goestoshow

It’s fitting that one of the last plays I saw at this year’s Fringe included some fake phone sex calls. It opened and closed with mock phone sex calls, the first to a phone sex service for vacuum cleaners (where the other end is a sofa or something like that) and the second to a phone sex service for gazelles (which had a lion calling in who wanted to be dominated). Both were hilarious, and possibly the highlight of the show.

It also included a guy in a rooster hood (and literally nothing else) playing guitar while a really weird monologue played over him, to which he cocked his head whenever it said something strange.

But more seriously, the play is about “the psychology of the penis.” Other than the little bit of shock humor, the play is a series of anecdotes along those lines, with the female perspective represented by Keira McDonald and the male by Sage Price. I would have really liked more of the male perspective from Sage Price, personally, but it was interesting nevertheless. I did find that one anecdote from Keira, about a boyfriend of hers in the navy, kind of dragged on a bit and didn’t really link back thematically to anything else in the play. It unfortunately dominated the back half of the play.

Funny, entertaining, but not exactly the most amazing treatment of the subject I can imagine.

The History of Lost and Found is about a man and a woman who are slowly becoming a little kookie as they work in a city bus service’s lost and found department. As the story goes on, we discover that they’re both at risk of being fired over an incident involving a lost cat. This part of the story is really more of a mcguffin, though. The important thing is the little flights of fancy these two dream up as they explore the items left behind. Most of them involving some dynamic duo of crime fighters or ragamuffins.

The scenarios are funny, and the play itself is entertaining, but the love plot at the end kind of comes out of nowhere. That’s possibly made up for by the fun song they sing at the end, though, which is well performed (and makes you wonder why they didn’t sing a little more during the play itself). I was also pretty disappointed that they never actually revealed the reason someone would leave not just one pair of panties on a bus, but 12 over the course of a week on one bus. The mystery is introduced early, and then never resolved.

Sometimes the play dives into darker territory, like showing that they occasionally take lost prescription medication (with the help of a medical book on drug side effects), but never really delivers on the promise of actually exploring that darker side. It dives in and then pulls right back out.

It’s a good play, but not a great one. It doesn’t quite live up to its own potential, and only the really solid performances and good comedic timing by the two actors gives it any real life. It’d make a good random “because it’s on” pick, but I wouldn’t go out of my way.