Billy the Kid: First Exhumation
The Bodega – at The Trading Post

Remaining Performances:
July 17th, 7 pm
July 25th, 5 pm

They say: Directed by a former member of Herbert Blau’s performance group Kraiken, Redd Shifft tackles similar performance issues, including spontaneous improvisation, psycho-association, physical and vocal reflexivity, all in a highly charged, non-linear context of the body longing to know.

Llewellyn’s take: Be grateful for the Fringe Festival: these experimental theater opportunities that are few and far between in DC.  Dramatic improvisation may not be everybody’s cup of tea for sure, but I like it as a palate-cleanser from a world filled with Legally Blonde the Musicals.

So here we have Billy the Kid: A First Exhumation, a storytelling experiment that delves into the fight-or-flight mentality.  Intertwined with the stream of consciousness re-enactment of Billy’s life are modern tales of revenge and revenge fantasies. Threats punctuate dream sequences while a tense Western gunfight-strum plays in the background.  The characters are there only to mock and threaten each other—just the way Artaud might have wanted them to.
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Wow. So this is still going on, and I’d just like to say: I want some of what he’s smoking.

That is all.

UPDATE, 11:45 p.m. – So just to revisit: I’m not going to write a full review, because I’m not sure quite where to start.  

This was one of the most out-there things I’ve seen yet at Fringe; can’t say it was good, not sure I want to say it was bad, exactly. (It had the distinct whiff of the Radical Faerie about it, and everybody needs a little Faerie dust once in a while.) So let’s leave it at mad — and perhaps spectacularly ill-advised, in a town as buttoned-up as this one. 

Of the 18 audience members who came, 12 of us survived until the end. Which was convenient, because it meant no one was left out when lead performer Huilo Marvavilla produced a dozen yellow roses and went about bestowing them upon the patrons.

The projections were intriguingly psychedelic, the soundscape much the same; the puppets, whether smallish or enormous, were wonderfully well-crafted.

But the puppetry itself was amateurish and unfocused, the dancing likewise, and the whole thing thoroughly incoherent. Act 2, an improvised and largely undecipherable puppet conversation titled “Tea With Duality,” was possibly the single most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever seen on a stage.

Finally, if I were called upon to offer one technical suggestion, it would be this: If you know that, during the course of your trippy hourlong multimedia paean to peace, you will be donning a giant papier-mache puppet-head and dancing about the darkened performance space, you might think twice about building a spider-web of purple yarn throughout said space before the puppet-head dance.

That way, there will be less stumbling.

Black Jew Dialogues
Warehouse – Main Stage

Remaining Performances:
Thursday, July 17 @ 5:00 PM; Friday, July 18 @ MIDNIGHT
Saturday, July 19 @ 9:30 PM; Sunday, July 20 @ 2:30 PM

They say: “Who knew that rednecks, slavery, bar mitzvahs, and chicken livers were so funny! Hilarious multimedia romp of sketches, improv, theatre, and video, which reveal the absurdity of prejudice and hate. Has toured the US and UK to rave reviews.”

Sheffy’s take: No, Sammy Davis Jr. is not talking to another black Jew. This show (whose title is missing a “/” between “Black” and “Jew”) stars improv comedians Ron Jones (the black guy) and Larry Jay Tish (the Jewish guy) in an abbreviated version of their Dialogues. This must-see Fringe treat puts “PC” back into ethnic stereotype.

I hate to admit it, but I usually force myself to laugh at stand-up comedians because I can’t actually figure out what everyone else thinks is so funny. Not here—I didn’t have to fake a single snigger in what was easily the most entertaining Fringe show I’ve seen to date. The personalities portrayed by the talented Jones and Tish, their hand puppet alter egos, their racist-but-adorable-granny costumes, and even pre-recorded video projections of themselves that join the conversation fill the stage with enough racists to populate a grand jury in Louisiana. The key to comedy is timing and every movement has been carefully engineered to allow the actors to zip through a myriad of characters—to squeeze it all in, they talk right over their incessant costume changes. As they try to catch their breath between sketches, pre-recorded street interviews illustrate the cultural gulf they are trying to bridge.

As a well-traveled touring show, the performance is almost rote, yet at times they seamlessly switch to improvisation. Aside from an outdated Barry Bonds quip, the references are not yet stale, but there’s room for new material. A word to the wise: the theater was close to full, and it may sell out as word spreads. If you come early to claim a seat, a slideshow of witty aphorisms and black/Jew trivia whets your appetite.

Despite starting the show by telling audiences to “Turn off your cell phones; turn off your prejudices,” making comedy about racism without offending anyone (besides rednecks) takes chutzpah. They succeed because they earnestly want to engage the community in a dialogue about race and culture, and their commitment shines through.

See it if: You liked Avenue Q but didn’t understand that the “monsters” were people of color… or if you want to learn how to wear a yarmulke on a Fro.

Skip it if: You’ve got something else so important that you can’t take an hour from your busy schedule…I’m not your mother so I can’t tell you what to do, but you’re only hurting yourself (and you’ll be haunted by Jewish guilt for the rest of your life).

City Folk
The Universe and Source

Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 13 @ 6:00 PM (The Universe)
Friday, July 18 @ 6:00 PM (Source)
Thursday, July 24 @ 8:00 PM (Source)

They say: “City Folk, a new improvised sitcom about the people you know, but don’t really want to. Over five nights audience members will drive the plot to create a pilot, a few filler episodes, and a series finale. Brand new episodes each night! You speak. We act! Save us from syndication!”

Brett’s take: Youngish improv group ATC (A Theater Company) has an intriguing concept: an improvised sitcom, with a completely different, sequential episode each performance. Whether or not they’re angling for followers to attend each show or not doesn’t matter, since a sitcom, of course, is designed to be jumped into with little background. What ATC does seem to be aiming for here is a modern commedia dell’arte, given the easy-to-follow stock-characters-and-plots format of the sitcom.

Trouble is, they’ve got the structure down pat, but lack the skill and substance to make it funny, or even particularly amusing. Five actors (with the program promising guest improvisers at some performances, but not saying which) take on an appropriate array of stock types: a pompous theater director and her slightly dimbulb producer, who are trying to run a theater company in the basement of a church populated by a nice-guy preacher, a sweet-and-naive choir singer and a wacky old monsignor. The group is funniest when they’re nailing sitcom tropes, like the look-at-the-camera-and-smile credits sequence.

However, the mechanics of plot and interaction (at my performance, the episode theme picked out of a hat was the ‘dream’ episode) produce little besides fumbling amateur improv. It didn’t help that at the performance I saw the plot ended up following the choir singer, who must have been brought in to sing a song or two (her voice is lovely) because her ‘acting’ mostly consisted of repeating the last line spoken to her in a higher pitch. Anu Yadav does deserve credit for milking as many laughs with her expressive face as she can given the sluggish proceedings.

If you do decide to see this show, I recommend waiting until they are at Source, because the inexperience of some of the cast shows as their voices are lost in the echo chamber that is the Universe.

See it if: You give an A for effort.

Skip it if: You’re holding out for the holy grail: the Hilarious Fringe Improv Show.