Fringe Day 1 - Three home runs!

[dreamshark]

For the first night, Richard and Thorin went one way and I went another. I think I had the better luck. They both liked Communopoly by Camp Schlatter at Intermedia Arts, but were less enthusiastic about their other two choices: Inferno by Carlo Cicala at Intermedia Arts and Breaking Down in America by Patrick Devine at Intermedia Arts.

The three shows I picked (with some help from barondave ) all turned out to be almost perfect examples of their types. My first impulse was to rate them all as 5 stars, but that just seemed like too much enthusiasm for the first night. Upon reflection I realized that the only one I would not want to see again was Joe's Cafe, so I rated it a little lower. But I liked it well enough that I bought their CD (for the very reasonable price of $10).
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Underneath the Lintel                                  * * * * *
Pat O'Brien
Jungle Theater

Uncle Shelby's Traveling Treasure Trunk        * * * * *
Shelby Company
Theatre Garage

Joe's Café                                                         * * * *
Rupert Wates & Friends
Theatre Garage

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Underneath the Lintel                              * * * * *
Pat O'Brien
Jungle Theater

It takes a virtuoso actor to carry off something like this, and Pat O'Brien pulls it off. He's all alone on the stage for an hour of non-stop rapid-fire monologue interspersed with bits of business with a box of props. As if that weren't enough, the character of the librarian is expressed as much in body language as it is in words, keeping him in constant motion as he paces about the stage, always circling back to his beloved box of "evidences."

It's a fascinating, oddball little play with a deeply philosophical core. To paraphrase Churchill, it's an enigma wrapped inside a mystery. The mystery of who returned that profoundly overdue book in the middle of the night keeps our attention for quite a while, but eventually we work our way down to the enigma at the center of it all.

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Uncle Shelby's Traveling Treasure Trunk           * * * * *
Shelby Company
Theatre Garage

In case you had as much trouble as I did deciphering the online description of this show, allow me to translate. It's improv-derived sketch comedy performed by a company of 4 incredibly talented performers. Think Dudley Riggs. Dudley Riggs on a very very good night. There is no actual improv in the show - all the skits have been developed into fully finished little plays that expertly walk the line between comedy and poignancy.

Well, okay, a few of them are just goofy fun, like Larry Lemonseed, whose slogan ("When life gives you lemons, just shut up and eat them") just can't seem to compete with the charismatic Johnny Appleseed. But "All I Have Pictured" was absolutely brilliant. The narrator presents an (invisible) slide show of a family vacation, which he has jazzed up by using Photoshop to insert celebrities into each picture. It starts out funny ("Here's the minivan packed for the trip outside our house. If you look closely you'll see the face of Millard Filmore in the window here - he's watching the house and watering the plants for us") and becomes increasingly poignant as the trip progresses and the marriage deteriorates.

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Joe's Café                              * * * *
Rupert Wates & Friends
Theatre Garage

I can't come up with a better description than the online one: "four consummate performers deliver fifteen songs that retell the experience of ordinary American people. In 'Dick And Delores (The Loving Kind)' we hear of an interracial couple in the south of the 1950s, who defied state law to marry. 'The Skies Of South Dakota' unfolds the sad story of a young girl's struggle against religious and class prejudice. 'Days Of Mercy' tells of the exodus of a poor family across American during the Dust Bowl depression. There are tales of love and loss in two world wars, and other stories of yesterday and today, each recast in song, each of them a piece in the mosaic that is the story of America itself."

All you need to know beyond that is that the show delivers exactly what the description promises.

The songs are simple, clear and poignant with lovely melodies and the musicians are very talented. Each song has a single lead singer (they take turns) with the others sometimes performing backup harmonies. All the singers have strong, sweet voices, making it easy to understand the lyrics (important with story songs!).

My only nitpick is that some of the songs would have been more effective if the ending hadn't been telegraphed by the song introduction, or in one case by the title. Have the confidence to let the songs tell their own stories, folks! If you have to explain the context, do it afterwards so you don't steal the story's thunder.

The Theater Garage is a great venue for this act. The open bleacher seating around a bare floor lends a feeling of intimacy that works well with the material, and the sound fills the space perfectly. Highly recommended.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I've added Uncle Shelby's to my list.

As good shows pile up, I find it less likely that I'll stay in one venue for long. Eventually, there will be good stuff that I just don't get to see.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I'm not having any trouble building a day's Fringing around a single neighborhood so far, but not necessarily the same venue. It's SO much easier to plan this year with the new tools and schedule format. I LOVE the new flipbook schedule, color coded by day and organized by neighborhood! I can't believe it took them SEVENTEEN YEARS to figure out that organizing the schedule alphabetically by venue made it pretty much unusable. Better late than never, I guess.

On the other hand, some of the "neighborhoods" are so depopulated this year that it's almost ludicrous: one stage in "St. Paul" and 2 in "Northeast." I don't see anything at the Gremlin that will make it worth my while to go that far out of the way, and there's only one thing at the Ritz that I really want to see ("Spin"). So we're mostly dividing our days between the West Bank and Uptown. Mostly West Bank, because more than half of the venues are in that neighborhood.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

True, though I do want to see "The Quest", which is a BYOV close to the Gremlin. Unfortunately, at 7:00. What I do (if anything) for outliers is pick a day when the two or three things I want to see the most are in a block, then skip a slot. And while both the Ritz and Gremlin are a ways away, they're pretty easy shoots into town if the traffic is good (yeah, a big if).

[mle292.livejournal.com]

You reminded me -

There was a board game produced back in the 80s, if anyone in the Twin Cities besides me owns it, it's your household. The board game was called "Class Struggle," and it was a communist kids game that was a little bit like monopoly.

It exists only on ebay anymore.

[thorintatge.livejournal.com]

Actually, I thought "Breaking Down in America" was quite charming, better than "Communopoly", which started off lively but got tedious.