2013 - Friday (Day 2)
Aug. 3rd, 2013 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamsharkOn my own for this one, since R was busy with game party. Left work early again, since absolutely nothing was going on, and they're closing the place down in a few months fer God's sake, so why sweat it? To avoid the problem I had on Thursday when I stupidly started a closely scheduled Fringe evening without supper, I stopped at Kowalski's on the way home and bought dinner at the deli counter. Unfortunately, by the time I finished eating it, changing into bike shorts, packing my travel bag, etc. there was not enough time to make it to Red Eye (for a show I had only a passing interest in anyway) so I stopped at the first venue I passed, which happened to be HUGE. Serendipity! The Press Conference At The End Of The World was my first 5-star show of the Fringe. Loved it!
I also had a nice time chatting with two pairs of middle-aged ladies sitting near me. Unfortunately, I quickly forgot their names, but recognized them when I saw them again 2 shows later and sat with them.
5:30 HUGE The Press Conference At The End Of The World (Kelvin Hatle) * * * * *
Solo shows are always a gamble - not every performer has the chops to hold your attention for an hour. This one does. Watching him change character by swapping to a different pair of glasses and then conduct a hilarious snippet of a seemingly random press conference is worth the price of admission. But there's more! There's actually a plot (sci-fi), funny throwaway lines that riff on politics and media, and an increasingly endearing main character. Some of the throwaway topics are just the usual inanity that comes out of press conferences, but some of the seemingly pointless questions wrap around and tuck into later ones and one seemingly silly thread actually turns out to be the main point. This one is great - don't miss it!
7:00 Theatre Garage Lord of the Files (Lesley Tsina) * * * 1/2
This one is hard to rate - a little amateurish and probably not everybody's cup of tea, but given my situation I got a full 5 stars of enjoyment out of it. It feels a lot like a heart to heart chat with a colleague about what happened the last time she worked for a tech company that was closing down the site where she worked (reread my opening paragraph if it isn't immediately obvious why I had to see this one). There was so much I could relate to, from the HR lady's desperate "morale calendar" to Lesley's helpless inability to stop caring about her increasingly pointless job responsibilities. About the time her office cliques reformed into "the serious people" (including poor Lesley) and "the fun people" I decided that my new career goal was to be one of the "fun people" at my dying office. And here I was, leaving work early two days in a row to go Fringing - maybe I've succeeded.
8:30 Intermedia night train / red dust (Sheila Packa and Kathy McTavish) * * * *
I liked this one quite a lot, despite the fact that it put me to sleep. I was expecting a mixture of music, stories and poems. Instead, it was one woman standing at a podium reading poetry with trance-like cello in the background and flickering images on the screen behind.The poetry was really quite good, in the free form half coherent style of Walt Whitman. But what with the cello droning on, and the rhythmic voice of the poet, and the barely understandable images on the screen it was hard to avoid dozing off occasionally. Oddly enough, this made some of the images more compelling, as I listened/watched while drifting in and out of dream space. Yes, I guess it does make sense to use the train as a central image for comprehending the Iron Range. Trains in, iron out, iron rails and train cars back in to pick up more iron.
I also had a nice time chatting with two pairs of middle-aged ladies sitting near me. Unfortunately, I quickly forgot their names, but recognized them when I saw them again 2 shows later and sat with them.
5:30 HUGE The Press Conference At The End Of The World (Kelvin Hatle) * * * * *
Solo shows are always a gamble - not every performer has the chops to hold your attention for an hour. This one does. Watching him change character by swapping to a different pair of glasses and then conduct a hilarious snippet of a seemingly random press conference is worth the price of admission. But there's more! There's actually a plot (sci-fi), funny throwaway lines that riff on politics and media, and an increasingly endearing main character. Some of the throwaway topics are just the usual inanity that comes out of press conferences, but some of the seemingly pointless questions wrap around and tuck into later ones and one seemingly silly thread actually turns out to be the main point. This one is great - don't miss it!
7:00 Theatre Garage Lord of the Files (Lesley Tsina) * * * 1/2
This one is hard to rate - a little amateurish and probably not everybody's cup of tea, but given my situation I got a full 5 stars of enjoyment out of it. It feels a lot like a heart to heart chat with a colleague about what happened the last time she worked for a tech company that was closing down the site where she worked (reread my opening paragraph if it isn't immediately obvious why I had to see this one). There was so much I could relate to, from the HR lady's desperate "morale calendar" to Lesley's helpless inability to stop caring about her increasingly pointless job responsibilities. About the time her office cliques reformed into "the serious people" (including poor Lesley) and "the fun people" I decided that my new career goal was to be one of the "fun people" at my dying office. And here I was, leaving work early two days in a row to go Fringing - maybe I've succeeded.
8:30 Intermedia night train / red dust (Sheila Packa and Kathy McTavish) * * * *
I liked this one quite a lot, despite the fact that it put me to sleep. I was expecting a mixture of music, stories and poems. Instead, it was one woman standing at a podium reading poetry with trance-like cello in the background and flickering images on the screen behind.The poetry was really quite good, in the free form half coherent style of Walt Whitman. But what with the cello droning on, and the rhythmic voice of the poet, and the barely understandable images on the screen it was hard to avoid dozing off occasionally. Oddly enough, this made some of the images more compelling, as I listened/watched while drifting in and out of dream space. Yes, I guess it does make sense to use the train as a central image for comprehending the Iron Range. Trains in, iron out, iron rails and train cars back in to pick up more iron.
