Bloddeuwedd
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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. Continue Reading
Idiosynchronicity
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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. Continue Reading
Couch Aliens vs. the False World
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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. Continue Reading
The Selkie
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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?” Continue Reading
Can Michael Come Out and Play?
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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.”
That question has been answered — the man is definitely a storyteller, at least insofar as he has more than one story to tell. Continue Reading
A Standing Long Jump
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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. Continue Reading
Yvette
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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. Continue Reading
Mike & Matt
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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. Continue Reading
Entwined
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I tour occasionally, and whenever I come to a new city I make an effort to look up the local storytelling scene. Continue Reading
Digging a Hole: Two short absurd one-act plays
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“Absurdism” is one of those buzzwords that’s applied so widely by theatre artists that I no longer know what they mean when they use it — and I suspect that they don’t, either. I’ve heard it applied to any show that’s quirky, or expressionistic, or just about anything other than kitchen-sink naturalism. Continue Reading