Fringe 2012 - the rest of the week

[dreamshark]

I guess I should finish this up, since I do like to look back on my past Fringe experiences every year when it's time to plan a new one.  In fact, if it weren't for my online Fringe schedule I wouldn't even remember now what we saw way back last weekend. Gosh, it seems like forever.

Actually, there was one weekday show. I didn't post this review on the Fringe site, because I feel a little mean being so critical.  This is a first production by a couple of Macalester students who obviously put a lot of love and effort into it, and I didn't want to knock down the chances of people seeing it.

To and From on the Earth      Mirror Maker Productions (Rob Gelberg and Alana Horton)      * * *
Tuesday 8:30, HUGE Improv Theater

Not bad for a first effort, but I was hoping for a little more. It's a great setup: Satan and Yahweh meet for coffee. The title, of course comes from Job, but I'm not sure where they found a translation that says "To and from on the earth" instead of the usual "to and fro in the earth."  It just sounds wrong, and I can't help wondering if it was just a typo, and lack of familiarity with the source material.

Oddly, God is played by a woman, but in his asides to the audience Satan always uses the masculine pronoun for God.  Perhaps it was to make the point that gender is arbitrary to God, but then why have God get all prissy and scold Satan for using the term "waitress" instead of the politically correct "server?"  I'd like to think that the playwright (Rob) was making a very subtle and ironic point, but I fear that he just didn't think it through. Although some of the dialogue is witty, overall the writing veers towards the sophomoric. But wait... these two really ARE college sophomores!  So maybe that's an unfair criticism. Like I said, not bad for a first production by a couple of college students.

The most winning parts of this production are the simple but elegant staging and the body language. Rob chews the scenery a bit as Satan, but Alana is cool, poised and perfect as God. I think my favorite part of the whole play was the minute or so that she has to wait for Satan to show up (of course he would be late!), which she spends fussily straightening the table settings to be just perfect. The idea of presenting God and Satan as a couple trying to be friends after a bad breakup is actually pretty clever, and the body language around that is the best part of the show. 

I'm definitely glad I saw it, but I can't help thinking how much better that concept would have been executed with Joseph Scrimshaw as Satan.