Fringe Festival: "Pecan Brown and the Seven ...'s"

Day: 7

Show: 24

Title: Pecan Brown and the Seven ...'s

Category: Something different

By: Under the Skin Theater Company

Created by: Kloie Rush-Spratt and BriAnna McCurry

Location: Music Box Theatre

Summary: A screenwriter is given the opportunity to rewrite a film adaptation of Snow White, and decides to cast a woman of color as the lead, specifically the color of Pecan Brown, but is thwarted by racism in Hollywood.

Highlights: The under-representation of minorities in Hollywood is definitely an idea worth exploring and bringing attention to. Unfortunately the execution is a little lacking. The show brings up some great points (especially the scene where everyone explains why they're not racist), and the leads are appealing (particularly Ashe Jaafaru as the screenwriter and Chava Gabriella as her star), but the whole thing feels a bit clunky. And I'm not sure why Thor is there, but as played by Collin Knopp-Schwyn with great dedication to the camp of it, he's the most entertaining part of the show. And that's a problem. But the creators have some great ideas; I'd like to see them explored and polished a bit more.

Fringe Festival: "Buckets and Tap Shoes"

Day: 7

Show: 23

Title: Buckets and Tap Shoes

Category: Dance

By: 10 Foot 5 Productions

Created by: Rick Ausland and Andy Ausland

Location: Music Box Theatre

Summary: The title pretty much says it all. Two guys create a percussion explosion with their feet and drumsticks on various surfaces.

Highlights: This is a surefire crowd pleaser; there's really nothing not to like. There's something about the rhythm of tap dancing and drumming that gets into your very bones. Although Buckets and Tap Shoes is a regular at the Fringe, this is the first time I've seen it. Rick and Andy are not only great and inventive tap dancers and drummers, but they also have an easy chemistry with each other, are playful with the audience, and make use of the entire theater - who knew you could tap dance on carpet or drum on a coffee cup? There is some high tech stuff that is not as fun as the low tech stuff; the best moments are when it's just the guys and their tap shoes, or banging away on ten-gallon plastic pickle tubs and cake pans, or chasing the light of a flashlight like a cat chasing a laser. There's not a whole lot to say about this one - it's fun, energetic, and entertaining. And kids seem to love it.

Fringe Festival: "Hour Town"

Day: 7

Show: 22

Title: Hour Town

Category: Comedy

By: Dana's Boys

Created by: Dana's Boys

Location: Music Box Theatre

Summary: A condensed version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, set in Minnesota with Garrison Keillor as the stage manager.

Highlights: This show is littered with Minnesota references, which I love. Everything from Joe Mauer's bilateral leg weakness to Jesse Ventura's recent court win, from Paul Bunyon to Little House on the Prairie, from pedal pubs to a list of Minnesota-made movies. But that's not the only thing that makes Hour Town unique. The creators have also added puppets, pop culture references, and music. While not everything works (as much as I love Grover, I don't understand what he was doing in the show, and the wedding dance break was fun but a bit weird, and "Super Trooper?"), enough of it works to make this show a delight. And while some of the poignancy of the original gets lost amidst the goofy humor, there's still a touch of it here, particularly in the repeated use of the song "Que Sera, Sera," which perfectly fits with Wilder's theme of appreciating life in the moment because you don't know what the future will be. The large cast does well with the many roles; Brad Erickson does a spot-on Garrison Keillor impression, and as the young lovers Drew Tennenbaum and Sulia Altenberg are fresh-faced and charming (and Sulia has a lovely voice and looks like a young Judy Garland, Minnesota reference not intended). It's a clever take on a classic and appeals to those of who unabashedly love (or at least love to complain about) our home state.

Fringe Festival: "Hidden in the Picture"

Day: 7

Show: 21

Title: Hidden in this Picture

Category: Comedy

By: Ductile Anchor

Written by: Aaron Sorkin

Location: Music Box Theatre

Summary: A movie director watches his final shot get ruined, which forces him to rethink his priorities and what he's really doing in the film industry.

Highlights: Aaron Sorkin is my favorite TV writer. Sports Night, West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Newsroom (which is sort of a combination of The West Wing and Sports Night), I love them all. This play precedes his TV work by ten years, but you can still hear some of his trademark fast, smart dialogue. I'd love to see this play in the hands of professionals, although these young amateur actors (fresh out of high school and directed by their high school director) give it a good effort and are kind of adorable in a "look Ma we're doing a show!" sort of way. Director Robert (Mathew Timmons) and his playwright-turned-screenwriter partner Jeff (Nick Haeg) were plucked from the theater world and offered lots of money to make a movie. A bad movie. Robert forgets that they're doing this just for the money, and begins to take it seriously. He freaks out when his shot is ruined, until Jeff suggests that it might be the perfect ending to the movie and their experience. The play has some interesting and funny things to say about theater, playwrights (you can hear some of the criticism that Sorkin receives when Robert tells Jeff what's wrong with his writing), and big budget movies. Sorkin of course eventually did turn to writing for movies and TV, and one wonders how his opinion might have changed in later years. Not the best production, but I enjoyed the Aaron Sorkin-ness of it all.

Fringe Festival: "These Old Shoes"

Day: 4

Show: 12

Title: These Old Shoes

By: Transatlantic Love Affair

Created by: Diogo Lopes and the ensemble

Location: Music Box Theatre

Summary: Using their trademark physical theater style, Transatlantic Love Affair tells the story of a man packing up his belongings and memories as he prepares to move into an "old folks home," with the help of his loving granddaughter.

Highlights: Transatlantic Love Affair never fails to make me cry. The pictures that they create and the emotions that those pictures evoke are so beautiful; it's difficult to describe if you haven't seen them. The seven actors are on a completely bare stage with no set or props, dressed simply, but manage to create a rich and varied world in which to tell their stories. With only their bodies, voices, and facial expressions, they represent everything from furniture to trees to the characters in the stories. And they always use music very wisely to enhance, but never distract from, the story (Dustin Tessier on an expressive electric guitar). Without giving away too much, the story they tell here is one of aging, memory, regrets, and second chances. The entire cast is wonderful, but Derek Lee Miller and Peytie McCandless are especially lovely as they portray characters at various times in their lives. There's so much going on, such exquisite attention to detail, that it's impossible to see everything. I wish I had time to see this again* so I could drink it all in. My favorite of the Fringe so far, and I doubt anything else I see will top it.

Read more of my fringe fest reflections…

… including my top 5 shows

*And maybe I will see it again. They're continuing their trend of expanding Fringe shows at Illusion Theater with last year's Ash Land, to be presented at Illusion in February 2014. Dare I hope for These Old Shoes at Illusion in 2015?

Fringe Festival 2012: The Music Box

Day: 4

Show: 13

Title: The Music Box

By: Graber and Napolitano Productions

Created by: Elliot David Graber

Location: Rarig Thrust

Summary: Set in 1929 St. Louis, a young writer takes a job with a newspaper to pay the bills, but never forgets about the book that he's written based on stories his beloved grandfather told him as a child. His favorite story is the one about the poet and the prince, and he dreams of the day when he falls in love. So of course, he falls in love with his boss's fiance, a spirited young woman who's not sure she wants to give up her life to move to New York and settle down with the stable, steady man.

Highlights: I feel like I should have loved this show more than I did. All the pieces are there - beautiful original music in the classic musical theater style, appealing performances by the leads, gorgeous costumes, elaborate sets (for the Fringe), even the clever program made to look like a newspaper from 1929 passed out by boys in period Newsies costumes. This is likely to be the most professional-looking show you'll see at the Fringe (check out the beautiful postcard on the left). But I just didn't connect with it as much as I did some other shows I've seen this week. Perhaps it was a little too cliche, perhaps it was too ambitious (see: frequent set changes that went smoothly but perhaps pushed the running time to the one-hour limit). But if you're a musical theater fan, it's still worth seeing for the gorgeous music and production. Libby Anderson gives a great performance as our heroine Zoey and makes you want things to work out for her. She and Jordon Oxborough (could he be Jared's little brother?) make beautiful music together. This show might work better if it were fleshed out into a full production, giving the characters and relationships more room to grow and develop.

Read more of my fringe fest reflections...