FringeNext: Come See Our Show or the Teddy Bear Gets It

[FringeNext is the young performers, under 18, who may become the next generation of Fringe performers.]

Lyndsey Brown, Kevin Burgun & Christina Cardenas
Brebeuf Jesuit Prep (Indy)

These are excellent performers; the girls sing beautifully, together or separately, and they all act well. But the play ("winning" the Irish lottery---actually falling for an internet scam---and attempting to force payout of the "winnings" by threatening to guillotine the teddy bear taken from a child one of the girls is supposed to be babysitting, but has in fact left home alone) has, with apologies to Gertrude Stein, no "there" there.

The original songs were good. But the script was a meandering ramble. Even the core part of the "plot" didn't seem to exist: they did some background on the lottery "win", wandered off to high school life and getting in to college, and then shifted to "ok, time to shove the bear in the guillotine" so abruptly, and unexplainedly, that I was left wondering if they'd accidentally skipped a couple of pages of lines. Then having set that scene, pretty much went back to rambling from topic to topic with no dramatic tension until they reached the end of their time slot, with no denouement whatsoever---simply "okay, we're done now, thanks for coming."

There's a great deal of performance potential here, but it needs a script that goes somewhere and does something.

Piggie's Rating: **** for the performers and the musical portion; ** for the show itself

FringeNext: Every Story Has a Song

[FringeNext is the young performers, under 18, who may become the next generation of Fringe performers.]

International School of Indianapolis

This compilation of stories and songs was excellent, and the performers quite talented. The one thing I found distracting was the singers using sheet music for their songs: in a self-described "cabaret", I expect the performers to know their pieces (as they did in storytelling), and the continual movement of the music stand and flipping of pages in the sheet music was an annoyance which detracted from the overall effect of the performances.

Other than that, it was top drawer for a high school performance, and as professional as any Fringe performance---and more than some.

Piggie's Rating: ***
(Would be a four star without the sheet music)

Fringe: Tortillo!

Avenging Orange Productions (of Indy)
written by Casey Ross

The concept here is interesting: a mystery of malfeasance in a snack food company, and the acting was mostly pretty good. But the script starts to lose direction about 2/3 of the way through the show, until it's trying to be a comedy, a mystery and an odd tribute to the late John Entwistle of the Who all at the same time---and thereby succeeding at none of those attempts.

I think Casey's got a great deal of potential, but she needs to be clear on where she's trying to go with a script and not get seduced by ideas of "and we can work this in...and we can work that in....." Looking forward to seeing what she comes up with next year.

Piggie's Rating: ***

Fringe: Simple Joys

Jennifer K Sutton (of Indy)

This show was radically different from anything else in the Fringe: a light and easy dance, and a journey back to kindergarten. A refreshing interlude with audience participation.

It was a bit short, and perhaps light, for the Fringe setting, though.

Piggie's Rating: **

Fringe: The Rise of General Arthur

Maximum Verbosity (of Minneapolis)

This setting of the Arthurian legend in modern Baghdad was a fascinating concept, but the execution seemed a bit off.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low's "narration" may have been styled the way it was to set it apart from the "acting" parts of the one man show, but the rapid-fire monotone was counter-productive, a hypnotic drone that hindered the mind trying to absorb the information rather than assisting it. It made the narrative of the overall show hard to follow, and the rapidity of the narration made it feel that perhaps this was a show written to run 90 minutes which was sped up to fit its 60 minute time slot, rather than being cut or otherwise adapted.

I think he's got something good here, but I'd love to have a chance to see it again with the narration done a bit slower; there's more quality there to absorb than the style permitted.

Piggie's Rating: **
Done slower, it would have been a three or even four star show.

Fringe: New Vaudeville

Midwest Emerging Artists (of Indy)

This show was really uneven, just like....well, just like vaudeville used to be. From the high points of Elliot Feltman (emcee and core of the show) and musician Joe Welch, the acts coursed downward until much of the show had the feel of tryouts for a high school talent show. In fact, everything I saw of the FringeNext (high school/youth) shows was of higher overall quality than this show.

BMX pro Andy Cooper's bicycle tricks were interesting, but extremely limited by the tiny stage, and seemed a bit lost in the vaudeville setting.

Piggie's Perspective: **

Fringe: Nevermore

Twilight Productions (of Indy) @ MySpace

A dark show about writers, depression, and suicide; a Poe-and-poetical contemplation of where madness lies. Russell McGee's acting as "The Raven" (a Poe shade, certainly) was wonderful; Amy Pettinella's writer seemed less real, as if she believed nobody could tell her character was depressed unless she was Dramatically Depressed: her writing of the character was fine, but her portrayal was a bit strained.

Piggie's Rating: ***

Fringe: Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach

Assorted Fruits & Vegetables (of Indy)

This one's a bit of a specialty show: if you're amused by a bit of over-the-top gay camp, then Mr. Charles is an absolute hoot, and Ron Spencer plays him beautifully. The show does include full frontal nudity, and I did hear talk here and there from audience members that some folks were taken aback, perhaps even shocked by this. The warnings for the show did clearly state that nudity was involved, but (probably influenced by the poster which showed full rear nudity) "full frontal" wasn't expected by a lot of the audience. This was the last show I saw, at the end of the Fringe, and it was a glorious show to cap off the ten day experience.

Piggie's Rating: ****

Fringe: I Do, I Do in Delhi or How To Survive an Indian Wedding

24th Street Players (of NYC)

This is a one-woman story of traveling halfway around the world to attend the wedding of a college friend's son. She captures the essence of the various players in voice and manner so that you forget that there's only one person on the stage; the story is warm and interesting without rambling or becoming overly sentimental.

Piggie's Rating: ***

Fringe: Phil the Void - The Great Brain Robbery

Phil Van Hest (of LA)

Wow. I'd say Phil's "traditional standup" compared to the other comedy shows I've reviewed here, except that there's nothing traditional about Phil.

This is thinking man's standup: it's deeply thoughtful, not an exaggeration to call it intellectual, even---and funny as hell. Phil reaches for the highest common denominator and finds both the disturbing and the funny elements in life.

The phrase that comes to mind is "like Bill Cosby---only smarter."


Piggie's Rating: *****

(Get thee to a Phil the Void show *early*---Phil consistently sells out the house.)

Fringe: Wanda & Rhonda's Bitchin' Bingo Bash

Tony McDonald & Adam O. Crowe (of Noblesville IN)
with links to Tony's facebook and myspace pages.

I stand in awe of Tony McDonald's writing. Wanda and Rhonda---the pair of middle-aged sisters that he and Adam portray---are women you know. He's got the authentic voice of these gals down, and he approaches them with compassion and affection, despite the fact that given the divergence between their views, one of them's got to have a pretty alien point of view from where Tony is. And the acting is equally affectionate; the honesty of the portrayal comes in part because they're not making fun of Wanda and Rhonda; at best they're teasing a bit.

And they are funny, but it's the warm and homey funny of reality, not a contrived, scripted funny.

Piggie's Rating: ****

Fringe: Hypothetically Stupid

Doctor Spaceship (Matt Kramer and John Patrick Coan) (of Indy)

These guys were reasonably funny. Traditional "two guy sketch" type comedy. That should be enough, no?

There wasn't anything that stood out about them or their gags; nothing to make you remember them or seek them out again at a later date. They weren't bad, they just didn't excel.


Piggie's Rating: **

Fringe: The Attack of the Big Angry Booty

This is subtitled The Adventures of Les Kurkendaal (of LA), with a couple of links to his pages at MySpace and facebook.

Les's tales of diet woes---his and others'---are funny. There's no question about that. But this is not just your everyday standup of laughing at other people, or in rueful recognition that we're included in "other people." Les manages to mix funny with compassion in a subtle fashion so that when he's done, not only has your funny-bone been thoroughly tickled, but your spirit has been fed as well. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and will certainly look Les up next year if he's at the Fringe....but he also came across as a guy I wish lived in my neighborhood. All in all, a thoroughly pleasant experience, I definitely recommend it.

Piggie's Rating: ****

It's Fringe Time!

What follows over the next week will be my reviews of shows at the IndyFringe festival. I'll admit up front that since I'm out of work at the moment, everything I'm seeing, I'm seeing for free---either because I'm working that venue, or because I'm using my freebies I get for working the venues.

That said, here's my definition of ratings:

* = can I get my time back I spent watching this?
** = it was okay for a freebie
*** = that was right fine for a freebie, and would have been worth paying for
**** = would go out of my way to see this for real money, for sure
***** = wow. why ain't these folks on tv?

Do they come with cages?

I've been hearing things oddly for years. It's tempting to write it off to "old age", but it's been going on since far before I was old by anyone's definition except maybe a toddler.

It comes in part from minor hearing loss, I'm sure; it requires the intervention of distance from the source and background noise interfering as well. And oft-sloppy enunciation on the part of the announcer can also contribute. But it leads to mishearing things---usually advertisements---in a way that makes them far more interesting that anything that could have possibly been the actual intent of the advertiser.

I still want to know what Marie Osmond was selling, 20 years ago, that I heard across my mother's house as "Romanian underwear."

And I just heard a commercial for one of those "buy diet meals in quantity" companies that I'd swear included the line "order now and get free weasels for a week!" This has left me with a number of questions:

• Is that a set number of weasels who come to visit for a week?
  
• Or do weasels keep arriving at some set rate for a week?
  
• Are the weasels yours to keep?
  
• Do the weasels simply come to visit before wandering off through your neighborhood?
  
• Or does someone turn up at the end of the week to collect the weasels?
  
• If so, do they bill you for any escaped weasels?
  
• Are the weasels litterbox trained?
  
• If not, are the costs of having the house cleaned covered, or are you out of pocket on this one?
  
• And finally, do the weasels bring their *own* meals, or are they going to be eating the diet meals you've just bought?
  

I'm not sure "free weasels" would be all that much of an incentive to buy their product....but I'm sure it's a more interesting concept than what they're actually selling. :)