Minnesota Fringe Festival 2019: "The Shrieking Harpies"

Day: 1

Show: 1

Title: The Shrieking Harpies

Category: COMEDY / IMPROV / MUSICAL THEATER

By: Shrieking Harpies

Created by: The Shrieking Harpies

Location: Strike Theater

Summary: "Shrieking Harpies is a fierce femme powered musical improv trio dedicated to bringing bad-assery to the improv stage."

Highlights: The Shrieking Harpies perform regularly at Huge Theater, usually past my bedtime, so I was happy to finally see a full set from them. It's great fun, very feminist (in the mostly male-dominated world of improv), and a perfect way to start my 2019 Fringe. Based solely on the audience suggestion "astronaut," performers Lizzie Gardner, Taj Ruler, and Hannah Wydeven created an entire story with multiple characters and a beginning, middle, and end, that even mostly made sense! The show you see will be different than what I saw, but I loved this tale of female astronauts (and their moms) finally getting to be heroes in space. Because women were born for space! It's pretty remarkable to watch them create the story live in front of you, and with songs too! They improvise funny, clever, silly, melodic songs (with harmonies), along with Justin Nellis improvising on the keyboard (and playing not just for the songs, but providing an improvised soundtrack for the entire story). If you like improv, and musical theater, and women telling women's stories - don't miss this one!

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Fringe Festival 2016: "The Lounge-asaurus Rex Show with Lounge-asaurus Rex! (featuring Lounge-asaurus Rex)"

Day: 6

Show: 27

Title: The Lounge-asaurus Rex Show with Lounge-asaurus Rex! (featuring Lounge-asaurus Rex)

Category: Comedy

By: Tom Reed

Created by: Tom Reed

Location: Theatre in the Round

Summary: The master of Fringe comedy/music improv Tom Reed returns with his character Lounge-asaurus Rex, the loungiest singer of them all.

Highlights: I first encountered Lounge-asaurus Rex (and Tom Reed) at Sample Night Live several years ago. It's a great character, a great shtick, one deserving of a whole show, which he finally gets here. Dressed in '70s-style leisure suits, chunky gold rings, and big dark glasses, with a drink in one hand and a corded microphone in the other, Lounge-asaurus Rex talks, and he sings (the difference: singing takes longer to convey information). He chats with audience members (avoid aisle seats if you don't want to be chatted to) and then makes up a song about the conversation, e.g., songs about Duke Ellington, world peace, Tom Sawyer, a Fringe show promotion, or dietitians. Loungey (as I like to call him) loves the sound of his own voice so much (and he should, it's a great one) that sometimes he sings questions or statements instead of merely speaking them. Accompanied by Justin Nellis on keyboard, the songs are really funny and clever, and Tom is incredibly quick in coming up with lyrics and rhymes. It's obvious he's been performing as this character for a number of years because he's extremely comfortable and confident as Loungey, yet the act never gets old or stale no matter how often I see it. Louge-asaurus Rex is a super entertaining, funny, quick-witted, well-sung show, and in typical Tom Reed fashion, there is shirtlessness (and pantlessness)!