goestoshow

Last play of the normal fringe! Well, this one was a good one to end off on. It was hilarious. It was so funny I bought the guy’s album for $20. It was a humorous take on music history and a bit of theory.

It’s one of the holdovers. If anyone still wants to see any more fringe plays, I recommend looking into this one as a holdover.

Oh wow was this ever funny. The actor/writer of this is incredibly good at keeping the audience engaged and laughing, even when talking about very serious things. I really wish I’d seen the plays that inspired the letter he got implicating him as someone who was out to teach people to seduce their students now. I’ll have to keep an eye out for him now.

Well, it wasn’t what I expected. I’m kind of glad I didn’t actually get a lot of people to go, because the play I sold was not the play it was. There were a few funny things, but not many — and certainly not in satire terms.

Still, for what it actually was, it was really good. Excellent choreography, brilliant timing, great use of AV equipment and the club space, and they even managed to make the play watchable from seats that surrounded the ’stage’ (actually the dance floor + the stage of New City) by around 270 degrees. It also really played out a storyline with the pacing and structure I’ve come to expect of actual Anime films. It seemed like a cross between Ghost in the Shell and Paprika. I’m not a big fan of that plot structure or pacing, but this got it all bang on.

Apologies to Brenna and Rachelle, who did not end up staying for the whole thing. I do wish I’d known better what it was going in.

Wow, this was a really strange play. It was kind of a wildcard in my lineup, as it got mixed reviews and unlike most of the rest I went into it knowing pretty much only what was in the fringe guide description.

But I was impressed. It had pacing issues, and they could have tied a couple of plotlines together a bit better, but in the end it was good. I really liked that the (obviously) fake accent was a plot device, because otherwise I’d have been wondering why on earth they bothered.

I don’t think I’ve seen a lot of ‘twist’ plays that really worked at the Fringe in the past. This one pulled it off.

Last year (or was it the year before?) we saw The Bible (Abridged) and I think we liked it. I was less impressed with this one, though. There just wasn’t enough funny to sustain the little movie skits they did. The connecting plot was weak until the end, where it was a little fun but not really worth the rest of the play.

It’s funny, though, since this is a really well-reviewed play. Just goes to show, I suppose. Can’t trust the reviewers.

On the other hand, it DID get that song from Pulp Fiction stuck in my head, and I appreciate that as it’s one of the better songs I’ve had stuck in my head lately.

I was groaning when the play they picked out to spoof/do their own version of was some opera at a BYOV. It seemed unlikely that this would go well. But it definitely did go well and it was pretty hilarious. Best parts I can think of:
- Discussion about thought bubbles/comic-book-style emotion signs (question marks, anger vibrations, etc) coming off the characters’ heads.
- The crazy twisted woman-murders-everyone plot they came up with.
- The use of a lesbian affair as part of said plot (in an improv done by all men)
- General hilarity

I don’t usually go in for improv, but the two I’ve seen this fringe have been really good. One of the guys from Rocket Sugar Factory was also in this one.

This was probably the best improv show I’ve ever seen. Although some of that was probably because the phrase I put in to be used: “I’ve got a fish in my vagina” was the first card they picked. And they did a good job with that, and I’m very impressed that they did (seems like it’d be really easy to just give up and not use it).

Was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it.

I expected this to be all funny rhyming and mixing of poetic style. It wasn’t that, but that’s ok because what it was was fantastic. It was funny, it was sad, it taught me about Dr. Suess (and a little about Jack Kerouac as well). I was definitely impressed.

Whatever truth there is to the claim that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays (the claim being that the Earl of Oxford did), this was an amusing portrayal of a version of history. According to this version, Shakespeare believed his horse was writing the plays and giving them to him. More physical comedy than I expected, but I can’t complain about that. Overall this was a good play. And because it’s a BYOV play, it’s playing pretty consistently throughout the rest of the week.

So I saw this play because the girl who wrote/stars in it was in Sad Victoria and I was impressed with her enough to see the thing she wrote (er, and she’s cute). I wasn’t disappointed. There were definite technical issues (which were apparently worse opening night, as See Magazine gave it 2 stars and it appears to be entirely because of the sound levels being wrong), volumes going wrong and stuff like that.

Most of the singers were passable (I think they’re mostly performers first, singers second). On the other hand, Alexandra Mihill, the writer/star, was incredibly good. Her voice filled the theatre even as she was running from one end of the stage to the other.

The play itself was essentially what Corpse Bride should have been. It was all very burtonesque and pulled it off really well (even the set design, spare though it was, evoked Burton).

I think this might have been one of my favorite plays so far.