This year’s Fringe Fest attracts an Invasion

KC theater in mid-July usually means one thing: Fringe Festival, that 10-day convergence of local and out-of-town theater, music, comedy, spoken word, dance, burlesque and film. But this month, the usual has company. Besides Fringe Fest, which holds a preview night July 16 and begins performances July 17, there’s Central Standard Theatre’s the Invasion, a parallel 10-day festival composed of U.S. and U.K. artists at Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre, beginning July 15 (see sidebar).

Where to start? Here’s what we’re most curious to see. (See kcfringe.org and cstkc.com for show schedules and descriptions.)

Out-of-town performer Timothy Mooney makes his sixth visit to KC’s Fringe, following up last year’s erudite, entertaining Shakespeare’s Histories: Ten Epic Plays at a Breakneck Pace. This trip, he brings two shows: Breakneck Hamlet (a one-man, 9,000-word, one-hour take on the Dane) and Criteria, his own sci-fi piece, set in a future world in which “numberism has replaced racism” (a favorite at previous Seattle and Winnipeg Fringe Fests). Find Mooney on the Unicorn’s Jerome Stage.

Right Between the Ears, the public-radio comedy program marking its 30th anniversary this year, puts on a show at Musical Theater Heritage at Crown Center. Another comedy, Whim Productions’ Badder Auditions, takes off from last year’s Fringe hit Bad Auditions, reprising the largely improvisational sendup of the audition process. The rotating group of players appears on Union Station’s City Stage.

Zany comedies are Fringe’s bread and butter, but there’s reason to make The Ballad of Lefty and Crabbe your main course. The vaudeville-inspired musical, penned by Ben Auxier and Brian Huther (of comedy duo “Dog and Friend Dog”) and Seth Macchi, blends new tunes with old-timey quirks. See it at the Living Room, directed by KC Rep’s Jerry Genochio.

Actor and prolific local playwright Forrest Attaway can swing from the light to the heavy. He wrote the humorous and interactive Outta Beer and Outta Space in 2013 and the dark Columbus Day last fall. Who knows what to expect at The Grave, a show described as both a comedy and a drama — involving a dead man, his ex-wife and his girlfriend — starring Seth Macchi, Peggy Friesen and Amy Attaway. At the Living Room.

“From lightly comic to disturbingly dark” goes the provided description of the short plays by local playwrights Margaret Shelby, Lindsay Adams and Victor Wishna that form the hourlong The Art Is a Lie (a title taken from the Pablo Picasso quote “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth”). See it at Phosphor Studio. From Original Oddity Productions in Columbia, Missouri, comes The List, which centers on a 70-year friendship and a childhood bucket list. Well-received in Columbia, the play finds a stage here at Crown Center’s Heartland Forum.

Drama fans should save time for Bryan Moses’ ThisThatThen, a three-act “epic romance” at the Living Room, and Alli Jordan’s The Snake That Stole the Flower, on the Unicorn Theatre’s Jerome Stage. Jordan’s 2013 Fringe entry earned one of our Best of KC honors, and her new script — a rural-Missouri scorcher with tarot readings, animal masks and auditory hallucinations — sounds promising.

Hang around the Jerome Stage to see Bond: A Soldier and His Dog, featuring local actor Logan Black. The combat veteran, who served as a Specialized Search Dog Handler, has based this debut one-man show on his experiences in the Anbar Province with his canine partner, Diego.

The Heartland Men’s Chorus meets karaoke at Big Gay Sing, hosted by drag queen Daisy Buckët. Prepare to sing along at Union Station’s City Stage. Jesus on Toast isn’t a menu item but a café owner’s contrivance to boost business. Or is it? Find out if it’s fraud or miracle at the Musical Theater Heritage stage, also at Crown Center. Paul Mesner Puppets offers two productions: the family-friendly Star Wars parody A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Death Star, and a more naughty The Georgette Show, starring the opinionated Mesner alter-ego Georgette.

Bryan Colley and Tara Varney — the duo behind last year’s Fringe fave Red Death — turn their telescope on Carl Sagan and the Voyager Golden Records in Voyage to Voyager. The multimedia play is staged, appropriately, at Union Station’s Gottlieb Planetarium, featuring Coleman Crenshaw as the beloved Kermit-voiced astronomer and original animation by local artist Billy Blob.

Also at Union Station, playwright Dave Hanson aims for rewatch value with Bird in the Hand, a crypto-conspiracy thriller tuned to the key of Alfred Hitchcock. Audience members can see the show in one of three spaces, with a different secret hidden in each telling.

To those losing track of appended acronyms (LGBT? Isn’t there a “Q” somewhere?), Whim Productions offers a tongue-in-cheek education in Alphabet Soup: Stories From Queer Voices. The bill comprises four short plays from talented LGBTQIA writers and plays on Union Station’s City Stage.

At the Buffalo Room (inside Westport Flea Market), see Ry Kincaid’s Presidential Briefs, a comic musical with an original song for each U.S. president. Attend for a Taft rap and to see how Kincaid briefs our briefest president (the tragic William Henry Harrison).

And finally, if you’re tired of sitting through The Vagina Monologues every year, veteran artists Heidi Van and Peregrine Honig have erected a fitting alternative. The pair’s The Penis Monologues (playing on the Unicorn’s Levin stage) looks at envy, intimacy and the sexual politics keeping the male member down.