Fringe Report #1: Thursday night

Got off to a really fun start with a double-header in Northeast, only half of which was actually Fringe-related. It turned into one of those evenings where Minneapolis feels like a really small town, with friends and acquaintances popping up everywhere.

First Richard and I visited the old Northrup King Building, where mmagidow was presenting her lovely water colors in a gallery on the 4th Floor. The NKB is nothing short of jaw-dropping. It's a MASSIVE L-shaped old building, 4 stories high and half a city block long in each direction. One entire half-block wing has been converted into artist studios. I couldn't begin to count how many artists that is. On the first Thursday of each month they have a building-wide open house. It took us a while to find mmagidow, but fortunately I recalled the suite# and we finally got there. minnehahaK showed up shortly thereafter, as did Barb J, David E, and Mark M. After admiring mmagidow's surprisingly extensive oeuvre, we rambled around on the 4th floor visiting other artists. It was fun, maybe worth going back again for another First Thursday (preferably when the weather is a little less steamy - no A/C in those old buildings).

minnehahaK, Richard and I then headed off to the nearby Ritz Theater to purchase our ultrapasses and see our first show. We had almost a half-hour to hang out in the lobby before the show, which allowed me to buy a much-appreciated cold beer. While we were waiting, we ran into barondave, saracura, and Scott (who is almost certainly on LJ, but I don't know his LJ name).

The play, Robert Anton Wilson's Masks of the Illuminati, turned out to be very... challenging, making me wish that I had started out the week with something a little less demanding like a puppet show (or possibly skipped the Grain Belt). Robert Anton Wilson's writing tends to be multi-layered, darkly funny and insanely complicated, with real historical figures dashing around the fictional landscape with great abandon. This play is a highly ambitious attempt to jam an entire Wilson book into one hour, resulting in a production that is bursting with characters, themes and most of all, WORDS. I've read the Illuminatus trilogy, so I thought I was covered. But it turns out that Masks of the Illuminati is a whole different book (James Joyce, Einstein and Aleister Crowley, but no Dillinger brothers). If I could have understood all of the dialogue, I think it would have worked fine anyway, which is a tribute to Tim Uren's adaptation skills. Unfortunately, several of the actors had a tendency to swallow their lines, which left me rather confused about some key points. It's not a play that can stand to lose any of the dialogue. Fortunately some of my companions were more alert, and were able to clarify some of the parts I missed.

I'm almost tempted to see this one again later in the week, when the performers have had a chance to settle into their roles.