
Thursday, July 24 @ 7:00 PM
Saturday, July 26 @ 3:00 PM

They say: McSwiggin’s Pub is a one man comedy show featuring DC resident Sean O’Brien, a former performer at Chicago’s Second City, ImprovOlympic and Noble Fool theaters, now working at the comic theater known as Congress. This show features three characters engaging in night of hard drinking, political blarney and keno.

Mike’s take: Ralph Nader, Barack Obama and Barry Manilow all walk into an Irish bar…

McSwiggin’s Pub is an entertaining comedy that blends fresh, contemporary political humor with local DC stereotypes. Sean O’Brien effortlessly switches between three main characters: Joe, an on-the-wagon Irish bartender; Howard, a disgruntled veteran Capitol Hill staffer originally from New York; and Roy, a young, passionate, slightly alcoholic, senior legislative “something-or-other” Capitol Hill flunkie (complete with Blackberry). While his accents could use a bit of work, O’Brien manages to give each personality its fair share of the spotlight—so we can gain a bit of insight as to why they frequent the pub night after night.

O’Brien’s jokes get chuckles and genuine belly laughs from the audience throughout the 45 minutes (I even heard a few snorts). There are also a few instances of audience-participation as well, which sets the tone from the beginning that we are actually spectators to the drunken conversations in an actual bar.

I received an omen before the show that it was going to be a good performance when the couple behind me popped open a bottle of wine. I guess they figured that the subject matter made it appropriate. And who know—maybe it accounts for the raucous standing ovation Sean received at the end.

See it if: You watch American Idol only during the first few episodes (for the auditions).

Skip it if: You work on the Hill and are easily offended.

Signor Deluso and The Women
The Warehouse – Mainstage

Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 13 @ 5:30 PM
Saturday, July 19 @ midnight (canceled)
Saturday, July 26 @ 9 PM
Sunday, July 27 @ 6:30 PM

They say: “Presenting Opera Alterna, a new DC opera company dedicated to creating dynamic, provocative opera performances, brings two contemporary mini-operas exploring classic themes of love, relationships and miscommunication. Signor Deluso is a comedy based on Moliere’s Sganarelle & The Women, a surrealist look at the problems between mother, son, and his wife.”

Trey’s take: Good for Opera Alterna, a gaggle of young D.C.-area singers who take their stuff — but not themselves — too seriously. And bravo for whoever picked the repertoire: two brisk little shorts from a New York composer who was all the rage until the ’70s, then suddenly fell out of favor — and moved to Hollywood, where he helped score American Beauty and The Road to Perdition, among other films.

The first mini-opera is the more challenging — not atonal, but dissonant, it’s set in the afterlife and concerned with a mother and a wife warring eternally over the man who’s all they have in common. But it clocks in at a skinny 10 minutes or so, and its heavily Freudian overtones are familiar enough that it needn’t frighten any but the most hardened operaphobes.

Signor Deluso, a slightly more substantial one-act based on an early Moliere comedy, is decidedly more accessible: a jealous wife, an outraged but cowardly husband, a dopey ingénue who (like the husband) leaps to dubious conclusions, and a saucy maid to set everyone straight at last — you know the genre.

It’s all creditably sung and amusingly staged, and everyone’s doing their best — down to the projected surtitles, even though it’s all sung in English — to make it as unthreatening as a Friday night at the multiplex. And at $15, it’s a fair sight cheaper than a night out with the WNO.

See it if: You think it’s good that this year’s Fringe lineup seems a little more diverse, discipline-wise.

Skip it if: You sprout hives at the sound of young lovers warbling — however sweetly — about their passion.

7(x1) Samurai
The Shop at Fort Fringe

Remaining Performances:
Saturday, July 19 @ 8 PM
Sunday, July 20 @ 2:15 PM
Thursday, July 24 @ 10 PM
Saturday, July 26 @ 1 PM
Sunday, July 27 @ 7 PM

They say: “Kurosawa’s epic tale of victimized peasants, marauding bandits, and samurai warriors – retold at breakneck pace, through movement, by one exhausted and ridiculous actor. With accompanying gibberish and vocal sound effects.”

Trey’s take: Best 45 minutes of my Fringe so far. Don’t be intimidated by the Kurosawa name-check — or by the fact that this guy’s a highly trained mime.

Solo artist David Gaines tarts up the tale of The Seven Samurai with decidedly American pop-culture tropes ranging from action-flick fight sequences to Looney Tunes cartoons — I think there’s even a nod in the direction of the Samurai homage The Magnificent Seven — using those instantly recognizable vocabularies to help tell the story almost entirely without words.

And Gaines is as deft as anyone I’ve ever seen at the efficient definition of character: A gesture, a posture, a shambling shrug, or a katana-sheathing shhhhwwwt sound, and you see the archer, the sleepy swordsman, the giant or the klutzy apprentice samurai. By the time the show culminates in an epic one-man rendition of a full-tilt defend-the-village free-for-all, the illusion is total: One guy, a couple of masks, and a white backdrop, and a roiling battle against the landscape of feudal Japan has unfolded in your mind’s eye.

See it if: You grok that, far from being an outdated discipline to sneer at, the rich nonverbal language that is mime informs contemporary entertainments from Broadway’s Lion King to Pixar’s Wall-E.

Skip it if: You’ve got better things to do than be charmed by a witty concept and a first-rate performer.

Jack & Jill; In to the Out Side
the Shop at Fort Fringe, entrance on L street @ 6^th, NW

Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 13 @ 4:00 pm
Thursday, July 17 @ 6:30 pm
Saturday, July 19 @ 3:30 pm
Sunday, July 20 @ 12:00 noon

They say: “Jack & Jill: A happy, successful young couple questions the meaning of love in the wake of personal tragedy. In to the Out Side: An absurd comedy, a wordplay play which examines our frames of reference. Not for the faint of art!”

Sheffy’s take: It’s been said that comedy is harder to pull off than drama. Fringe is all about turning theater conventions upside down, and that axiom certainly crumbles in this pair of one acts. Jack and Jill tosses a bunch of catastrophes into a script and hopes to end up with some drama. Alas spotty acting (pathological afflictions: convincing; emotional colloquies: ugh), clichéd plot devices (accidentally hypnotized by a swinging necklace, c’mon!), and over-the-top dialogue (OK, we get it, he has amnesia) force the audience to imagine the drama. Maybe the tension was also rocked by the jams of Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s heavy metal band blasting just outside the theater.

Despite some shortcomings, the sound effects, staging and sets far exceeded my expectations for a Fringe show. The height of drama was the 12 minute scene change between shows (I don’t think the power tools were there for the effect). I entertained myself by reading through the dissertation qua program notes (does the nursery rhyme “Jack and Jill” really have a “denouement”), which was actually rather insightful.

The comedy that followed was really quite clever, echoing of Waiting for Godot, but cheerier. One character (David Crowley) finds himself alone in a cell, when he discovers an impish and lovable tinkerbell (Amal Saade) sharing his small universe. Through playful banter, he coaxes her out of her protective womb and opens her eyes to the world. It’s hard to believe these two shows share a common writer/director, John Sowalsky, since the snappy lines and brilliant acting engaged me from start to finish.

See it if: You still laugh at your dad’s corny puns.

Skip it if: You don’t have time to stay for the second act.