Monday, August 11, 2025

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2025: "Duluth: An Improvised Midwest Murder"

Day:
 10

Show: 37


Category: Comedy / Drama / Horror / Improv / Mystery / Audience participation

By: Duluth Improv

Created by: Avery Kiefer and Walter Mueller

Location: Rarig Xperimental

Summary: A story of murder in a Midwest town.

Highlights: Curiously, Duluth Improv is a troupe based in Chicago. And they finally brought the show home to Minnesota "where it belongs." They ask one audience member to volunteer info about their hometown; at the show I attended it was Madison Wisconsin, home of the Oscar Mayer Wiener plant (and Wienermobile). What started out as one murder in the plant, with a body shoved into the machinery, turned into a Mayer family crime drama, a workplace murder at The Archives, and a shootout in the parking lot. The cast (many of whom were subs when I saw the show so I don't have all their names) is great at improvising crazy crime scenarios and bizarre deaths, all while speaking in Midwest accents, and sometimes Russian-ish. Most of their shows were sold out or nearly sold out, because Minnesota Fringe loves Minnesota humor, improv, and murder, even when it's from Chicago.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.