Trying Guilt

by Phillip Andrew Bennett Low • August 7, 2008 • This is yet another show that falls under the category of “bursting with talent, bursting with ideas, but still doesn’t really work as show” for me. There’s plenty of cool stuff here — not least a set of shoeboxes that is used in various clever ways, and some pretty impressive sound design. There’s flashes of inspired writing here, some more poetic pieces and some comic pieces that could easily be plucked out and stand effectively on their own.

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.

But they combine to be something less than the sum of their parts. There’s so many characters here, and so many interweaving storylines, and just so many moving parts to this whole show, that I found it impossible to follow — the performer is an engaging stage presence, but this many characters need to be sketched out quickly and effectively in a few broad strokes, and I lost track of when she was who doing what. My attention drifted several times during the performance, and I was pretty much lost at what seemed to be a fairly intense denouement.

So, yeah. Lots of cool stuff here, and I’ll be seeing whatever they do next, but I have to confess that overall this one was a bit of a miss for me.

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.