Fringe - midweek report

[dreamshark]

I'm getting a little burned out on the magic of the Ultrapass, and have been trying to target exceptionally good shows rather than cramming in as many shows as possible. I've seen 22 and am running out of steam. Richard (who is still enchanted with the all-you-can eat aspect, and probably always will be) is at 30-something. My scheduling strategies have been pretty successful.  Here's the tally so far. I believe that the slant towards high ratings reflects wise choices rather than grade inflation. I've seen a lot of really excellent shows, and only one that I would consider a dud (and even that one was not without its charms).

• 5-kitty shows: 6
• 4-kitty shows: 8
• 3-kitty shows: 7
• 2-kitty shows: 1 (really 1-1/2 rounded up)

The Fringe people are always tinkering with the format. Some new ideas are better than others. A real loser in the bright idea department was requiring the house manager to take the stage before every performance and deliver a pointless, scripted, deadly dull introduction ("Hello, I'm xxx, the house manager. Welcome to the 2010 Fringe Festival, featuring 169 performances in 19 different venues! blah de blah de blah blah blah...")  There is absolutely no useful information in this monologue unless you consider it important to let people know in advance that if the play stops suddenly in the middle, the house lights come up and the house manager sprints onto the stage to make an announcement -something is going on.

Needless to say, active Fringers got bored with this pretty quickly. Mostly people just did what they do on airplanes while the flight attendant explains how to use a seatbelt (ignored it). At some of the rowdier venues (e.g., Mixed Blood) audiences started cheering and applauding inappropriately throughout the spiel. Eventually a Rocky Horror style call and response routine started popping up ("How MANY shows are there??" ...  "How many venues??").  Sometime in the last couple of days the intro quietly disappeared. I'm sure the house managers are even more relieved than the audiences.