The Pumpkin Pie Show

by Phillip Andrew Bennett Low • August 4, 2008 • If the online reviews and word-of-mouth are any indication, this is going to be one of the big new hits of the Fringe this year. Which is why I'm kind of disappointed that I can't wholeheartedly share their enthusiasm.

Womb With a View is the blog of Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, one of five bloggers covering the Minnesota Fringe Festival for the Daily Planet.

These guys first caught my attention at the out-of-towners showcase, both because they were so friendly and charismatic, and because they had such an incredibly energetic, crowd-pleasing piece. When I walked in the door of the production, one of the performers was greeting me at the door, dancing, waving, jumping up and down in anticipation. They are prepared to work astonishingly hard to entertain you. And for the first ten minutes, I was really grooving on what they were doing. But fatigue quickly set in. The problem, for me, is that that level is sustained in a single, unbroken line -- that the show contains so much jumping and waving and dancing and yelling and leaping and gesticulating, that the content of what they were saying became impossible for me to follow. There were several points at which I just wanted to grab the performers, tell them to slow down, sit down, and *talk* to me, just tell me the story they had to tell. I believe I would have been more than ready to listen. Still, they put on one hell of a show, and the audience was enjoying themselves from beginning to end. I just wish they would have slowed down enough to let me catch my breath. Phillip Andrew Bennett Low (maximumverbosityonline@gmail.com) is a playwright and poet, storyteller and mime, theatre critic and libertarian activist, who lurks ominously in the desert wilds of St. Louis Park, feasting upon the hygienically-prepared flesh of the once-living. His main claim to fame is probably as co-founder of the Rockstar Storytellers, and as founder/producer of Maximum Verbosity, a garage-band-like theatre troupe that is in a state of constantly re-defining itself.