"The Adding Machine" by Clevername Theatre at the Hive Collaborative

Clevername Theatre's production of the 1923 play The Adding Machine feels like a sequel of sorts to last year's production of the 1928 play Machinal, or at least a continuation of the theme. Both plays are a little weird and dark, performed in an Expressionist style, are about the mundanity and absurdity of everyday life, and even share some cast and creative team. Where Machinal focused on a woman trapped in societal expectations and the extremes she goes to to escape, The Adding Machine tells the story of a man fired from his boring job of 25 years, also going to extremes to escape, only to find more of the same. Once again, Clevername has taken a hundred-year-old play, performed it in the style it was intended, and made it relevant to today. See it at The Hive Collaborative through June 22.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2024: "The Peter Pan Cometh"

Day: 1

Show: 1

Title: The Peter Pan Cometh

Category: Comedy / Mystery / Literary adaptation

By: Clevername Theatre

Written by: Alexander Gerchak

Location: Theatre in the Round

Summary: A mash-up of the classic children's story Peter Pan by J.M Barrie with Eugene O'Neill's play The Iceman Cometh.

Highlights: For the third year in a row, Clevername brings us a mashup of a sweet children's tale with a dark classic play. In 2022 it was Winnie the Pooh and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, 2023 was The Care Bears with Mother Courage and her CHildren, and this year we have perhaps their most clever pairing yet: Peter Pan and The Iceman Cometh. I'm of course very familiar with the former, but not at all with the latter. A quick WIki read tells me it's a bleak existential tale of alcoholics who await visits by a salesman, who tells them they should all quit drinking, oh and by the way he killed his wife. Somehow, the story of a boy who refuses to grow up (inspired by Barrie's brother who died as a child) meshes brilliantly with this existential story of dying dreams. And as with their previous productions, it works because the cast is 100% committed to it, performing as if they're in a serious drama despite playing iconic children's characters high on pixie dust. Hook (Thomas Buan), Smee (Alec Berchem), and Tinkerbell (Isabelle Hopewell) are wallowing in a cove when Peter Pan (Nick Hill) appears in a suit, boater hat, and roll-y shoes, announcing that he's all grown up and they should all give up the dust and join him in London. But then the truth comes out about his life, and Wendy, and it's not happy. But it is very clever, smart, ridiculous, and well executed, with whimsical live glockenspiel music (played by Bradley Kallhoff), spot on character costumes, and some kind of blue sugary powder as the dust.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

2024 Minnesota Fringe Festival Must-See List

The most adventurous 11 days in the #TCTheater year is almost upon us! The Minnesota Fringe Festival runs August 1 through 11, with about 100 shows playing at 9 Fringe venues (plus some additional venues for independently produced shows). This will be my 14th consecutive year attending MN Fringe (if you count the all-virtual 2020 festival and the 2021 hybrid), so I have a pretty good idea of how to go about this. But if you're new to fringing, don't worry, it's easy! The MN Fringe website has everything you need to know, including details about all of the shows, info for how to get to the venues, and ticketing info. Bookmark this, and refer to it as needed. I also have a few tips at the bottom of this post. But first, and without further ado, my annual Minnesota Fringe Festival Must-See List.

"Machinal" by Clevername Theatre at the Center for Performing Arts

Machinal: mechanical, done without thinking, from force of habit. Early 20th century playwright Sophie Treadwell uses this word as the title of her her 1928 play about a woman caught in the mechanics of a woman's expected life path and the disastrous results. In Clevername Theatre's new production (my first experience with the play), it feels like it could have been written yesterday instead of almost 100 years ago. It's performed in the German Expressionist style with exaggerated, almost absurd, performances, which is a bit off-putting. But that's intentional, and how the play was written, and it beautifully and harshly exemplifies the experience of this woman. Even if the style feels unfamiliar to audiences used to modern American theater, the themes are resonant with modern life. The show is halfway through its short two-week run, with only three remaining performances at the Center for Performing Arts in Uptown.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2023: "Mother Courage Bear and Her Children"

Day: 4

Show: 16

Title: Mother Courage Bear and Her Children

Category: COMEDY / ORIGINAL MUSIC / LITERARY ADAPTATION

By: Clevername Theatre

Written by: Alexander Gerchak

Location: Southern Theater

Summary: A retelling of Bertold Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children, as Care Bears.

Highlights: I didn't think there could be a more Fringey mashup than Winnie the Pooh and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. But then Clevername Theatre followed up last year's brilliant weirdness with this mashup of the Care Bears and Brecht. It's so strange and clever, I'm not sure where to begin. We're introduced to this tale of the centuries long "Sunshine War" by a stern Director (Connor McEvoy) speaking in a German accent, giving a short intro to every scene with zero emotion (other than perhaps annoyance). Mother Courage Bear (Grace Barnstead) sells "cards" and "likes" from her cloud cart (a commentary on our social media obsessed culture), with her children Humanity Bear, Hubris Bear, and Sandwich Bear (in the original play, Mother Courage has a daughter named Swiss Cheese). Other bears we meet include Cowardice Bear, Drudgery Bear, and Prostitution Bear. Children go off to war, bears are murdered, and we get to the eventual unhappy ending. The cast (also including Thomas Buan, Nick Hill, Victoria Jones, and Will Vierzba in multiple roles) stays completely serious despite the ridiculousness of the story (and the costumes - pastel t-shirts and pants with matching ears and a belly patch), even into curtain call. It's a high-concept Fringey show that's well executed with great attention to detail.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2022: "Who's Afraid of Winnie the Pooh?"

Day: 5

Show: 16

Title: Who's Afraid of Winnie the Pooh?

Category: COMEDY / LITERARY ADAPTATION

By: Clevername Theatre

Directed by: Alexander Gerchak

Location: Theatre in the Round

Summary: A retelling of the classic Edward Albee play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with the characters from Winnie the Pooh.

Highlights: The key to making this premise work - Pooh, Piglet, and Christopher Robin as characters in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, is to play it with deadpan seriousness. And this cast does just that. In this version of the story, Winnie the Pooh (Thomas Buan) and Piglet (Stephanie Johnson) are the unhappily married couple who invite the new couple in the Hundred Acre Wood, Christopher (Nick Hill) and Hunny (Stephanie Callaghan), over for cocktails. The cocktails being honey, or nectar, or sweetened condensed milk, on which out party-goers proceed to get drunk, which is when things get dicey. They take turns telling stories that may sound familiar to Winnie the Pooh readers, only with a decidedly more sinister turn. Playwright/director Alexander Gerchak doesn't miss an opportunity in the mashing up of these two familiar but very different worlds, dropping in lots of little nuggets. The mid-century costumes and design are spot on, characters dressed in the familiar color (Pooh is in faded yellow, Piglet in pink) with animal ears to remind us where we are. The vintage bar is well-used, and much honey and sweetened condensed milk is consumed over the course of the play. This unexpected, genius, and well executed mash-up is the kind of thing that can only happen at Fringe, and the reason that we love Fringe, and the reason that we need Fringe!

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.