goestoshow

How Not To Suck was sketch-comedy that was described, by Vue I believe, as being like early Kids In The Hall or SCTV, but it also said that doesn’t do it justice. Well, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t do KitH justice. It is much like the zany, bizarre, and bitter KitH sketches that nobody really gets, so I can see the resemblance. But it is nothing at all like their best work.

It had its moments, though. Just not really enough of them.

Jem Rolls Off The Tongue was spoken word/slam poetry, and as such not really my cup of tea. Rhythmic and rhyming poetry tends to lull my brain to sleep. It was ok for what it was, but it wasn’t as good as Bold and Spiky (or at least not Bold). Not much more to say about that. I think there was something I wanted to quote here, but I can’t remember it now.

52 Pickup was the play I meant to see when I saw The Aleatory Project, which we saw on our second day and I really liked. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite as fond of 52 Pickup as I hoped. Where The Aleatory Project tells a random story in linear order, 52 Pickup tells a linear story in random order. This was more like Memento, but where Memento tells a story that is in itself interesting (if not surprising) if you put it the right way around, this one tells only a relatively dull story.

The main plus to 52 Pickup is that the actors, when doing intimate scenes, had by far the best chemistry I’ve seen all Fringe. This may be because they’re very much into each other, or it may be they’re just good at it. But compared to the utterly laughable intimacy in Identity (man yanking himself up onto a table that the girl is sitting on), for example, it was very very well done.

Also, I totally have the hots for the woman in this play. She’s adorable.

Beyond Therapy is about a man and a woman who’s therapists have suggested that they place a personal ad and respond to a personal ad respectively. The man is bisexual and involved with a guy at the time, but his therapist never knows who he is and is completely unaware of the fact that he’s not straight, let alone in a relationship with a man, hence the bizarre advice. In fact, everything about his therapist is strange. She has a snoopy doll that she talks to, she barks to encourage when she thinks her patient (or porpoise) is doing something positive, and she mixes up words (like dirigible for her secretary, or porpoise for patient). She also has no files in her briefcase, only slinkies, spam, and other toys.

Of course, the woman has slept with her therapist. And he’s always trying to get her to do it again. Yet she always comes back.

Anyways, they meet at a restaurant that appears to have no waiters (in fact, they never get service at this place until pretty much the climax), and proceed to flirt in strange ways. Whether each thinks the other is independent, protective, or vulnerable seems to change with the wind, and they go quickly from taking everything too far (ie. marriage proposals) to being painfully aware of how strange they seem to the other. Which reminds me of some interactions in my recent life.

The play sort of goes on in this strange way for the whole thing. It is bizarre, but also really funny. If the Fringe weren’t over I’d recommend it. I was especially fond of the way that it dealt with alternative relationship structures, because there seems to be so painfully little of that out there, even in the lowercase-eff-fringe of culture.

Get Off The Cross, Mary! was really damn funny though. It’s about three puppets (who’s careers supposedly started on The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock, but went downhill from there) who are trying to make a film comeback by making a movie about Jesus being gay. It opens with the auditioning of their handlers (you know, the people who stick their hands up the puppets’ asses *wink wink*) and is hilarious pretty much from the first moment to the crazy musical finish (”At first I was afraid, I was crucified!”).

Especially good was how they dealt with mistakes. This is the Fringe, so you don’t really expect flawless execution. Least of all in the BYOVs, which are almost all bars. Three times during the play a bottle was dropped (once was me… oops) and every time they worked it into the play. When a line was dropped, it was similarily worked into the play. I found that pretty impressive, since most plays I’ve seen at the Fringe didn’t deal very well with that sort of thing.

Good play. Totally worth it and I highly recommend it. It may even have tied with The Aleatory Project as my favorite of the Fringe so far.

Girls’ Guide is a one-woman show about a girl who goes to New York to try to break into Broadway, but all she really manages to break into is stiletto heals and a big black trenchcoat (which she foolishly thinks will work as a dominatrix outfit). Basically, while working as a waitress, she sees an ad on Craigslist for a dungeon that needs new dominatrixes for $75/hour. She goes to it, expecting training but it turns out the only training she can get is when someone is ok with having her watch (presumably because they like to be watched).

This one is not for the weak of stomach, that’s for sure. It references acts that most people probably don’t think too much about and does it like it’s yesterday’s meatloaf. But it was also really fucking funny. And the performer manages to get the audience involved in hilarious ways. If you sit in the front row, she may even sit on your lap. And like I said above, if you want a bit of a striptease, you’ll get it here.

Gayface is, essentially, a collage of observations about gay life set to a story about a couple who have been together for well over a year and their inability to be in love with each other at the same time. The observation moments were depicted by wearing masks and were done sketchcom style. Had some really funny moments, like the old-folk gay guys lamenting about how easy it is to be gay in the big city these days compared to their experiences in the little towns: “In my day, we had to walk 5 miles uphill… IN THE SNOW… to get a trick. And we had to do it IN THE OUTHOUSE. And watch for CAYOTES all the time….. AND WE DIDN’T HAVE LUBE BACK THEN EITHER.” Also amusing was the MSN smilie bit where two guys who want very different things try to hook up. One ends up with a rolleyes smiley after flipping the mask over, and the other a sadface.

While it was good, it didn’t really feel like the main story went anywhere. It had the feel of a play with a political or sociological message, but never really managed to reach it.

But it was worth the ticket price. If nothing else, it was a fun time. Reminded me a bit of Kids in the Hall gay sketches. And some portion of the proceeds go to a good cause of some sort.

Criteria, a sci-fi dystopic ‘thriller’ (in so far as a one man play can be a thriller) was very good. It had all the makings of a good 60s sci-fi short story. The premise was that the US has, in the 24th century, broken up into 6 countries based on the first number of the social security number for the states in them(I looked on wikipedia and a lot of the bits of information about SSNs used for the premise of the play seem to be incorrect, so I won’t go into a lot of detail on that), which were then swallowed up into 3 larger superstates based on the prefixes 2 (Twoland — the eastern states), 4 (Fourland — the middle states, a stripe beginning on the south side in Texas), and 5 (Fiveland — the western states with California being the dominant).

People in these new states have their SSNs tattooed to their hands as a means of identification, and there’s lots of racial allegory in the way the dominant SSNs treat both each other and the less dominant prefixes (0, 1, and 3). The main character is from Fourland, and is part of a government program to use untattooed people as terrorists against Fiveland. The audience follows him on his journey to blow up an important train via suicide bombing, which is a pretty relevant topic.

I felt it a bit slow, such that a lot of scenes seemed to drag on a bit longer than they should have, but it was still pretty good. On going in, they stamped a SSN on people’s hands as a ‘participation stamp,’ which had me worried we’d have to do something, but we didn’t.

Dragonfly: Identity, on the other hand, was quite terrible. Overchoreographed, overdramatic, overeverything hackish story of a person with a big giant brain and a person with a big giant heart (and superpowers to match — telepathy and empathy respectively). Granted that any story can be made to sound horrible with the right description, I really think this one was quite bad. Every now and then the story would break into a nativesque story about a dragonfly saving humanity by biting the first Man, thereby giving Man more heart so rather than destroying the world quickly, they would do it slowly and painfully (my embellishment, but it’s pretty close).

The protagonist being the woman with the giant head, very little about this play made any kind of sense, and it was clearly wishing it were a movie or tv show. It just didn’t work on any level.

The Bold and Spikey Poetry Show was a couple of British guys reciting somewhat dour poetry about angry bus drivers, the end of the world, the idiocy of love (that one’s a title), the right to life (but not the kind you’re thinking of), and Veterans/Remembrance Day. All in all it was good, even if I do sometimes have trouble following rhyming poetry (it lulls my brain to sleep). These were pretty funny though. I liked Bold better than Spikey (names assigned by us as the audience, not by themselves — one is bald and the other has a big purple spike in the front of his hair — actually Gollum is a better name for Bold). Spikey overused repetition in his poetry and generally the delivery was harder to follow, while Gollum/Bold/Bald tended towards the lighthearted.

My favorites were the angry bus driver (about a hijacked bus where the bus driver starts to enjoy the things the hijacker wants him to do — and has a bit of a surprise ending), the end of the world one (actually called The Day the Earth Stopped Turning) which was about the idea that humanity would be freed from its ills if it knew there was no more — sort of a baudy version of Imagine maybe, and the Veterans Day one that Bold claimed was both commissioned AND banned by the BBC which ended in the sentiment (like it or love it) that “as long as we send people to replace them, we should wear our poppies with shame and not pride.”

They were definitely worth it.