Minnesota Fringe Festival: Their Century and You Smell Like Whiskey and Bad Choices

Their Century by David Schlosser at Intermedia is a great show about family and where we come from. David interviewed his aunts and uncles to put together a story on what it was like to grow up in an era of so much change. A sweet show, utilizing Intermedia’s lovely screen for family photos. Highly recommended. Last chances: Thursday at 7, Saturday at 10.

Occasionally children come over to my house. It’s rarely because I’ve invited them; they just show up unannounced, with their parents. They arrive and look around at what might at first glance look like a fun house, but upon further inspection it’s actually a museum packed full of very breakable stuff that can’t be touched by little hands. They ask where the playroom is. I can’t really answer that, because they’re children. When I offer them the basket of cat toys, they look disappointedly at me and I can tell they’re thinking “This woman is obviously insane.”

But because there is no other option, they start digging through the basket full of lumps of fur and feathers that have had had their distinguishing limbs, tails, eyes and wings chewed off. The catnip banana, limp and gray from repeated licking. Balls with bells, balls made of crinkle paper, fuzzy balls. They paw through the goods, and I can see what they’re thinking, under a light dusting of rogue catnip: “I don’t get it. I must be missing something. These toys suck.”

This is how I felt at You Smell Like Whiskey and Bad Choices at HUGE, a zany caper featuring three young women who wake up after a night of partying to what appears to be a very bad scene. They retrace their steps to put the pieces together and rebuild the events of their evening.

I’m not saying this was a terrible show – I’m just saying it wasn’t the right show for me. It’s a show designed for kitties, and not for kids. The kitties in the audience were eating it up.  Friday at 8:30, Saturday at 5:30.