Minnesota Fringe Festival 2018: "A Part of Me"

Day: 2

Show: 6

Title: A Part of Me

Category: Drama / Musical Theater / Original Music

By: Imagined Theatre

Created by: Julie Ana Rayne and Phil Darg

Location: Southern Theater

Summary: Two patients waiting for an organ donation meet in a transitional care facility.

Highlights: This sweet and lovely story of friendship in difficult times caused me to shed my first #fringetears of the festival. The patients, musician Sean and teenager Jimmy, connect over their shared situation (waiting for a liver and kidney transplant, respectively) and their love of music. Sean teaches Jimmy to play the guitar, begrudgingly allowed by understandably overprotective mother Rita. Caregivers nurse Cate and administrator Liz try to make their lives as comfortable as possible, but the situation is dire for both of them if they don't get a transplant soon. I don't want to tell you too much of what happens, but suffice it to say connections are made and lives are changed. The songs are on the whole lovely and melodic, with poignant or funny lyrics. Dan Piering's Sean accompanies many of the songs on guitar (an instrument he's as adept at as his usual cello), with additional accompaniment on keyboard played by, I'm going to assume, composer and lyricist Julie Ana Rayne. Dan, Abilene Olson as Rita, and Rachel Schmidt do most of the singing, and beautifully so. Katie Consumas is natural and believable as one of those angels on earth, a nurse, and young Logan Schuneman is adorable as Jimmy. Amidst the zaniness that is most of Minnesota Fringe, it's a rare treat to experience a moving drama such as this.

If you're interested in becoming an organ donor, visit www.organdonor.gov.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

"A Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas" at Lyric Arts

I'm a little bit obsessed with all things Little House on the Prairie, and I'm not ashamed to admit it! The TV show started the year after I was born, and I don't remember a time when I didn't watch it and love it. When I was old enough to read, the Little House books were a favorite, although I soon discovered just how different the TV and book worlds are. I've re-read them as an adult, along with several other books about Laura Ingalls Wilder, most recently the excellent Prairie Girl: An Annotated Autobiography. And when I took a road trip across South Dakota a few years ago, I made sure to stop in De Smet, and Walnut Grove on the way back into Minnesota. On the live performance front, I loved the Guthrie's 2008 musical adaptation of Little House on the Prairie (starring Melissa Gilbert!), and I even saw Alison Arngrim's comedy performance of her funny and touching memoir Confessions of a Prairie Bitch. So it's obvious I will consume Laura Ingalls Wilders' writings in any form I can, and I couldn't resist Lyric Arts' "Mainly for Kids" production of A Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas. Playwright Laurie Brooks has turned a few pages in Laura's original memoir that never made it into her children's series, about their time spent in Burr Oak, Iowa, into a sweet little 65-minute play in keeping with the Little House theme of family and frontier life.