Sixty or 90 minutes at a time, Fringe and the Invasion reveal heroes and also-rans

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The Fringe Festival is always a gamble. Its pay-to-play setup and anything-goes sensibility afford diversity of genre and topic but guarantee nothing. Fringe audiences know this — some shows will disappoint while others will yield rewards.

We know, too, that the clock is not our friend. The first night, four shows I’d hoped to see shared a single time slot. On any given Fringe day, with most productions running 60 minutes and others more, I resign myself to pushing shows I’m curious about into the hope-to-see-later column. (Fringe runs through Sunday, July 26.)

One prize was Bond: A Soldier and His Dog. Logan Black, a talented local actor, turns out to be a skilled playwright as well. He stars here in his first play, a solo show, in which he recounts his combat experiences as a military dog handler in Iraq and his close relationship with his bomb-sniffing yellow Lab, Diego. It’s a vivid and compelling piece of storytelling, and is deeply moving — not to be missed.

Never having been much for clowns, I nearly bypassed the aptly named troupe Box of Clowns and its “Mom?” A Comedy of Mourners. I’m glad I didn’t. The three artists from Portland, Oregon (Laura Loy, Anna Sell and Jeff Desautels), who trained at the Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre, incorporate athleticism, physical antics, slapstick, song, vocalization and humor as they move about on and within a very small platform. It’s a skilled and funny performance, and ultimately touching.

If you’ve ever longed for plot explanation as a Shakespeare play progressed, or if you just love Hamlet, then don’t skip the succinct and engaging Breakneck Hamlet, a fast-moving hour that condenses the great play. Timothy Mooney portrays all of the main characters, including the lead, mingling narration and editorial comment with the Bard’s words. It’s an animated and eloquent performance, and amusing as well.

The entertaining Mooney also appears in his own play, Criteria, a solo one-act set in a not-so–United States two or three centuries distant, when distinct territories exist under a castelike system based on Social Security numbers. What begins as exposition to get us up to historical speed shifts into the absorbing, very personal tale of Albert and his experiences on a mission on enemy turf.

The Snake That Stole the Flower, a new play by Alli Jordan, is a well-written, beautifully choreographed drama about the serious legacy of Huntington’s disease. Excellent actors bring out Jordan’s distinctively drawn characters: Lauren Pope as a returning but standoffish daughter, Seth Macchi as her former beau, Margaret Shelby as her new-agey mother, and Chris Roady as their small-town pharmacist. I have only one complaint about the poignant story: Pope’s Maggie pushes people away to such an extent that her unpleasantness risks distancing the audience.

In The Grave, playwright Forrest Attaway shows a well-honed comic voice and a sure ear for dialogue. He’s helped by a fine cast with impeccable timing. In a story that could’ve been clichéd, Attaway and his actors have found fresh perspective. Amanda (an outstanding Peggy Friesen) sits graveside with her son, Charles (the versatile Seth Macchi), awaiting the arrival of her recently deceased ex-husband’s live-in girlfriend, Elizabeth (a very good Amy Attaway), as they prepare for burial. It’s funny and emotionally true.

Agent Hanson (playwright Dave Hanson, with a clear sense of humor) assigns audience members to their missions in Bird in the Hand, a clever take on the whodunit. Attendees are divided among three viewing venues and get only one piece of the mystery’s puzzle. (At the end, we mingled to compare notes and fill in missing pieces.) Actors do a convincing job as agents, spies and pawns, and it’s all good fun.

Alphabet Soup, a group of four very short plays by local LGBTQIA writers, comprises four stories on pertinent topics but isn’t quite ready for prime time. The exception: Raphael Isabella Tate’s humorous and heartfelt A Triple Balance, a well-crafted and -performed solo work on gender identity. Nick Sawin’s Ace of Leaves also shows promise.

The Art Is a Lie also groups four short plays, centered in this case on visual art. The two standouts: Victor Wishna’s enjoyably witty and intelligent The Impressionists and Margaret Shelby’s slightly overlong but interesting The Lash. Lindsay Adams’ satirical The Price of Art is funny but teeters into silliness; her Breaking the Pose might benefit from a rework, but it’s a distracting mismatch here.

Only after we went to press was I finally able to get to the 90-minute-long The List. The play by Columbia, Missouri’s Jason Cavallone — who’s also very good as a central character — relies heavily on narration but is an appealing and touching story. Cavallone and a winsome Paige Runge portray two friends at different stages of life over 70 years. (Jerico Whitaker and Cheryl Metz enact multiple roles.) It’s precious at times but believable and heartfelt, and prompts simultaneous reflection. (It has one more performance on Saturday.)

A couple of days prior to the onset of the KC Fringe Festival, I was able to catch a few of the Invasion’s U.K. imports as well as a new show by local act Victor and Penny. (Additional plays debut at Central Standard Theatre’s festival this week.)

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Going in, I knew little about British war hero Horatio Nelson, chronicled here in Nelson: A Sailor’s Story. But the audience’s ignorance seems to be one of the points of this humorous and affecting solo piece. The 18th-century admiral, a statue in London’s Trafalgar Square, comes to life and begins his story, brushing away pigeons and watching the goings-on of people beneath his gaze in present-day London. This hourlong play engages on many levels, thanks to a fine script and the excellent Nicholas Collett, who not only enacts the central character but also portrays multiple roles — in action scenes on a warship (including squirm-worthy rudimentary surgery) and in the reflections and thoughts on Nelson’s life. I’ll never view a historical statue — or the average recruit — in quite the same way.

From the moment King Henry VIII storms onto the stage, he rules the house and the hour. That we sit while he stands is just one of the factors tormenting this monarch, who has been dead 468 years, he says, and is getting testy. That proves a good thing for An Audience With Henry VIII. Ross Gurney Randall makes a larger-than-life and imposing king — he convinces an audience member to get him a chair — and delivers pure entertainment as he parodies this “sinner among kings and a king among sinners” while recounting facts of his rule. The real king wasn’t exactly hilarious — he signed 80,000 death warrants, he tells us. But that isn’t the only thing about which he waxes nostalgic or complains: Jousts, his first royal wife, the pope, Thomas Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey and, of course, Anne Boleyn all have their turns. It’s a delightful performance.

Mata Hari Female Spy felt more theatrical than intimate. The nonlinear story, about the life and death of the mysterious European exotic dancer and celebrity before and during World War I, felt disconnected at times and lingered too long in others. But Katharine Hurst’s engaging solo performance made me want to know more about this woman and her debatable guilt.

Victor and Penny (Erin McGrane and Jeff Freling), personable and accomplished local performers, debut Project X, a work that mixes spoken word with song. Those two parts don’t yet meld, but it’s a work in progress and may be different by its next Invasion appearance. Backed by the very talented Loose Change Orchestra (bass and woodwind), the music-filled second half was note-perfect.

Shows continue through Sunday, July 26, including Bill Clinton Hercules, Crusoe: No Man Is an Island, and The Six-Sided Man.