Phillip Andrew Bennett Low's blog

So there's a flash mob taking place, for a show called Down Devil's Backbone. These are some folks who came all the way in from Indianapolis, and reportedly have delivered at least one show with one -- that's right, one -- member in the audience. And received two zero-kitty reviews.MORE »

So this is the show that everyone's been approaching me, saying, "Oh! You especially are really going to love this show!"MORE »

Having now seen it, I'm not sure how to interpret that.

Monday was supposed to be my night off -- it's the one night of the Festival in which I wasn't committed to performing in a show -- but, impulsively, I decided to head out to catch the 10pm showing of this one.MORE »

I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to write about Rob Callahan's Fringe show -- since his is one of those that seems to get everything right.MORE »

This show is pretty much the definition of light Fringe entertainment -- it's bright, and colorful, and wacky. There's not a lot of in-depth character work here, because it's not necessary. These are stock characters, and therefore we recognize them instantly: the gen-X slacker hero; his douchebag best friend; Ford Prefect (i.e. his nonplussed alien guide); the bratty ex-girlfriend. They're sketched out for us in a few quick strokes, and that's all we need.MORE »

Being part of a dance show this year, I had the pleasure of witnessing several other dance shows in preview. So this is one that I saw some snippets of a few weeks back: and my thought was, "Huh. That looks cool. How the hell are they going to tell the whole story without any words?"MORE »

In my pre-Fringe promotion for this show, I wrote the following:

"Mahmoud Hakima stormed onto the storytelling scene with Two Bowls of Cereal and Some Bacon, an impressive initial effort that was both heartfelt and well-structured. With that show, he established himself as someone with at least one great story to tell - the question of whether or not he's go staying power as a storyteller may be answered by this one."MORE »

That question has been answered -- the man is definitely a storyteller, at least insofar as he has more than one story to tell.

I've been trying my hand at some more joint storytelling lately. My current partner is someone with a great deal of acting experience, but not much in this particular discipline. Our first time working together, I asked her how she thought it went. She stated that she thought it went well -- but also expressed frustration that she didn't know the text well enough; she was referring to it too heavily.MORE »

This was a show that put me in mind, oddly enough, of two previous ones that I'd seen. (Another one of the things that I love about Fringe -- when seeing so many shows, in such a compressed space, patterns become increasingly more evident.) Thematically, this could be the sister show to Entwined -- it, too, is about the hilarious horror of unrequited love -- here, pushed to a ludicrous extreme.MORE »

This is clearly the most accurately-titled show in the Festival, in that it delivers precisely what the name promises: nothing more, and nothing less. Brothers Mike and Matt Fotis take the stage, and each one of them tells a story. So there's really nothing to this, beyond the strengths and weaknesses of the individual stories themselves: and they are, fortunately, both extremely skilled comics.MORE »