goestoshow

This was really excellent in a lot of ways. I kind of wish I’d had someone more musical along for it, but oh well. I especially liked the girl (sorry, I’m terrible with names) with the upright bass. She did a really good song that I enjoyed a lot. This play was a study in how to engage the audience with a music performance. They managed to get the audience dancing and singing along (I suspect they’ve had more engaged audiences, but it was still pretty good at this one).

I’d probably see this one again, but there aren’t a lot more showings of it I don’t think.

I’m not entirely sure I got the title right here, but it’s close enough. This was a Trevor Schmidt/Nick Green play. Those two are people you hear about at every fringe as they’re involved with usually several plays at the fringe. Generally ones that tackle gay themes and issues.

Well, this one was definitely about those types of issues (which I was actually not expecting). It’s basically 3 segments, each dedicated to one member of a family that’s falling apart due to the various usual life issues you can imagine (including the son being gay).

There is a definite element of mysticism to each of the plots in this play. The father believes the messages on his coffee cups (think Jones soda lid kind of thing) are telling him things that help him in his life (see Joan of Arcadia/Wonderfall). The mother seems to use “Why did the chicken cross the road?” jokes to help her process her life. The son is inspired by a boy who decided to go off and meditate for 6 years, and wants to learn to meditate and elevate himself above his painful memories.

All in all, it was definitely not a happy play. It was good though. I would have liked more cohesiveness between the three plots (eg what DID the father ‘remember’ to bring flowers for, anyways?), but it worked well enough.

Oh, and one note: Women do not talk like stereotypical gay men. I find this a lot in plays where a man is playing a woman. I know it’s hard to portray yourself as a woman when you’re a bald heavyset man wearing a button-up open to your chest, but still. They do not talk like that.

I had high hopes for this play, as Bryce Kulak’s music seems to lend itself really well to narrative. Unfortunately, it turned out to be more of a Bryce Kulak performance with interpretive dance as a visualization. It was pretty good dance, though, and it did manage to pull off a narrative structure that made sense with no actual dialogue. So although it didn’t live up to my expectations, it was quite good.

I was also impressed enough with one of the dancers/actors to decide to see a musical she wrote today even though I haven’t heard any buzz about it.

Nancy also managed to arrange an interview with Bryce for her radio show on Thursday, which is cool. He even recognized her from back at Fyrefly quite a long time ago.

They have a list of plays they can perform, each about 15 minutes by my reckoning, that they perform based on random draw at each performance. They pull them out and perform them at random. The girl’s (Vagina Dentata and Suicide Bomber) were both hilarious and awesome. The guy’s (Poor Man’s Mermaid, Oldsmobile, and Late Bloomer) were … enh. I couldn’t get into his performance style, where he alternated between sounding like Christopher Walken and a whiney old man.

But I’d see it again. I like the randomness, and I like collections of one-acts. This one worked for me.

This play would have been really good… if it were my kind of thing. Unfortunately, the results of childhood rape are kind of not that exciting to me. There was good (but minimal) use of sound effects and song to punctuate the play, the performer was good, and the venue wasn’t stiflingly hot for once (every other time I’ve been in the Yardbird, it’s been really hot).

So yeah. Good play, not my thing.

Well… they tried. This honestly could have been much more awesome than it was. Basically it came down to a play about the time between Zelda games. With Link and Zelda fighting (and swearing at each other) in some kind of post-moved-in-with-each-other-non-bliss.

There were nice touches, but they weren’t worth the whole play. The use of real zelda music was amusing. The part with Tingle was appropriately creepy/funny. Mario and Peach being Ed and Trixie to Link and Zelda’s Ralph and Alice was good (and Mario flirting with Zelda, too).

But in the end, it was pretty weak.

Next up is the only play I’m scheduled to see that’s gotten full stars on a review I’ve seen. I hope it lives up to it.

Just saw the overnight and am now waiting to see Liink and Zellda. I love the whole ‘before the show’ thing some plays do. The overnight had the main guy in the play just sitting sleeping at his radio board while everyone got seated and the play started when he wakes up. This one has the original Zelda overworld theme going.

Anyways, the Overnight was really good. They did an amazing thing with the secondary characters being behind a screen as silhouettes so they didn’t have to do rapid fire costume changes, and it worked really well. Especially when the crazy stalker lady was on the phone and she played the seductress. The main plot is a guy juggling his career ambitions with a relationship, which is pretty typical plot fodder for fringe plays. It excelled at doing it all in an interesting way, though. This is one of the two plays I’d be willing to see again so far.

So, during this show, one of the biggest lightning storms ever struck and both the Yardbird Suite and the Catalyst Theatre were deprived of power. They got through about 5 minutes of the show before the power outage, and that 5 minutes was pretty good. One of the ‘girls’ memorized everyone’s name (the show was not packed. It was the front row and a couple of stragglers in the back. I suspect the freak storm had something to do with this).

But the 20 minutes after the power outage, which basically amounted to an impromptu pow-wow between the actors and the audience, was awesome. I always say the thing I want out of the fringe is the unique experience, and tonight I got about as unique as you can get.

Apparently we can get a refund. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll go for tickets to see it again with the refund money. I’m leaning a little bit towards yes.

A play written by Leonard Cohen… Well, he writes plays about as well as he sings. I gotta say, this play made no fucking sense. Two roommates alternate between consoling and interrogating each other about their lovelives, interrupted by a member of an Obesity Society woman who wants money ($5 is just right, $2 is just rude, $20 would be too much…). Not worth seeing. It’s also less than a half hour but still costs $12 ($14 with the Fringe’s bullshit ‘fee’).

Saw this with Nancy.

Finally, my first Fringe play of 2008. My favorite parts of this play were:
- The giant pink elephant in the middle of the room that no one talks about.
- The old gay couple.
- The ‘other woman’ being confronted by the wife.
- The pikachu DDR dancing.
- The man who takes polaroids of his hot dog while wearing nothing but an apron.
- (fill in more later)
- The kinda cute girl sitting two rows in front of me.

So yeah. Good play. I’m very happy that my first play of this year was a good one.