Number 34: Fringe Festival 2003
by Carl F. Gauze
OK, we’re done with taxes, bike week, and the war. In-laws have left. Last major guilt holiday (Mothers Day) is clear. I sort of have my home wireless network running. Both cars start, neither makes any real expensive sounding noises. I guess we are ready for Fringe. Best of all, they put some venues near the beer tent this year, so the walk won’t be as bad. I’ll see you there; I’ll be wearing the alcohol-themed shirt.
Not that I would drink while on duty, of course. It’s just a fashion thing. <p>
Cancer Tales</br>
By Nell Dunn</br>
Directed by Mia Perovetz</br>
Starring Christelsie Johnson, Faye Novick, Dorothy Field, Sharon Donohue</br>AfterGlo Theatre Company at Temenos Theater, Orlando Fla</b><p>
It’s a major challenge to go through cancer, either by yourself or for a loved one, and that challenge clear reflects on tonight’s stage. We follow several women who either contract the disease or support ill loved ones. Feisty Claire (Johnson) tackles the problem directly, with her intimate professional knowledge of the medical system. While the pain and fear are real, her biggest loss is self-esteem as an impersonal medical system chews here up and spits her out. Mary (Novick) wrestles with the anger engendered by her daughter’s (Amanda Rispoli) lymphoma as Rebecca rejects nearly all human contact, including her mothers. Penny (Donohue) and her lover Marlyn (Suzette Rising) hold onto love until the very last, as Penny eventually succumbs to the pain. Sharon (Beverly Perovetz) isn’t as concerned over the loss of both breasts as she is over here hair falling to chemotherapy. And Joan (Field) applies denial to her son-in-law’s distress. We’ll fight this, but by God we won’t mention it in polite company. Some live, some die, and all struggle as this terror rips apart their lives.<p>
Entering the theater, we see a bevy of hospital workers dressed in scrubs and carrying clipboards as the respond to mysterious pages over the intercom, The audience is led into the waiting room, where a TV blares out the banality of Oprah, making the feeling of hospitalization complete. Actors scurry to open and close curtains on two small rooms as the patients make their way across stage. Voices are low, and hearing the actors is often a struggle – projection is rare, and street noise often overwhelms the dialog. We struggle along as the action unfolds, perched on tight chairs for the 2 hours and 20 minutes of uninterrupted curtain openings on stage. Some good acting fills the space – Novick’s anger is palpable, and you’d like to slap some sense into Field’s Joan. Johnson’s Claire grows on you – at first she seems strident, but ultimately you see that her standing up to the system that makes her feel ‘dirty’ for having a disease she has little control over. <p>
What’s missing, perhaps lost in the long, long ending, is a deep emotional association with the characters. There’s enough pathos and lingering death to make every eye in the place weep, but mostly we just feel a disconnected sorrow for these people – we all must die, they have just had the misfortune to get the long miserable early death. We, as the audience, must wait it out with them.<p>
Noodling Inspiration
By Paul Kiernan
Directed by Rob Anderson
Invictus T.C. at Shakespeare Center, Orlando Fla.</b><p>
If you’ve every wanted to see Bobby Bell in his skivvies, here’s a wonderful chance. Famed author A. B. Parker (Bell) has lost his mojo. Half a dozen bestseller hardbacks to his name, and when one of them is turned into a stink bomb of a movie, he loses the ability to write. In order to retrieve his Voice, he’s created an insular little fantasy world that might get him back to his writing roots. Presiding over this micro-Disney is the Thurberesque Mrs. March (Tara Anderson) who makes him sandwiches and flusters away when ever she’s asked about her late husband, not that he ever really existed. One day, a guy in a suit drops by with 6 million smackers, a post death bequest from the man who took Parker’s last book and turned it into Bonfire of the Vanities. Well, this isn’t about Money, but about Art (and what good fight isn’t?), and James Bowles (Michael Mayhall) makes a commitment to stay until Parker finds his muse. Maybe we can even rough up the film’s Assistant Director Arty McGowan (Nathan Hyatt), like it was his fault anyway.<p>
This is a brilliant comedy, complete with a touch of symbolism for the deconstructionists in the audience. The set is a Film Noir era flophouse, and outside Parker’s window is a symbolic mountain cast as shadows on the window shade, representing the peak he must climb to achieve his new goal. Or maybe it’s just weird lighting they didn’t get quite right, but either ways it’s fun. The dialog is snappy, there’s just a touch of mystery about the whole process, and the stories spun to explain the missing Mr. March are a hilarious sidebar to his Quest For Words. Bell is is his usual 5 foot 4 looking to be 6-2, Anderson represents the perfect sexy landlady, and Mayhall’s physical comedy surrounds Bell with out ever touching him, at least not emotionally. Even hapless Hyatt does an excellent job in remembering his 3 or so words of dialog. Heck, he’s just the AD on a film; he has nothing important to say. “Noodling” is a romp through the darkness of lost creativity, and you’re happily disengaged from the problem on stage – no one is checking to see if YOU’VE got another novel inside you. <p>
For more information on Invictus T.C. , please visit > http://www.invictustc.com/ <p>
1776
Book By Peter Stone
Music and Lyrics by Sherman Edwards
Directed by Bob Dutton
Starring Allan Barker, Ron Zarr
The New Mark Two Dinner Theatre, Orlando, Fla</b><p>
It’s time for a musical civics lesson as this perennially popular show comes back to the Orlando stage. The sexually frustrated John Adams (Barker) and his fellow congressman struggle to swat flies and decide whether it’s better to revolt, or just play nice with the English. There are good arguments for each, but Adams succeeds by brow beating his fellows worse than the British army ever did. Their military position is weak, the moral justification lacking, and worst of all – no one has ever pulled this off before. The delegates are largely split along geographic lines – the rum and slave trading New Englanders want to ditch the British tariff system, and the slave and rum producing southerners want to keep the aristocratic ties that bind. It’s a musical with a message – Freedom takes a lot of jawboning. <p>
Fortunately, most of the jawboners on stage are pretty good singers and pretty funny to watch. Beside the strident Adams and his comic relief buddy, Ben Franklin (Zarr), you have the excellent singing talents of Martha Jefferson (Karla Sue Schultz) and Edward Rutledge (Mark Taylor). Leading the snobby contingent we find the tragic John Dickson (Michael St. Pierre), a man who walks out of the Congress on the basis of his well thought out personal convictions. Don’t you hate that? Other noteworthy performances come from a slightly foppish Thomas Jefferson (David Kelly) and the long-suffering clerk Charles Thompson (Paul Wegman.) <p>
The show is fun and bouncy, although there are some long expositions on parliamentary procedure that seem to drag. As we roll through the second act, Adams becomes more and more strident, which makes you wonder why they didn’t let him from his own country somewhere just to keep the peace in Philadelphia. Late in the second act, there’s a very touching but jarring song by the mysterious Courier (Kevin Thornton) “Mama, Look Sharp”, which reminds us a lot of innocent people get shot in revolutions, and not everyone gets their face on a coin. It’s always the fourth of July in this production, complete with sparklers on the birthday cakes at intermission.<p>
For more information on The New Mark Two Dinner Theater, please visit www.themarktwo.com / <p>
Wonder of the World
By David Lindsay-Abaire
Directed by Aaron Babcock
Starring Julianna Moring, Daniel Cooksley, Nonalee Davis</b>
Can Trout in Aspic rescue a marriage devastated by a sexual deviance so rare there isn’t even a web site devoted to it? Kip Harris (Cooksley) gets his thrills in a way that still amazes me, and his disgusted wife Cass (Moring) is about to book for Niagara Falls to discover life, the universe, and all the stuff on her Things To Do Before I Die list. That includes parachuting, sleeping with a bellboy, dressing White Trash, and maybe helping a suicidal alcoholic (Davis) named Lois. Lois has dreams and aspirations as well, but they mostly involve falling from a great height in a pickle barrel. Well, that’s one way to cure a hangover. Kip’s not taking maybe for an answer, and he hires some low budget Private Eyes (Peni Loza and Larry Stallings) who track Cass down and infiltrate her life. Next step? Why, Group Therapy, With Clown. What else can you do in Niagara Falls with a drunk and a guy fixated on Barbie?<p>
“Wonder” is very funny in an Oscar Wilde sound bite way. Everyone gets a great line about every two minutes, and the charters and situations are hysterical. Moring’s Cass is very matter of the fact about everything going g on, and has as clear direction in life as Louis, who stole the show as the drunk with an attitude. Sure, she wants attention, that’s why most people kill themselves. I never grasped this idea, but then I’m not suicidal. The supporting cast was a dream, with Loza and stalling perfect for the bumbling idiot roles assigned, and Joan Gay as an assortment of walk-ons, each with their own private neurosis.<p>
Despite everyone laughed most of the time, the show was equal to the sum of its pieces, and not more. With all the amazingly weird people on stage, I was hoping for a giant climax of comedy as all the bits came together at the end, but that never happened. In particular, Kips fetish was a shock, but it only produces a few throw away lines, and never the big surprise ending expected. It’s fun and funny, but “Wonder” just sort of rolls over the falls and stops suddenly – <p>
For more information, please visit www.theatredowntown.net <p>
Many of the shows in this month’s column are presented at the 2003 Orlando Fringe Festival. Schedules and other information is available at www.orlandofringe.com
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Molière Than Thou
By Jean Baptiste Molière and Timothy Mooney
Blue Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival </b><P>
The show must go on! That’s the entertainer’s motto, and it derives more from a desire to keep every sou that enters the box than a need to please the public. But it’s common knowledge, and even if all the company but one succumbs to bad shellfish, you will see something from your rickety folding chair on a wobbly riser. Tonight that would be the master of 17th century French drama, J. B. Molière, bereft of this supporting cast, but still trouping along to present some of his finest monologs about sex. We see segments from School For Wives and the Bourgeois Gentleman and Tartuffe; all plays that got him in trouble with the church for their supposed heresy. Really, the problem was they were to close to the truth for many a priest, which only makes them more fun, even today. A few pieces do require a reader for a line or two, so some of the audience is drafted, including the Cute Blond in the Short Skirt, and the Ruggedly Handsome Guy In Need of A Shave. More pieces are read, more French sensibilities ruffled, and the result is a much better awareness of Molière’s oeuvre (I looked that up at PretentiousFrench.com). Mooney is brilliant and capable actor, and his presentation of an obsequious entertainer is superb. We all get enough Shakespeare around here, but I say “More Molière!” His innuendo is so much better.<p>
A Long Time Ago – The 80’s Review
Written and Directed by J. Simon MacDonald
Brown Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
I had some doubts about this show before I went in, based on some of the buzz around the Fringe this year, but as the show proceeded I kept thinking, “This is pretty clever – too bad the sound isn’t mixed better…” This is a musical review, with the central story the Star Wars movie set to parodies of 80’s hits. Leader and sparkly MC Threepio (Chris Shackelford) carries the beat with a monster clock on his chest, opening with a rousing redo of J. Geils “Centerfold “ (C3Pio is Painted Gold!) Adam Bellas plays the anti-ominous Vader against the relative clean cut Luke (Macdonald) as the troupe massacres “We built the city” and “Don’t you want me?” and, of course, “Mr. Roboto”.<p>
The songs are all cute and very well written, and the customs are very clever in a low budget spoofy way. The show could be a little tighter in production, as the sound wanders from hard to hear to blasting. The excuse is the move to the New Improved Brown Venue, which has a ceiling, but the A/C is still iffy. It’s a gem in the rough, with potential to be something special.<p>
With Joanne Haydock and Sophie Partington
Manchester Central Theatre Company
Yellow Venue, Orlando Fringe</b><P>
“Whining about Medea” might be closer to the truth. Two women are stuck in eternity, forced by the inexplicable will of the Gods to straighten out the barbarians of the present day. Somehow, they might teach us to not kill our children, and not sell out our homeland, but it’s not clear why. Haydock is cast in the role of a reluctant Medea, sick of telling the same depressing story over and over again, and desirous to do a little light comedy. Backing her up is a one woman Greek chorus (Partington) who sort of acts like a stage manager and personal trainer, keeping the spirit of the show alive and on track. Without dragging us through the literally gory details, the story line of this great tragedy come out – a woman spurned by her husband for another younger model, then cast out on here out with no choice but to murder her kids and brother. Yeah, it’s depressing, but that why they edit it down.<p>
Notionally a tragedy in this presentation, there is enough humor to blunt the edge of the subtext, and enough exposition about the story itself to help place it in the modern non-Greek speaking audiences’ mind. It’s Greek Tragedy 101 of the uninitiated, and a delightful deconstruction job for those of us who have sat thought a full production. For a mass murderer, Medea is a fun woman to hang out with.<p>
Colonel Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Talent Show
Slothco Productions
Green Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
Is “Bad Talent Show” redundant? Sometimes it seems that way, and this show pushes the concept to particularly low points, and then comes back out to draw some genuine laughter from the crown crammed into the seedier-than-normal Green Venue. Presiding over the action is frazzled haired Colonel Pepper (Charles Frierman), joyously blasting out the last show of his low-grade talent show. You’ve got your puppets, operated by twins James and Scott Silson. You’ve got your stand up comic Joe Serious, who never tells a joke (Francisco Laboy). You’ve got smashed celebrity commentary from Bill Crosby (Greg Barris) and Christopher Walken (Kevin Townsley) Best act of the show? The Smeagol twins (Silson boys again), debating whether they hates the audience or loves the audience. It’s precious.<p>
“Colonel Pepper’s” is that odd combination of not funny and funny that ends up keeping ht audience roaring, although no one could exactly say why. It’s blatantly, shamelessly, and thoroughly silly, and is worth tripping over the broken plaster to see.<p>
Job: The Hip Hop Musical
Written and Performed by Jerome Saibil and Eli Batalion
FDLT Productions
Red Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
After 20 years of snooping around the edges of mainstream culture, hip-hop now is as pervasive as infomercials and junk mail. With its repetitive rhythmic blocks and stylized gestures, it’s a perfect framework for any story that fits into short couplets. This urbanized tale from two rappers casts the story of biblical Job and his trials by God and Satan into a modern corporate setting, with mixed results. Rappers McCain (Saibil) and McAbel (Batalion) relate the story of poor Job Lowe, fast rising star in the Hoover records empire. It’s suggested by another VP of filthy lucre, Louis Saphire, that his loyalty is only tied to his salary and stock options. Well, duh, that’s what his whole day job thing is about – you give me money, I show up and do what you want me to. Anyway, Saphire gets permission from Mr. Hoover to whack Job’s package (the compensation one) as a test of his loyalty. Lowe maintains his loyalty until he is finally fired, at which point he lets loose with a string of profanity that you might well expect. But Hoover relents, restores his status and salary, and says, “Good boy, you’re loyal, just kidding.”
While this diverts quite a bit from the biblical story (Job never does curse God), it has its moments of entertainment. Job’s wife and her quest for tenure is a blast, and the ongoing dispute between McCain and McAbel over who stretches rhymes the farthest gets to the point of matching “fishy” with “potato knishy”, which makes you really question the “Grand Master” title all rappers claim. Most inexplicitly, after the curtain, the pair went off stage and continued the argument over rhyming skills, only to return to stage and mime a murder. As we left the studio, only one thought remained after all those fast paced lyrics – “WTF?”<p>
One Man Star Wars Trilogy
Written & Performed by Charles Ross
Directed by T.J. Dawe
Red Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
I admit I’m not that big a Star Wars fan. I’ve only seen the original movie 10 or 15 times, the next two maybe half a dozen, and the last 3 never. That puts me a leg down on appreciating this clever one-man tour de force of sci-fi parody, although I did enjoy it. Ross pulls of the trick of miming most of the important characters, scenes and effects in these three films, although he emphasis is on the mimic, not story exposition. That the audience is required to bring themselves, and from what I overheard in the restroom pre-show, cultural context was dripping from the crowd. Ross does pull off a brilliant synopsis; emitting R2D2’s squeak and princess Leia’s hair with equal ease, and the big fighter attack scenes are almost as thrilling as the originals, given the lack of Motion Camera or blue screens.<p>
If you named your kids Darth or Hans, you’ll love this show. If you never saw the films, difficult as that is to imagine, you’ll be lost. If you’ve seen them once or twice, sit in the back and admire the crowd.<p>
Dead Man Flying
Written By Eric Hissom
Directed by Patrick Flick
With Mindy Anders, Eric Hissom, Megan Whyte, Timothy Williams
Brown Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
So what’s your Grand Narrative? What story motivates you to fight for something, bleed for something, maybe even die young for it? Religion? America? The environment? I’m happy to hear that – but I don’t believe you. Not really. Sure, you’ll argue against Big Sugar or Big Government or Big Whatever after a few glasses of Chardonnay and a drive home with Rush. That’s what Senator Snowden’s staff does – split into teams and try a legislative approach to resurrecting the everglades. Betty (Whyte) infiltrates the realtors, Henry (Hissom) tackles Gatorland, Joe (Williams) shoots at the military, and Mary (Anders) goes after evil Dunstan Pharmaceutical, breeders of mutant alligators and for all we know supporters of HMO’s. Righteous indignation rules the roost until Joe and Mary hook up, and Dunstan provides the only possible drug to allow her to breed and raise neurotic children. At this point, she breaks ranks, buys the product, and turns Republican. Well, they warned there might be side effects, but this is ridiculous. As the worm turns, Joe’s atheist dad discovers religion while Joe takes to kidnapping, and pretty much everyone drifts from the ideal to the convenient. Personally, I just started there, but then I’m not in the glamorous Brown venue.<p>
While a bit preachy at times, Dead Men is the chewiest story of the Fringe, with deep symbolism, complex themes, excellent acting and an environmental message. What you take away is the difference between the press conference position and the reality behind the Green curtain. The senator’s staff sells out to the person, emitting a vague aura of self-importance while condemning the Other Side for basically starting out where they ended up. Like watching an avowed agnostic discovering Jesus on his deathbed, no one objects to saving the lost, it’s just that it’s a bit annoying when they claim the high ground after decades of being a direct pain in the ass. Certainly, there must be special condo in heaven for them, right next to the sewage plant.<p>
Mr. Story And The Supposed Gauguin
By Tod Kimbro
Directed by Michael Marinaccio
Temenos Theatre, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
Here’s a diffuse little drama about a young man with an unusual gift – the ability to paint like Gauguin. Emmet Spivey VII (Tod Kimbro) escapes the poverty of Appalachian coal mining to the poverty of art until he stumbles across a patron, the sexy Miasma Fontaine (Beth Marshall). She gives him money, status, and a commission to paint a mural of Tahiti. A bit of fieldwork is in order, so it’s off to the island where Emmet meets the ambiguous Mr. Vincent Story (Rocky Hopson). That might or might not be his name, and he might or might not be with the Met, and there might or might not be an undiscovered oil painting under Gauguin’s old hut. I’m skeptical; canvas doesn’t age well in damp tropical humidity, but never mind. Emmet rejects Miasma’s advances, first by claiming impotence and then homosexuality. Either might or might not be true as Emmet has a temporary entente with local sex worker Mali (Davis S Monge). Now the deal with Miasma isn’t standing up too well, so it’s back stateside to his pregnant (perhaps by Emmet, perhaps not) girlfriend (Christine Morales). <p>
Two weak themes permeate the story – Emmett’s attempt to locate himself artistically and personally, and the possibility the Mr. Story is scamming everyone with one of Emmet’s paintings. On a rain-dripped stage, we have some excellent work by Monge, as the nipple ringed jack of all tourist service on this small island. Rocky Hopson seems to be bombing though his lines in order to get to another show, but Marshall and Kimbro put out stalwart and competent performances in roles that seem written for them alone. Ok, Kimbro tends to write for himself and his friends, but that’s no crime – here it works best as a show case for their acting ability, even if the story is a bit lost in the mist of artistic ambiguity.<p>
One Man Hamlet
By William Shakespeare
Presented by Clayton Jevne
Theatre Inconnu
Blue Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
To cast, or not to cast. That is the question.
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and Arrows of outrageous Equity rules
Or, to take music stands and balloons
And, by arranging them, tell the story.
No more cast parties, late arrivals, tantrums.
The heartache, the thousand small disasters
That theater is prone to. ‘Tis a production device
Devoutly to be wished for. To act, to direct –
To direct! Perchance to triumph! Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that trip to Fringe what crowds may come?
When we have shuffled off to the Edmonton show
Will crowds come there, as well?
That would be no calamity. No lost time.
For who would not bear to hear every word of the Bard?
The ghost on a rope, the treachery of Claudius
The pangs of Ophelia’s death, of Yorick’s skull
The lust of Gertrude and Polonius’ blood
All from one guy in jeans, with puppets
Who might well make the audience read the soliloquy
Ne’er defining a fardel or bodkin.
To grunt and sweat with no A/C
To dread the hip hop rock concert
Unannounced across the street, with a million fans
And no parking. Puzzling? Not here.
It’s the ills we bear in Orlando, ills in pursuit of Art
That causes us to flee to the suburbs.
Oh, forebear! Be not a coward in the face of the unknown!
The native wit of Jevne, his bold approach
His pale cast of thin, vaporous actors,
And enterprise of great motion and movement,
With this regard: turn not yourself away,
And lose not the name of this play.
Joe’s NYC Bar in Wonderland
Directed By Christian Kelty
Temenos Theater, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
Running a bar is tougher than it looks, what with drunks and stickups and the general stress of dealing with the public. Owner Gabe (Christian Kelty) is handling it well enough until his mysterious twin Damien (James Keaton) arrives at Joe’s, and they get into a fight over relatives. Like that’s news. And, Gabe’s porn queen girl friend Jenny (Cindy Pearlman) has a project in the oven, and now she’s drinking for two. What IS news is the heart attack Damien provokes, and as the cast starts CPR, Gabe’s soul enters a bizarre world where he must make some serious choices – life or death, destiny or dreams, Coke or Pepsi. It’s down the rabbit hole for Gabe, and in the suspended animation of an oxygen deprived brain he meets the Alice in Wonderland crew. There’s Caterpillar, played by James Newport, a guy who can act more stoned than any other actor I’ve met. Caterpillar asks the question “Who are you?” over and over again, but its not clear if he pointing up Gabe’s lack of self-awareness, or just forgetting stuff. The Cheshire Cat (Lynda Wilkerson) coughs up fur balls and asks, “Where are you going?” Well, Gabe finds himself at a cross road (as are we all, at all times), and needs to choose. His dear departed mother (Jennifer Christa Palmer) arrives, looking like Audrey Hepburn and commanding a surreal game of croquet. This frustrates Gabe, as his family continues to concoct rules designed to alienate him. Yup, I have the same problem, but at least I don’t have to play pass the hedgehog.<p>
This is one of the more fanciful episodes of Joe’s, and feels looser and more spontaneous than the last few, even with minimal audience input. The descent into Wonderland is pretty creepy, and the back up music from guitarist Nathan Adams goes from pop to ominously weird when the UV lighting comes up. Will Gabe change? Wonderland tries the classic brain washing techniques of loud and disorienting environments and nonsensical stimuli to break the man down and rebuild him as it wants. It might work, it might not – he seems a better man at last call, but only another episode will tell. I hope that happens, but experience shows once you’re jerk, you tend to stay a jerk. <p>
The Book of Liz
By David and Amy Sedans
Directed by David Lee
With Becky Fisher, Chris Robison, Joe Swanberg, Tommy Wooten
Crazy Talk Dramatical Guild and Fall River Productions
Pink Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
Can a traditional, agrarian culture survive in today’s world by employing modern management methods, and still respect tradition? Of course not, that would be silly. You can’t just take manual methods of cheese ball manufacture, strip them of their religious significance, and expect to keep you congregation down on the farm. Brother Bightbee (Wooten) drops into the Cluster Haven community with all these new fangled ideas, and demotes Sister Liz (Fischer) from cheese ball production to the chive patch. She knows this is against God’s will and just plain wrong, and takes a powder. She hitches into town, gets a job in a restaurant catering to recovering alcoholics, and discovers liberal humanism. She’s broken out of her past and now has a management fast track career, but it grinds to a halt when a toast colored uniform with a knee length skirt challenges her deeply seated values. It’s back to the Cluster Haven, just in time to save the furniture from sale on Ebay, and everyone in the community learns that individuality CAN make a difference, particularly in food service.<p>
Amish don’t come to many plays in this town, so they are a safe yet distant target of parody. Humor here revolves round a clash of cultures, and the stiffness and inflexibility of people trying to live like it was 1659. Fischer’s Liz carries the message proudly – be nice to those around you, even the sinners, express your doubts, and do what you know to be right. The world she’s embedded in is either fossilized like the beard on Rev Tollhouse (Swanberg) or completely falling apart as in the Ukrainian household of Oxana (Robison). The message is light and positive, the delivery good natured and funny, and while it won’t reorient your belief system, it does allow you to laugh at your superiority to the inflexible folk around you. You’d NEVER be like them, right? Right.<p>
Sex? Don’t Mind If I Do
By Franca Rame, Dario and Jacapo Fo
Starring Vanessa Aranegui
Cracked Halo Productions
Purple Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
We all like sex, but do we know that much about it? Beyond the pick up lines and condom jokes and cleaning up efficiently? Of course not, that’s why we talk about it almost as much as we discuss politics and sports. Ms. Aranegui does her best to fill in the blanks, whether by showing how Adam and Eve might have gotten things rolling to her sexual confusion over whether babies came from the belly button area, or her euphemist “Rear End Up Front” The show starts on a very light note, and our narrator is assisted by a well equipped male blow up doll. He does have a small leak and when he gets a bit limp, the audience is called up to help restore him, plus get him in some decent boxers. We romp along with on stage costume changes and Photoshop enhanced pornography and get some incredibly obscure tips on locating a clitoris and the make G spot. The show then takes a dark turn, with a monologue of a woman’s rape and subsequent shame.
While the show stars out fun and bouncy, the negative energy at the end is what stays with you as you leave the theater. You might argue that rape is a part of sexual relations, just as foreplay and orgasm, but so are pregnancy and STD and all sorts of other things. While entertaining, the show is a bit schizophrenic, and not to it’s advantage.<p>
Fumbling Toward Idiocy
Smellfungus
Purple Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
I think they have a new rule at Fringe this year – no comedy group may appear on stage without doing at least one rap style song. It IS the easy style to ridicule, consisting of a stable drum machine and little couplets that might fit easily on the restroom wall. Of course, with a group of 3 Mission Improbable alums, this rap opener is pretty clever, even working in the value of pi to 4 places. After that, it’s a string of sketch number revolving around sex and death (the funny kind of death, of course). Guys hang out in a bar and brag about women. Pilots don’t die when they are supposed to. The Loch Ness monster runs a dating ad. He’s really a nice guy, and, well, let’s say the species continues. It’s a pretty steady stream of comedy, no real dull points, pretty steady yucks, lots of black outs, and the whole crew wear those bright orange jump suits the utility guy have, so that if they’re struck by a live wire, the body is easier to find. If you like the MI improv, this is a good lead in to their sketch stuff. Aloha.<p>
Tired Clichés
Written and performed by T. J. Dawe
Blue Venue – Orlando fringe Festival</b><P>
It’s Humor In My Crappy Job time as one of Canada’s best story tells comes to town again. You get your degree, you get your graduation card from grandma with five bucks, and next thing you know, its minimum wage and maximum work. But there are benefits, mostly arbitrary and pointless rules. Dawe spends his time at work collating printouts, and his time on stage arranging and jumping onto a collection of cardboard boxes that break his fall. Interspersed with the snippets of life are Carlinesqe observations on the meaning of words and the silliness of random events. For instance, is it more meaningful to scribble “Happy Birthday” on an office card for someone you don’t know, or really personalize it with a standardized obscenity? All seems pretty meaningless, until the job dumps him, the boxes are beat to a pulp, and the entire story solidifies into focus as a bicycle wreck clarifies everything. Dark and funny, personal and universal, Dawe pulls off another great hour story telling as he and the audience huddle around a flaming paper match.<p>
Do You Take This Man?
Written By Sarah Quick
Directed by James Barrett
Quick Change Theatre
Blue venue – Orlando Fringe</b><p>
Just a silly romantic story – or so it seems. Joanna (Quick) is a tad ample, and her friends all think see need a guy, a permanent one and not one that is just leaves pubic hair on a bar of soap. Dressed in red silk bathrobe, she tells about heading to a bar with her friend. Lo and behold, a really cool, romantic, non-abusive man appears! OK, he smokes, but he’ll give that up. And he’s a Manchester United fan, but she can adapt to the chant, plus he looks GREAT in a tank top. Romance lead to marriage, and marriage to a honeymoon, and a honeymoon to a deeply tragic story of sudden and unexpected loss. The red silk fades to flat black as Joanne changes clothes and watches her life shatter in front of her.
“Do You Take This Man” is one of the most powerful dramas I’ve seen in a long time, and certainly one of the best shows at this year’s Fringe. While it starts out appearing as a light romantic romp filled with British slang terms for sex and booze and other aspects of life, the turn from joy to pathos is subtle but effective, and when it’s done, the senses of loss is as much yours as the woman on stage. I loved it more than any guy ought to.<p>
For more information on Quick Change Theatre, please visit www.quickchangetheatre
Theme Park Diva: The Musical
By John B. deHaas and Heather Finn
Starring Angela Sapolis, Trudie Petersen and David Houde</b><p>
You know my theory – take any crappy experience, add “The Musical” to it, and it’s not nearly as bad. I’ve never though much of “The Parks,” as we say, but they are enormously popular and filled with the sort of bitter backstage catfights engendered by the low stakes. Even if you’re the Queen Bee of “Music, Music, Music, Music, and More!” no one really cares except the annual pass holders, and they rank with the cockroaches in the theme park pecking order. Little Suzy Ditty (Sapolis) has her dream, and it involves performing 5 shows a day in the heat and no dressing room. She might just have the stuff to replace the faded talents of Amber Crystal (Petersen) at Galaxy World, the best gosh darn park in the whole world. Ambiguously talented Terry Richards (Houde) has a dream as well, and his new all singing, all dancing, all talking show could win the coveted Silver Stubby, if the cast doesn’t kill him first and his boobs don’t fall off.<p>
Here’s a brilliant musical, packed with great songs, great singing, and even a bit of plot. Production values are high (by Fringe standards at least) and the singers are wonderful, even the ones that barely pass the audition in scene 2. DeHaas and Finn have put together an extremely clever set of songs, from the Bad Spanish 101 “Manzanas de Amor” to the factually incorrect “The USA is A-OK” boffo blow out. It’s clean, it’s fun, and the A/C was working the day I saw the show, drawing a well-deserved ovation. Sure, we hate the parks for all the reasons you know, but that’s no reason not to pick on them. After all, we locals need to have SOME fun with them.<p>
For more information on this show, please visit www.themeparkdiva.com <p>
When Shows Collide
Eric Pinder and Dave McConnell
Yellow Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
I’m sure scheduling a Fringe is no easy feat. Tonight it looks like a screw up of major proportions, as Eric Pinder’s pseudo intellectualism runs smack dab into Dave McConnell’s foul mouthed street smarts. On one side you have an attempt to take the greatest (and possible longest) literary work of the west, the Iliad, and adapting it to formalized Shinto theater conventions. Adding some ‘multicultural’ mayonnaise to the process is petite Karin Amano, a woman who could probably kick box McConnell to his knees in a fair fight. On the other, there’s a lot of rhyme bustin’ and mother fuckin’ that works best to records scratched backwards. A salt purification doesn’t look sufficient to prevent blows or worse, and a drunken Chris Gibson is retrieved from the Hooters across the way to settle things. In the end, we learn that the stories of classic Greek poetry are really about a bunch of street gangs in togas, and the music you mother hates could one day be studied as classical culture. <p>
It helps if you’ve been to a few Fringes to get the jokes here, and tonight’s audience was filled with actors and regulars and volunteer hangers on who did catch the Todd Kimbro jokes and laugh in all the right places. If you’re new to this theatrical mayhem, it’s still funny, but you’ve wonder what the laughs are for from time to time. McConnell is man one must praise with caution, but he does have a gift for fitting words to rhythm on the fly, and when Pinder’s tap routine merges with his masturbation jokes, it does make for an entertaining hour. Especially if the band across the street would tune up or turn down.<p>
Do I Make You Horny?
Oops Guys
Red Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
At last, a show so crude, so tasteless, and so out of bounds that the unthinkable happened opening night – the tech guy got horny! It’s reality game show parody time, and the Oops guys have pulled off their funniest show to date – 7 semi-professional actors get on stage to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous sexuality, all hoping to pick off the grand prize – a wreath of crummy vines from Michaels, and a gift certificate to Fairvilla. Your contestant gene pool was about ankle deep, with the likes of Leydon Sedecky, Key West’s Bitch Sisters, and Orlando’s own James Newport. It’s double entendre elimination, with tests ranging from best pick up line (My favorite – “Irish I was with you”) to banana and whipped cream eating. That one was won by crowd favorite Jen McElroy and her double reverse gymnastic between the legs style. The guy sitting next to me just about rushed the stage to get her number (BR-549, as I recall), and she drew the best ovation in Oops Guys history. <p>
Every show is different, every show is bawdy, and every show represents a slight lowering of Fringe standards, such as they are. It’s what you pay the 5 bucks parking to see. Get down there, and sit in the front row. They won’t bother you – I promise.<p>
Mission Improvable: Evolution
Red Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
You’ve probably heard of the creation vs. evolution debate. Some folks believe the improv long form was handed down by a divine figure to the Second City in the mid 80’s and others think it evolved though a process of natural selection, aided environmental forces such as drunken comedy club patrons in the Midwest. Mission Improbable jumps into the middle of the controversy, and explores how improv got from where it was to where it is, a well-respected art form replete with technical terms to intimidate the outsiders, such as “short form” and “Armando Diaz”.<p>
Just as in the early days of life itself, there were simple creatures such as amoeba and sardines, Improvisation began as acting lessons and word games; such as “guess the telemarketing product”. Eventually it evolved more complex forms, such as “House of Pain”, where the improv actors may experience physical torture from the audience. This clearly sets the Improv on morally higher ground than most stand up, where in the audience experiences the torture and has no way to retaliate, except by leaving crappy tips. Eventually Long Form, the Homo Erectus of comedy appears. This style not only incorporated complex story telling but also was able to master not only fire and Internet pornography in the pursuit of creating Culture with a capital C.<p>
While Mission Improv displayed its usual quick wit and clever games, this show does have some rather academic stretches that are of more interest to a professional actor than to the general public. Overall, its funny, but it will leave you with more knowledge of the history of comedy than you might have expected exists.<p>
For more information on Mission: Impovable, please visit www.missionimprovable.com/ <p>
Equus On Ice
With Toxic Audio and Sak Theater Company
Red Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
Oh sure, just put “ On Ice” after any piece of Richard Burton swill, and next thing you know the buses from Des Moines will roll in with the rhinestone glasses set. That’s the plan of befuddled director Dave Russell, and it looks like it might work, except for the bit about there not being any actual ice (too warm in the venue) and no horses (no stable in the green room). Thing go well for about 30 seconds till Russell chops the power cord with his skate, Tanya Harding fails to show up, and the burden of entertaining a restive and spectacle seeking crowd fall to the twin skills of Toxic Audio and two of the Sak Guys. Fortunately, that’s enough talent carry the day, and opening the music portion of the show is a boffo number by Toxics that rhymes “Phony” with “ Zamboni”. I challenge YOU to try that. <p>
We alternating pleasantly between some light improv (“Moving Bodies” stick in my mind, I always hated that one) and some slightly modified Toxic acapella. The show’s intensity builds until Toxin Paul Sperazza does his trademark back flip on a stage covered with a deadly mixer of Tic Tacs and un-frozen Zephyr Hills water. What could have been a tragedy turns into Comedy Tonight, replete with silly hip-hop music (yes, that’s redundant, so flame me) and dueling vocal drummers. And, if you wonder what the true motivation of the boy who blinded the horses really is, it looks like you need to pop over to Stardust and rent the DVD. We never did resolve the horse opera question, but then we never really hooked into the vision thing that Russell had. We’re not on the same meds, you know.<p>
For more information on SAK, please visit www.sak.com <p>
For more information on Toxic Audio, please visit www.toxicaudio.com <p>
How To Make Love To An Actor
By George F. Walker
Directed by Lauren O’Quinn and Mona Garcea
Art’s Sake Studio
Brown Venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
You can sit front row center, take notes for years, and never understand how much the cast hates you. Opening night for “Adam and Eve II: The Bitter Core” finds playwright Ross (Kevin Townsley) agonizing over whether the audience likes his play. The cast certainly didn’t – Shakespearian overactor Willy (Simon Needham) thinks the second act needs a rewrite, neophyte Sandy (Stacey Miller) is afraid of what mom will think, and lesbian Jess (Yvonne Suhor) is ready to kill the stage manager (Garcea), preferably with her own stop watch. Vodka and painkillers aid the post show discussion, and when a fistfight breaks out between Ross and the audience at the lobby party, everyone declares the show a grand success.
This is a screamingly funny look at what thoughts really flow behind the plastic grins of those people you pay your $15 plus parking to see act their little hearts out. While actors may touch mediocrity on stage, it’s what their peers think that really matters. After all, the audience is all comps and who cares what they think? Attending a few opening nights will help, but isn’t required to laugh as the foibles of theater folks are dissected for you enjoyment. While Needham had his overacting skills honed, Townsley’s drunken stupor worked well, especial when he clumsily tries to seduce the venom spitting Suhor. Miller looked excellent in her space queen costume and subsequent tight pink dress, and exuded a naivety that perfectly fit the role. I say this is one of the funnies shows in fringe. But then, I was comped on opening night and I had to bring my own vodka.<p>
Elephant Club
Starring Nicola Gunn
Company C Na Na
Brown venue, Orlando Fringe Festival</b><p>
Quite little Rhoda lives at home where she’s treated worse than moms cat’s. She has a crappy job as the answering machine in an insurance company, and romance is at best the disembodied voice of a man on the Spanish language tape. Or maybe it’s a man on a bus, but reasonable advice comes from her invisible friend, the washed up film and cabaret star. The endless monotony of life grinds at her, until she fights back by giving away the bosses classic Jag and runs after love, only to be crushed by a passing truck.
Enigmatic and internal, actress Gunn mimes Rhoda’s life as a lost and put upon woman. Others speak to her, but she only receives, never transmits. We go thought her day thrice, the small slice of the ennui that is the whole of her existence, and ennui that leads to sympathy with her state, but no clear suggestion of a strategy out. However, she’s not without some power, and her impromptu disruption of the workplace is clever, even though she fails to find love in the end. Set in a small dark space, this is a fun little theatrical puzzle that mimics the mind of lost soul.<p>
Jerusalem Jones and The Mystery of The Dead Sea Scrolls
By Ken Hanson and Jonathan Chisdes
Directed by Mark Mannette
Starring Ken Hanson
JCC – Maitland, Fla</b><p>
It’s hard to write fiction as unlikely as the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were assembled by an obscure Jewish sect known as the Essenes, and contained various religious writings, manuals, and songs. Some were stored in clay pots, others covered by sand, all in remote caves near the Dead Sea. A Bedouin shepherd found them accidentally in 1947, sold them to a junk dealer in Bethlehem, and eventually they made their way to scholars who understood what they were. Amazingly, they provided written texts nearly twice as old as anything else known at the time.<p>
Presenting the story in dramatized form is Hebrew scholar and lecturer Ken Hanson, whose childhood fascination with antiquities lead to his involvement with the scrolls. He didn’t actully find any of them, but he does know his material, and you couldn’t help but learn something from the show. It’s less a drama and more a colorful college lecture by an eccentric and enthusiastic professor, and you always know the end point of the story before any tension builds. Besides his basic leather jacket and fedora adventurer, Hanson plays a number of other characters who handle the scrolls, including Archbishop Samuel, Professor Sukenic, and wrinkly-pated Yigael Yadin. The characterizations help the story, which is more than can be said of the silly jokes and Walter Cronkite impersonations.<p>
A few loose ends seem to remain as Hanson ends with the story of the Copper Scroll, which seems to point to a major buried treasure somewhere in the area. What happened to the remaining scrolls held by Kando, the dealer? Why did the scrolls stay locked up for so long, and what made the recent release of the unsorted scraps possible? Clearly, there’s more to the story than time allows, but a tighter resolution and a bit more tension would have made this a great show, not merely a good one.<p>
For more information on the Jewish Community Center of Orlando, please visit www.orlandojcc.org/<p>
Chesapeake
By Lee Blessing
Directed by Michael Edwards
Starring T. Robert Pigott
Orlando Theater Project, Seminole Community College</b><p>
Just because art can be bad, should it be guaranteed a government sinecure, like Bad Foreign Policy or Wasteful Defense Spending? On one side of the battle we find perfomance artist Cur (Pigott), who reads the Song of Solomon while the audience undresses him. His nemesis is powerful senator Thurm Poole, a man who realized that he could beat liberals over the head with the National Endowment for the Arts and get votes. Cur has an NEA grant; Poole needs him to hold up as an object of everything wrong with the Liberals. Cur is just as important to the senator’s campaign as his trusty dog Lucky. Both are perfect photo ops, and both can be manipulated with impunity, always good for a few votes in a pinch. When Cur realizes he’s been unwittingly used, he sets out to bring divine vengeance on the senator by co-opting his own dog. Ah, only an artist could come up with something as sublime and unworkable, and almost certainly get jail time or worse! Filippo Tommaso Marinetti would be proud.<p>
With his puppy-like enthusiasm and tear-the-place-apart energy, Pigott makes this one man show sparkle. It’s a first person narrative, so we have no issues with multiple character differentiation. He’s funny and likeable, and although he may have been involved in a few perfomance pieces along the way, the story tonight is NOT just one guy pounding on a frying pan creating aesthetic sadism. Cur has motivation – experiencing art with his dedicated but unconnected father, fleeing the narrow mindedness of a southern small town to date waiters in NYC, and eventually following his dream, no matter how unprofitable it might be economically. He sets out to affect people, and does. <p>
While the play appears to be at least superficially a light-hearted approach to justify arts funding, we see as well the deeper place art holds in society. While there are many actors Doing Art in the sense of making people uncomfortable in a black box theater, the notionally evil senator Poole produces the exact same effect. He has voice lessons, a schtick, and a director, and fills the seats to boot. While Cur wants to make one set of viewers uncomfortable (and does), Poole works on a complementary subset of the populace. Both are on stage, both manipulate the viewer, both aim for and achieve a result. Poole is, in fact, as much perfomance artist as Cur. It’s just that Poole DID get a government sinecure – we call him an Elected Official. <p>
For more information on Orlando Theater Project, please visit www.otp.cc </b>
