Orlando Fringe Festival 2018 – Day 3
Orlando, Florida
Multiple Organism – Mind of a Snail Puppet Co. – Silver Venue
This IS the raunchy show you’ve been looking for, assuming you look for sexy at this festival. The narration splits into two domains: an actor’s lips projected on the belly of a nude actress creates a weird flesh puppet (very funny), and multiple transparencies projected on a screen follows a woman and two tooth brushes down the sewer. This is the main story, the tooth brushes meet, fall in love, raise a family, and so on. This is the amazing puppetry section of the show. Odd but touching, this drew roars of laughter and applause. Not for the kiddies.
Shakespears’s Ghostbusters – Homicidal Orphan Productions – Green Venue
Like most modern productions of the Bard’s work, this show relies more on clever staging than clever dialog. The Ghostbusters team perfected a method of capturing spirits and containing them. They moved into an old fire house, get called into a hotel and there they get the ghost, at the cost of the upper two floors of the hotel. The laughs come from ninja stage hands zooming through set changes, from the silly props that work most of the time, and the occasionally audible narration from Sir Charles Dent that bring the laughs. Hight point of the show: The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man get marshmallows stuck to the ceiling. What ticket are you buying? Ghostbusters!
The Haunting of Saint River – Bremner Duthie – Pink Venue
There’s always time for a good ghost story even if the story teller breaks that pesky fourth wall from time to time. Mr. Duthie mixes sampled audio and loops with the tale of man who makes a bet with the devil, or at least one of his local press agent. So it’s down to a dream of a house on a river. Here’s where the ghosts hang out on weekends, and at night they torment him. Waters rise, and he’s rescued by a neighbor who may just be a different demon. It’s not the story but the telling you’ll love. Lights are low, but that’s ok for a fine tale in a rather dark room.
1 Hr.
Here’s some rather sketchy sketch comedy with a peck of funny people here but not too many gags that worked. By far the best number depicted Shamu’s dismissal from Sea World; this had a tight set up and great punch out line. Then there was a woman on piano, she sounded good. Pushing the boundaries were “Guilting” with two guys setting up an ex-girlfriend and some neighbors with weird guilt trips. A movie parody and a SNL style cold open gag about the Trumphouse felt limpid; there’s really not much more “funny”left in this adminstration. I say “pass.”
Hot Dog! – Always Fresh Productions – Green venue
Best costumes of the fringe, hands down. These two gals dress up like ball park franks and even have auxiliary mustard. They are in some sort of satanic contest competition for onions as prizes, but it keeps getting stick in a time loop forcing them to repeat things over and over. They finally brake the loop and then we blow up balloons for them. Kid friendly, so long as the kids aren’t old enough to demand mommy explain what just happened on stage.
