Encores at the 2014 Minnesota Fringe Festival

It's the last day of the Fringe Festival! We are going to see Edgar Allen and StrangeTalk today. The winners of the 8:30 Encore Slots have been announced. We are going to back to see Four Humors Does Every Show in the Fringe tonight, which was a favorite of my sixteen year-old son.

Here are some links and thoughts on the shows I have reviewed or seen in the last few days:

Illusion Theater:
Top Gun: The Musical Silly fun. You don't need to have seen the movie, but it helps to have been a child of the 80's. Here is my review.

Music Box:
Buckets and Tap Shoes (pictured above) is a great show to close out the Fringe with your entire family.  We never miss their show, and this year was no exception. This is a truly all ages show. Even the tiny tots in the audience were having a blast (A sensory warning: it is loud.) The Ausland Brothers are the Fringe's Midwestern Rhythm Kings.

New Century:
Four Humors Does Every Show in the Fringe: My review here. Loved it so much we are going back to see it.

Southern Theater:
Marie-Jeanne Valet Who Defeated La Bet Du Gevaudan: Here is my review.
 

Theatre in the Round:
Mainly Me Productions' Our American Assassin; or You Can't Handle the Booth! Here is my review.

Rarig Center Arena:
The Genealogy of Happenstance 
My review here.

Rarig Center Proscenium:
Hi! Hello! Namaste? We saw this yesterday and it is the happiest show in the Fringe. Another good choice for the whole family.

Rarig Center Thrust:
Fotis Canyon: A show that I absolutely loved and ran out of time to review. Funny and moving. If you haven't seen it, this would be my top pick tonight.

Thanks for Fringing!

Fringe Orphans 3: The Legends of Orphans' Gold at the 2014 Minnesota Fringe Festival

Fringe Orphans 3: The Legend of Orphans' Gold is playing at Theatre in the Round. Fringe Orphans is like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates of the Fringe Festival-you never know what you're gonna get. Each show rotates different performers doing skits, vignettes, and monologues. Originally, Fringe Orphans was populated by performers who didn't get a slot in the Fringe, but this year that doesn't seem to be the case.

Overall, this show isn't as strong as previous years. The highlights of the show I saw were a piece called "Non-Breeders" by Scot Moore and Victoria Pyan, an excellent monologue by Ariel Leaf, and a running gag through the show with a manic toddler called "Fit in This". But each show is different.

Cursed at the 2014 Minnesota Fringe Festival

Cursed, playing at the Huge Theater, is an adaptation of To Damascus, Part I by August Strindberg. I am not familiar with the source material, but it's a safe assumption that much is lost in this translation. The fifty minute time constraint is clearly a problem; there is no time to develop the characters as they move from from scene to scene. There is no chemistry between the two leads; the audience never sees the passion towards each other that they keep talking (and talking) about. Updating the play to the modern day doesn't work either.  Many of the plot details are unbelievable. Would a young modern day "trophy wife" invite her aging rock-star one-night stand over for a pot roast dinner with her husband the next day? Would the rock-star accept the invitation? Would a psychiatrist/psychologist type keep jars of brain tissue in his house and have his schizophrenic patient serving drinks at his dinner party? The situations are implausible. And in 2014, the weird little speech explaining "he's a good husband because he doesn't hit you" strikes a very sour note.

Jumpin' Jack Kerouac at the 2014 Minnesota Fringe Festival

In Jumpin' Jack Kerouac, at the Rarig Proscenium, choreographer Windy Bowlsby takes on the challenge of teaching a bunch of veteran Fringe writers to dance. The Fringe preview gave the impression that the show might be played for laughs, but the whole production was done with sincerity and commitment. The result is a show that is a celebration of the collaborative spirit of the Fringe Festival itself.

Jumpin' Jack Kerouac ends up being a show about getting out of your head and trying something new, with some pretty darn good dancing. John Heimbuch and Tim Uren's dance "Fathers/Sons" is one of the most genuinely moving moments of this year's Fringe.

Shakespeare Apocalypse: A New Musical at the 2014 Minnesota Fringe Festival: Blithe and Bonny and Baby Oil

What if you set out to make the quintessential Fringe show? You might start off with some Shakespeare. Maybe make it a musical! Add some pop-culture references and ghosts. And people in their underwear!

Shakespeare Apocalypse: A New Musical, playing at the Theatre in the Round, is a  jumble of everything you would put in the Stereotypical Fringe Show™. And the formula works for the most part. It's blithe and bonny and bawdy.

The story begins with actor Peter (Philip C. Matthews). Playing a small role in Hamlet at the Guthrie, he freaks out on stage and confesses he hates Shakespeare. His breakdown is recorded by an audience member and goes viral. People around the world are emboldened and turn on Shakespeare and the great writers of the world.  Then it just gets ridiculous. Shakespeare (Adam Rousar), Jane Austen (Lisa Bol), and Hemingway (Scot Moore) show up to defend themselves, in their underwear, glistening with baby oil. Bol is a comedic standout with her deadpan portrayal of Austen, and Moore lands the funniest line of the show.

The strength of the show is the original score by the composer/lyricist Keith Hovis. It has energetic original melodies. For all of the musical theater geeks, the orchestration is chock full of affectionate little Easter eggs, that lean heavily on the likes of Sondheim (particularly Into the Woods) and Rent.  I look forward to hearing more of his work in the future. I would have enjoyed the music more if the cast as a whole could consistently sing in tune. It was a problem that took me out of the show too often.

The show works very well at Theatre in the Round. Director/choreograper Ben Layne takes advantage of every nook and cranny of the stage. 




For musical theater aficionados, except  for out of tune singing
 

Reach at the 2014 Minnesota Fringe Festival

Reach, presented by Nautilus Music-Theater at the Rarig Xperimental, is a buffet of new music, sung by some of the Twin Cities' best singer-actors. I never miss the Nautilus collaborations at the Fringe. While I enjoy the frantic energy of the "fringier" musicals, it was nice to hear a show where intonation wasn't optional. Presented as an anthology of five vignettes, some pieces have a self-contained story and some are excerpts from a larger work. But all loosely share the universal theme of aspiration.

In East of the Sun, loosely adapted from the Norwegian folktale, Andrea Leap and JP Fitzgibbons are separated lovers. There was an audible sigh in the audience when Leap sang "and I will love you for evermore". And when Leap and Fitzgibbons joined their voices together it was glorious. Listed as an "exploratory sketch for a larger piece" in the program, I look forward to hearing more of composer Kurt Metzger's and writer Christina Ham's work.

The centerpiece of the show is Erin Duffy's very intimate and moving rendition of "Let Her Grow Old" by Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich. Duffy is a masterful storyteller, on par with many of the spoken-word artists that populate the Fringe. Interspersed with original text by Duffy and director Ben Krywosz telling the story of her mother's last months, she is heartbreaking.

The Genealogy of Happenstance at the 2014 Minnesota Fringe Festival

There are three chances left to see The Genealogy of Happenstance, an intimate one-person show by Allegra J. Lingo, including tonight (Tuesday) at 7:00 P.M. It is the story Allegra and her wife Amy's real-life journey to expand their family.

Lingo is a familiar face at the Fringe. Along with being the director of Audience and Volunteer Services, she is a longtime Fringe solo performer. I've seen most of her shows, and they always make me think and laugh. But this one made me cry. In a good way.

I am also a mother, a parent, and a wife, and I relate to the universal part of the story. Hearing Allegra, who is so good at words, give birth to a vocabulary about how she experienced this journey was inspiring.  Although part of the show is about how it feels to know her genetic material will not be passed on to her child, you can already see how Baby will definitely inherit her stories. And this made me happy.

This show deals with the universal through the specifics--as all great storytelling does.  Great First Chapter in your book of parenting.