The Warehouse – 1019 7th St. NW

Remaining Performances:

Thursday, July 22, at 10:30 p.m.
Friday, July 23, at 6 p.m.
Saturday, July 24, at 11 p.m.

They say: “Salem! The Musical [is] a campy [and] crass retelling of colonial history.”

Derek’s Take: Whatever you might say about a musical satire on the Salem witch trials, it’s definitely not “too soon.”  This zany retrospective exploits 300 years of change – perhaps even improvement – in man/woman relations and spins an amusing noose of greed and belligerent sexuality mixed with traces of sacrilegious fervor.  Yeah, that’s right – this ain’t no Crucible.  Irreverence is the key here, and the story, cobbled from the collaborative musings of the all-female cast, exposes the “true” history of 1692 in a send-up that captures the very essence of Fringe.

The hyper-sexualized script depicts a Pilgrim community unglued when Abigail Parris (Elise Dubois) teaches a slave to read and reveals her knowledge of mathematics.  These shockers and their implications – my God, girls thinking for themselves! – challenge the supremacy of Salem’s misogynistic kingpin, the sheriff, chief firefighter, wrestling coach, and richest man in town, Dr. Grimes (Kayce Alltop).  Something must be done; Abbie’s, um… witchcraft must be suppressed!

What ensues is a ribald spectacle cross-cut with a few decent songs.  In two highlights, “Man of Means” and, later, “Let’s Make a Deal,” Alltop unleashes her smarmy egotist and showers a raspy disdain on the patsies in his midst.  The players otherwise do their best with music that isn’t particularly memorable beyond a few crackling lyrics, joyously stomping the stage even when the choreography instructs them simply to jog in place.  Some numbers are so short as to render them instantly forgettable (“Happy Happy Wedding” is a notable throw-away), but the first and second act openers (“Welcome to Salem/Reprise”) are relative masterworks of harmony and wit.

Dubois and Allison Black (Tituba, a.k.a “Titty”) excel among the singers, belting out their defiant lyrics clearly and forcefully while their ‘mates scramble gamely to keep up.  Still, the cast’s mismatched talent, voice-wise, is more than redeemed by its solid comic timing and lunatic commitment to revisionist history.  The story, after all, blames Salem’s Hunt more on economic and sexual forces than religious intolerance, perhaps propelled by a close reading of the subject on Wikipedia.  Yet don’t fret – in the final scene, a kangaroo court stacks Abigail on a pyre as tradition mandates, its fuel formed by the props of this messy but entertaining farce.

See it if: You’re intrigued by the witch-hunt abetting properties of “Pee Cake.”

Skip it if: The sight of an actress “animating” a skeleton during a languid song and dance number makes you a little sad.

The Shop at Fort Fringe, 607 New York Ave. NW

Remaining Performances:

Tuesday, July 13 @ 10:00 p.m.
Friday, July 16 @ 6:00 p.m.
Saturday, July 17 @ 12:45 p.m.
Friday, July 23 @ 8:15 p.m.
Saturday, July 24 @ 4:00 p.m.

They say: “DEAD ON! IMPRESSIVE!” –DC Theatre Scene. “An uncanny, SUBLIME creation!” –Charles Busch. “This agent’s act is SPECIAL!” –Washington Blade. Spanning the range of standards to stand up, rock and roll to slapstick (sic), an evening with this Special Agent and her boys is one you won’t want to miss. And one that you will tell all your friends to go see!”

Sheffy’s take: Milli Vanilli was the first album I ever bought with my own money, earning them a special place in my heart.  After their lip synching fall from grace, my friends shamed me for continuing to listen. (Oddly, it wasn’t my questionable taste in music to which they objected.) I protested it was still music, regardless who sang it, and come on, they had been fooled, too.  Then there was Whitney Houston’s Superbowl-gate.  Well, Galactica and her Boys not only take the shame out of lip-synching — they elevate it to a thrilling art form.

Firstly, I’ll fess up to being among those at the Fringe preview debating whether they were lip-synching or in fact flawlessly covering “Superstitious” — all I knew was I had to see the full length show.  How does a drag queen and her three boy-toy back-up singers hold your attention for 85 minutes?  By mixing it up with a cabaret of rock, blues, country, gospel, and jazz, and even delivering a brilliant comedy sketch.  They didn’t miss a beat from Stevie Wonder to Stevie Nicks. (Apt lyric: “Sings a song sounds like she’s singing.”)  The crystal-clear acoustics (really, Fringe?!) fed into the illusion of live music.  Before long, I went from trying to catch any s’lip-ups to completely forgetting they weren’t belting it out.  And it really doesn’t matter.  They bring it on with their energy and verve.  The flamboyant choreography sizzled, and the sequined costumes were, well, FABULOUS!

The boys put the flame in Flamenco, but they don’t hold a candle to Galactica’s flair.  Her talents transcend the glitter of her lips: She embodied each vocalist down to every breath and bat of an eyelash.  Her timing was impeccable — when Ella Fitzgerald scats a tune, she gets a little leeway to rest and breathe, but Galactica relives every syllable by heart and doesn’t miss a breath.  (Okay, it may not have been Ella — a song list would have been appreciated).  But like Galactica’s hot pink hair, each irrelevant act was pure cotton candy.

See it if: You yen for an intimate Dolly Parton concert, but are looking for more affordable tickets. You won’t be disappointed.

Skip it if: You like your Galacticas preceded by Battlestars.

iSchool Musical

Source
1835 14th St., NW

Remaining Performances:

Saturday July 10 @ 8:00 pm
Friday July 16 @ 8:00 pm
Saturday July 17 @ 8:00 pm
Friday July 23 @ 8:00 pm
Saturday July 24 @ 2:00 pm
Saturday July 24 @ 8:00 pm

They Say: WIT’s hit show iMusical creates and performs and instant musical inspired by Glee, High School Musical . . . and suggestions from the audience.  Every note, lyric, character and line of dialogue is improvised in this hilarious and subversive sensation.

Adam’s Take: I agree.  Scripted lines are definitely overrated.  You’ve just got to let the words fly off the tongue.  Life is spontaneous and so, too, should be the stage.  Yet the cast of iSchool Musical were good enough to fool the audience into thinking they’d wasted weeks at rehearsals.

Of course, only improv theater could produce a show that melded the tale of an underground drama club at NOVA’s very own Thomas Jefferson High School (one of several audience-submitted elements) with that of an overachieving student who is seduced by a sausage maker-cum-opera singer named Carmen.   Could these lives really collide?  All in seventy minutes?  Only when there is no chance to think about what should rationally come next.  No time to dwell on the absurdity of the situation.  You just go with it.

What makes this show even more notable is the musical numbers that come when least expected.  Tired of talking?  Just break into song.  The masterful repertoire of  keyboardist/director Travis Ploeger was a big part of why each scene felt stranger than the last.  Washington Improv Theater has been around for a long while, and that experience was evident in the way the  cast worked as a team capable of taking cues from each other and running as far with a joke as possible — miles, it sometimes seemed, until some other unexpected twist is thrown their way.  This made the show not only funny but also engaging, no matter how crazy the plot became.  And the cast was still able to somehow tie most of the loose ends together to pull off an unexpectedly happy ending.

The performance I saw was the 100th in WIT’s iMusical series, (but the debut of the spinoff iSchool Musical) and with improv, there’s no way to know what the next show will be like.   But if show number 101 is anywhere as good, it would be hard to come away disappointed.

See It If: You believe the best playwrights do their work on stage while the play is happening.

Skip It If: You enjoy watching Hamlet because you know there is only one way for it to end each time.

Remaining Performances:
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
Saturday, July 25, 2009 @ 11:30 am

They say: Emily figured it out: run away to France, meet the perfect guy, leave everyone behind. But, upon her homecoming, to be the maid-of-honor at her mother’s fifth wedding, it becomes glaringly obvious — this is NOT her life.

Suzyn’s take: This is NOT a fun evening at the theater.

What gets me is that the playwright knows the problem.  He writes in the program that his script is full of “stupid, selfish asses.”   However, it is really hard to make a play about “stupid selfish asses” work—to say nothing of a musical.

Comedy wherein all the characters are jerks, no one is sympathetic and the real point is to sneer at everybody can be done well.  Indeed, plenty of sneering occurred in the audience as the obviously self-centered characters sung about how “Just for one day, I’d like to see…the whole world revolve around me.”  But the fun of most musicals is getting caught up in the joy or the drama and letting your emotions take you away, and that just doesn’t combine well with sneering.

The songs are well-written, though not all of them advance the plot and the cast is going to get a cease-and-desist from Bryan Adams one day. McKenzie Walsh as “Rebecca Romaine” can really sing, though I look forward to going the rest of my life without hearing “Not like the actress, like the lettuce” again.   It was one of several jokes that didn’t improve on endless repetition.

It’s easy to blame the playwright, and I do, but really someone in the cast should have said: “Hey, my character is a total cliché, and so is everyone else’s, and we all whine a lot, even interrupting a wedding to do so. And the daughter’s friends are the mother’s wedding attendants with no explanation.  And Emily slaps Sean’s ass while the audience probably still thinks he’s her brother.  And the ‘perfect boyfriend’ kisses his way up Mom’s arm for no reason.  And if we’re going to write a song full of Yo Momma jokes, shouldn’t we at least use funny ones?”

This could have been prevented, y’all.

See it if:  “I love wedding cake like a fat kid loves…regular cake” does it for you in the humor department.

Skip it if:  It doesn’t.

The Saints

Remaining Performances:
Thursday, July 16 at 9:45 p.m.
Friday, July 17 at 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, July 19 at 1:15 p.m.
Wednesday, July 22 at 9:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 26 at 12:30 p.m.

They say: “Saints, sinners, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Imagine Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, St. Augustine and a bevy of virgin martyrs singin’ songs around a celestial campfire. DMLRR Presents The Saints. Virtue and vaudeville. Burlesque and the blessed: Where the revival tent meets the carnie tent.”

Trey’s take: I’m inclined to agree with the buddy who sat next to me at this noisy, cheeky vaudeville — a handful of electroacoustic hagiographies from the crew what brought you last year’s smash-hit 70-minute Oresteia: “I think it’s constitutionally empirically impossible to dislike this bunch these guys,” said my friend.

Roger that: Led by singer-songwriter Steve McWilliams and actor-director Debra Buonaccorsi, the outfit calls itself Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue, but they’d have done just as well namewise if they’d gone with The Platonic Ideal of Artists Who Fringe for the Sheer Joy of Performing.
There’s a little belly-dance (courtesy of Buonaccorsi, as the spurned mistress of reformed hellion St. Augustine), a little honky-tonk (props to the raw little band, in which most everybody eventually takes part), a touch of panicky fortune-telling (from Felicia Curry, generating solid laughs as a highly strung St. Bernadette) and a whole lot of full-throated singing — all in service to the stories behind names you may know, especially if you’ve been properly catechised.

The irreligious may find things a mite confusing, I’ll admit, if only because the sound mix is sinfully iffy; song lyrics occasionally get muddied, along with whatever biographical details and theological fine points they might be trying to convey. And the curmudgeon huddling deep in my soul insists I whisper to the Rev. Buonnacorsi and her flock that when the pews in your canonically suspect revival tent are chock full of extroverted actorish types, your audience-participation bits are by definition going to annoy the civilians just a tetch.

But pooh to that: The voices are strong, the humor agreeably naughty, and the songs a tasty mix that ranges from rousing little foursquare rockers (for Jordan Klein’s St. Francis, complete with surfer shorts and a small aviary of birds clinging to his hoodie) to soaring, scorching anthems (for Currie’s St. Bernadette and Maria Egler’s Teresa of Avila, ecstatically remembering the “agony and rapture” of their visions) to bluesy brags so swampily accomplished you’ll be thinking, “Hey, that would be perfect with a little harmonica” — just about the time Klein’s strapping St. Ursula pulls a Hohner out of her brassiere.

See it if: You think organized religion could stand a little irreverence. Or if you’ve ever thought Gertrude Stein was unforgivably inefficient about squeezing just four saints into those three acts.

Skip it if: You’re allergic to dusty old relics — or to fun.

Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 12 at 4:15 p.m.
Thursday, July 16 at 5:30 p.m.Saturday, July 18 at 2 p.m.
Saturday, July 25 at 8:30 p.m.

They say: “Robert, a struggling playwright, undertakes a Faustian bargain of inspiration in return for his sanity. Driven by his desire to please his wife Claire and succeed as a writer, he risks his life in return for his Magnum Opus.”

Brian’s take: When he was a kid, my little brother refused to eat eggs. And I remember one morning when, despite his protestations, my mother kept on cajoling him to take a bite — just one bite — until finally he explained, “I like eggs, I just don’t like the taste!”

That’s pretty much how I’d describe my feelings about Magnum Opus, a new opera by the Alterna Opera company. It’s a predictably well-made tragedy: You’ve got your struggling playwright, his casually flirtatious wife, the composer charming her into casual flirtation, and a pair of muses (though they behave more like sirens) whispering some nefarious solutions in the playwright’s ear.

The real playwright should’ve summoned a few siren-muses for himself, because while the show does contain plenty of your daily vitamins and minerals, it leaves you wanting some flavor. Likewise with the performers, who belt a respectable original score but enlist the rest of their bodies — i.e. limbs and facial muscles — with much less vigor than they do their diaphragms.

Not that Magnum Opus doesn’t manage to be pleasing. The cast is invested enough — in its own laconic way — the orchestra tight enough, the production polished enough to make for an enjoyable time. Does it live up to its namesake? Not quite. Maybe if they retitled it “A Highly Palatable 60 Minutes.” But as one specter of a character realizes, after his own maddening brush with the muses, notes on a sheet of composition might resemble raindrops on a window or, depending on your state of mind, flies on a carcass.  Magnum Opus manages to do both.

See it if: That last metaphor does it for ya.

Skip it if: You really should be at home writing instead.

7 (x1) Samurai
David Gaines
Mr. Gaines may hawk his show as “An Epic Tale…told by an idiot,” but during the 7 minutes I witnessed last night, it became uproariously clear that this man is no idiot. Dressed as part street-pantomime part Japanese warrior, Gaines was riveting as he moved seamlessly among his manifold nonspeaking characters. This is serious, sidesplitting, mesmerizing stuff, and to see one man sustain it for 45 minutes is a feat I refuse to miss.

Slave Narratives Revisited
Mosaic Theatre Productions
Talk about a powerhouse: Lary Moten, in two tantalizingly short monologues, had everyone in RFD’s back room transfixed last night. He transformed that space twice in 5 minutes: first into an antebellum southern crossroads, and then into a Montgomery bus in 1956. There were some truly sublime (and deeply funny) moments, and if this is what 5 minutes in a bar feels like, well then I can’t wait to see the real thing.

Check out a few more suggestions after the jump.

Ball & Chain
Journeymen Theater Ensemble
Ball & Chain is a collection of seven short riffs on love and marriage. The Journeymen teased a piece called “Love in the Time of GPS,” a witty flirtation between a man and his green-eyed Global Positioning System. Although each of the seven shorts is written by a different local playwright, if “GPS” is any indication of the quality of humor, Ball & Chain should induce quite a few chuckles.

Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue Presents: The Oresteia
Spooky Action Theater
I have to admit, I’m usually skeptical of modern takes on the classics. Not so with Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Oresteia after what I saw last night. This show is sure to be a veritable volkstragedy, weaving Aeschylus’ tale of revenge with a bluegrass sensibility. Plus the tune they played was catchy, precisely rehearsed, and contained the words “vile whore” in the chorus.

I Like Nuts! (The Musical)
I Like Nuts! (The Company)
You know, after seeing only one number, I can’t really tell you what I Like Nuts! (The Musical) is going to be “about,” per se. But I can tell you that it was brazenly irreverent, overtly silly, and that I laughed my ass off. When the woman sitting next to you can’t stop herself from spontaneously singing along to “I like nuts! I like nuts in my mouth!”–well, that’s when you know you’re watching something special.