"Based On / A True Story: Two New Plays" by Raw Sugar and Theatre Corrobora at Southern Theater

At the Southern Theater this weekend, you can see two new one-act plays, both very much worth seeing. They're very different plays, but what they have in common is that they're written and performed by women, telling their own personal, authentic stories. Produced by two companies whose work I want to support based on their mission ("Raw Sugar creates imaginative, adventurous productions led by feminists" and "Theatre Corrobora is a group of young artists who strive to create meaningful, challenging, and intelligent works of original theater by and about young women"), Fadeaway Girl and The Critic and the Drama Queen are both funny, thoughtful, and engaging new plays, and you should go see them (five performances this weekend only!).

Fringe Festival 2016: "Apple Picking"

Day: 10

Show: 43

Title: Apple Picking

Category: Comedy

By: Ben San Del Presents

Created by: Ben San Del

Location: Ritz Theater Proscenium

Summary: A pleasant afternoon of apple picking turns sinister when the two couples turn out to be on opposite sides of the law

Highlights: In this hilarious dark comedy, mobster's daughter and hitwoman Candy (Mo Perry) brings her boyfriend Johnny (Jason Ballweber) to the family orchard to dispose of him. Red (Natalie Rae Wass) and Robert (Christopher Kehoe) appear to be on a date, but are actually undercover FBI agents. A mad chasee ensues, observed by a pair of trees (Rachel Petrie and Joshua English Scrimshaw, the funniest trees you've ever seen whether silent or speaking in a drug-induced halucination). It's really funny and the cast is fantastic, thoroughly enjoyable start to finish. Which is probably why it won the encore slot at 8:30 pm today.

"The Funny" by Raw Sugar at Bedlam Lowertown

I don't go to a lot of comedy shows, mostly because my busy theater schedule doesn't allow it. But I couldn't resist a night of feminist comedy hosted by Raw Sugar (aka Jenny Moeller and Rebekah Rentzel), a company that "makes adventurous and imaginative projects driven by women." They and their friends performed their third installment of The Funny at Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis last weekend and continue at St. Paul's Bedlam Lowertown this weekend. It's a fun evening of comedy that ranges from the grounded and relatable to the crazy and over the top, with a few poignant moments thrown in as the artists explore what it means to be a woman/trans/femme in our patriarchal world.

Fringe Festival 2015: "Stuff That Reminds Me of Other Things"

Day: 8

Show: 34

Title: Stuff That Reminds Me of Other Things

Category: Something Different

By: Keely Wolter

Created by: Keely Wolter

Location: walking tour starting at U of M Rarig Center

Summary: Two bright and spirited guides lead a small group of participants on a tour around the U of M West Bank neighborhood telling delightful stories.

Highlights: This charmingly original show, one of nine site-specific shows at the Fringe this year, is just as the title describes. Creator Keely Wolter is a disarming and engaging guide not just through the neighborhood but also her life, telling seemingly random and disconnected stories from her past. The stories range from silly to profound as she tells of anxiety, friendship, and dreams. Just when she gets to a particularly poignant point in a story, she lightly says "OK, let's go!" and it's on to the next memory. The soundtrack for this tour is a series of walking songs, from The Brady Bunch's "Sunshine Day" to "Walk Like A Man" and "These Boots Were Made for Walking." Director Rachel Petrie is an able and willing assistant (and I'm going to hold her to her promise to do her own memory tour next year). Each participant is given an official guidebook with photos related to the stories, in which they are encouraged to write down things that the stuff reminds them of, for the next holder of the guidebook to read. The tour is charming and engaging, encouraging participants to notice the beauty that's all around them, and is a nice chance to stretch the legs and enjoy the fresh air after a long week of Fringe-ing. I hope they continue this lovely tradition of the walking tour (see also last year's Into the Unreal City).

Fringe Festival: "The Finkles' Theater Show!!"

Day: 2

Show: 7

Title: The Finkles' Theater Show!!

Category: Comedy

By: Ryan Lear and Rachel Petrie

Created by: Ryan Lear and Rachel Petrie

Location: Bryant-Lake Bowl

Summary: Theater novices Carl and Wanda Finkles enter a festival and put on a show. What they lack in theater know-how they make up for with boundless enthusiasm.

Highlights: Ryan and Rachel have created something pretty clever here - a show within a show, in which their characters are putting on a show about putting on a show (think [title of show], only more absurd). The charmingly awkward Finkles (Finkleses?) walk us through their journey of finding out they made it into the festival, holding auditions, rehearsals (complete with instructions on what differentiates good theater from great theater - don't break that fourth wall!), a big dance number (which starts out silly and peppy and slowly disintegrates as the Finkles tire when the chorus of "Holding out for a Hero*" keeps repeating and repeating), all the way through to show night, when everything comes full circle. It's all very meta. But while Carl and Wanda may be theater amateurs, Ryan and Rachel are professionals. Ryan is a master at facial expressions and body language; I would happily watch him wordlessly contort for 60 minutes as his character goes through a range of emotions. Rachel is a great match and perfectly completes the odd couple, and has a surprisingly lovely voice that doesn't quite fit with the Wanda we come to know. This could be the most brilliantly awkward 60 minutes of theater you'll see this year.



*I was quite amused that the Finkles' dance move for "he's gotta be smooth" is shaving their armpits, considering the show I had seen just previously.

"Miracle on Christmas Lake II" at Yellow Tree Theatre

"A Little Bit of Lovin' and a Christmas Tree." That's the theme song of this year's rendition of Yellow Tree Theatre's annual holiday show, Miracle on Christmas Lake II* (presented for the second year in a row after a successful three-year run of the original Miracle on Christmas Lake). The song is a pretty good description of the plot as well - the "Loving" being represented by nerdy soulmates Martha and Neil and small town theater owners Colin and Tess, and the "Christmas Tree" taking the form of a silly costume that Colin wears in the pageant thrown together at the last minute. But more than that, it's about a small community pulling together to save their beloved small town way of life. Not your average sugar-coated Christmas treat, Miracle on Christmas Lake II is silly and preposterous and hilarious and heart-warming.

In the ridiculous (in a good way) plot, the entire town of Christmas Lake comes down with the goat flu (which causes its victims to make strange bleating noises and eat garbage), and is also in danger of annexation by neighboring town Potterton. Colin and Tess must put on a successful Christmas show to impress the Hollywood producer wanting to film a movie in Christmas Lake, which will save the town. It's the pretty much the same show as last year (written by Jessica Lind Peterson and directed by Jason Peterson, founders of the theater), with a few little tweaks and mostly new cast. The one constant in the five years of Christmas Lake is Yellow Tree regular Ryan Nelson as the Little House on the Prairie-obsessed piano tuner Neil, who thinks acting means doing an impression. He grows funnier and nerdier every year, and never fails to crack me up. Debra Berger ably takes on the role of Neil's girlfriend, the Sound of Music-loving Martha with a pet lizard and a mean tater tot hotdish recipe. Neil and Martha's big romantic moment is crowned with a rendition of (what else) "Something Good" from Sound of Music (the movie, but not the original stage musical, which had a song called "An Ordinary Couple" in its place, which has just outed me as a fellow nerd - maybe that's why I love Neil and Martha so much). Josef Buchel (the charming gentleman caller) and Rachel Petrie (of Four Humors Theater) play the only normal people in town, Christmas Lake native Colin and his wife Tess, who run the local community theater and try to corral these crazies into some semblance of a theatrical production. The charismatic Andy Frye returns as the Hollywood location scout with a secret, only this time he's given a new name (Stefan Stefanjovak) and a vaguely Eastern European accent. Rounding out the cast is Charles Fraser playing several characters, each one more quirky and outrageous than the last. The entire cast plays well together. One of the best examples of this is a fabulous slow-mo fight between Neil and Stefan over Martha. Hilarious and deftly executed.

Over the last three years I've grown to love the residents of the fictional town of Christmas Lake, which will seem familiar to any Minnesotan (you can read more about last year's version of the show here, and about the original play here). I hope to return for many years to come. Jason says in this article in the StarTrib that there are plans for a third play. Until then, check out this trailer featuring scenes from the show accompanied by one of my favorite local musicians (thanks to Yellow Tree) Blake Thomas** singing "A Little Bit of Lovin' and a Christmas Tree" (I'm still waiting for it to be released as a single). In the show, the cast sings the song and it sounds quite lovely - several of these actors are hiding great voices behind their comedy.



Miracle on Christmas Lake II from Yellow Tree Theatre on Vimeo.


*I received two complementary tickets to Miracle on Christmas Lake II, and brought along nine more friends who happily purchased tickets, even though many of them had seen the show last year. It's a really fun group outing, especially when paired with dinner at Nectar Wine Bar in adorable downtown Osseo.

**Blake Thomas is writing a new original musical Stay Tuned to be presented at Yellow Tree Theatre next spring, with help from his lovely and talented wife Mary Fox and Stefan Stefanjovak himself, Andy Frye (who is also directing Yellow Tree's next show, Circle Mirror Transformation, which I called "a quiet, real, completely satisfying exploration of five intersecting lives" when I saw it at the Guthrie in 2010). More information on both shows here.

"The Extraordinary Terms of Ordinary Life" by Four Humors Theater at the Loring Theater

The Extraordinary Terms of Ordinary Life is a wacky, off-beat comedy, which seems fairly typical of Four Humors Theater.  The other Four Humors show I've seen is the new original rock musical The Age of Wordsworth - the life and words of William Wordsworth set to rock music.  This show really is nothing like that, but they are similar in that both are pieces created from unique and original ideas that really evoke a sense of time and place.

The time and place of The Extraordinary Terms of Ordinary Life is a life insurance company in Manhattan in 1929, just before the crash.  The play was written by Ryan Lear (who also directs), inspired by some old life insurance training manuals he found at a garage sale.  A band playing jazz standards of the time helps set the mood, and the Loring Theater is a perfect venue - it's an old vaudeville theater built in the 1920s.  The set pieces are cartoonish skyscrapers, with a nifty backdrop of the skyline of NYC.  The whole thing put together almost feels like watching a silent film from the era, with exaggerated facial expressions and gestures and broad physical comedy.

John Davidson (the adorable Andy Rocco Kraft who's adept at the physical comedy) moves from a small town to the big city in response to an ad from the "Good Old Life Insurance Company."  Naive and enthusiastic, he believes he could be "the man."  He's immediately hired by the head of the company (Alisa Mattson, who also plays his wife, who it turns out is really the one in charge).  The experienced salesman Frank Engles (the fast talking Ryan Nelson) takes Johnny under his wing and teaches him how to sell to anyone.  Johnny soon becomes a big success, and falls in love with the sweet girl in Accounts Receivable, Mary Southworth (Rachel Petri), who has dreams of becoming a salesman like her father.  Rounding out the cast are Kat Wodtke as a creepy old man who eats paper, and the clowns Garret Vollmer, Mark Rehani, and Jon Mac Cole playing multiple roles (and harmonizing on the company theme song).

The Extraordinary Terms of Ordinary Life is a wacky, fun, at times inexplicable look at a time when the economy was booming, until it all fell apart.  Sound familiar?  Only in this world we learn that the reason the economy tanks is because the bankers are storing up gold to feed to angry demons to keep them from eating the entire human race.  Huh?  Oh well, it's about as good of a reason as any others I've heard!

Things aren't always what they seem.