Some Fringe Fest bets are already paying off
Besides straight theatrical productions, Fringe Festival’s opening weekend offered an eclectic mix of poetry, film and performance art. It was, in other words, the usual for this event: a roulette wheel ready to take bets. Here are the highlights and lowlights from this reviewer’s gambling excursion.
On the Unicorn’s Main Stage, the Coterie’s Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen is a peppy but occasionally predictable tale of queen bees, adolescent angst and the finer distinctions of ponytail swishing. Kathryn Walat’s script builds off a scattered plot of unlikable teen-girl clichés — “Socks are sooooo not cool this year,” Vickie quips, without irony — but feels authentic in its treatment of teen conflicts and concerns. Daria LeGrand rescues Vickie from the edge of vapidity with glimpses of vulnerability, and Benjamin Fleer (as the MIT-bound nerdthrob) helps keep the play’s romantic subplot tender instead of saccharine.
At Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre, Oakland, California’s The Submarine Show was a weekend highlight. The acrobatic performers weave skillful movement work and vocal sound effects into an imaginative underwater adventure. From a two-man submarine to warring birds of paradise, the mimes are crisp and witty, sculpting a vivid landscape out of thin air. Prepare for audience interaction — Friday’s performance featured magpie thefts of personal belongings and a competitive mating display for the crowd’s attentions.
I had high hopes for Phillip Low’s metaphysical storytelling in The Concept of Anxiety, a spoken-word show at the Uptown Arts Bar that Low describes as a “macabre cabaret of scientific geekery.” The cabaret is well-curated: Low mixes black humor, heady prose poems and quantum fiction in a one-man act that tries valiantly but never quite leaves the realm of grad-student pillow talk. (Walter Benjamin? Check. Schrödinger’s cat? Check.) Low’s stories are well-spun, engrossing modern myths, but as a performer, he seems too taken with their profundity, eschewing tonal variety and intellectual specificity for Poet Voice. “Don’t you get coherent on me now,” a voice-over warns near the end of the show. Low doesn’t.
On the Unicorn’s Jerome Stage, Extended 4Play offers a satisfying series of theatrical speed dates. Four bite-sized plays capture romance in all its icky splendor, from glow-in-the-dark dildos to Much Ado-quoting gorillas. “Peggy,” Michael Ruth’s comic love letter to pegging, puts a delightfully deviant spin on a disastrous first-date trope. Nicholas Sawin’s “Górecki in Silence” turns the dramatic tables, spinning lush language and tense confrontations with the titular composer’s music. Actress Briana Marxen-McCollom is a common denominator in two of the plays and a pleasure to watch, relaxed and confident as both an unlikely dominatrix and a tender-hearted gorilla (though not in the same show).
Also at the Unicorn, Outta Beer and Outta Space thrusts two country boys (predictably named Jeb and Earl) into a goofy galactic quest to save the human race. Alien quiz bowls and audience-inspired improv keep the laughs coming in Forrest Attaway’s playful redneck, buddy comedy. If the jokes are sometimes too easy (a Celine Dion sound cue when they find out that they must repopulate the planet), the actors keep the energy high and the farce amusing.
I’ll be honest: Spoken-word poetry isn’t my preferred literary cocktail. So a certain dread led me to expect Poetic Underground, at the Uptown Arts Bar, to consist of airy odes to Gaia and cliché-larded rants on fluoride in the water supply.
I’m glad to be proved so thoroughly wrong. The three poets who took the stage Saturday evening shattered my cynicism with a rhythmic dose of sincerity. The evening’s host, Miss Conception, flowed freaky fast rhymes with poise and hip-hop soul. The two featured poets, Mz Angela Roux and Sheri “Purpose” Hall, delivered solid sets that mixed the topical with the autobiographical, with passion pulsing through each line. Roux, in particular, stood out in both her linguistic innovation and her performance style. The lineup of performers changes at each show, so your results may vary, but if any of these three powerhouse poets is a common denominator, the show is well worth your time.
