Fringe 2015 Reviews - first Sunday
Aug. 8th, 2015 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamsharkJust one show, which I attended by myself: I was pretty sure Richard wouldn't care for it. I found it intriguing and worthwhile, but certainly not worth the 5 stars reviewers have been lavishing on it. I didn't post a counter-review to all the breathless praise, however. It would be like kicking a puppy. The show's description declares, "Through clowning, the show surpasses the victim/villain dichotomy and welcomes an open-hearted conversation about healing," which is an excellent description. It doesn't all work, but it works well enough that I would hate to discourage it.
Post Traumatic Super Delightful
by Pair of Animals (Antonia Lassar)
Phoenix Theater
The show began with Ms Lassar announcing, "Welcome to my senior thesis." I'm taking her at her word, although the whole thing was so meta that it could have just been a play about a woman writing a play as her senior thesis. The solo performer playing all the characters being interviewed by the invisible playwright worked very well. She did a good job of finding the viewpoints and the passions of each of them, while making each characterization just over the top enough to be entertaining. The intervals of clowning worked less well, IMHO. It's not as insensitive as it sounds, just a little odd. I guess the point was to break the tension of a campus rape story, but I found it a little tedious. As for her point on Restorative Justice - I never could figure out what she meant by that. All but one of the characters in the rape storyline seemed to find the play-within-a-play healing, but it was never clear what exactly that play was. Was it the play that we the audience were watching? If so, it's a little hard to see why they didn't find it acutely uncomfortable to watch. Was there some other form of Restorative Justice going on in this story? If so, I missed it.
Post Traumatic Super Delightful
by Pair of Animals (Antonia Lassar)
Phoenix Theater
The show began with Ms Lassar announcing, "Welcome to my senior thesis." I'm taking her at her word, although the whole thing was so meta that it could have just been a play about a woman writing a play as her senior thesis. The solo performer playing all the characters being interviewed by the invisible playwright worked very well. She did a good job of finding the viewpoints and the passions of each of them, while making each characterization just over the top enough to be entertaining. The intervals of clowning worked less well, IMHO. It's not as insensitive as it sounds, just a little odd. I guess the point was to break the tension of a campus rape story, but I found it a little tedious. As for her point on Restorative Justice - I never could figure out what she meant by that. All but one of the characters in the rape storyline seemed to find the play-within-a-play healing, but it was never clear what exactly that play was. Was it the play that we the audience were watching? If so, it's a little hard to see why they didn't find it acutely uncomfortable to watch. Was there some other form of Restorative Justice going on in this story? If so, I missed it.
