Fringe Festival 2017: "Synchronicity"

Day: 7

Show: 26

Title: Synchronicity

Category: Comedy

By: Raw Sugar

Created by: Raw Sugar

Location: Mixed Blood Theatre

Summary: The story of a community synchronized swimming team in the early '90s marred by all the drama of being a teenage girl.

Highlights: This super cute show full of '90s references (Blossom, Joey Lawrence, Rainbow Brite) builds to the even cuter synchronized swimming routine. The girls in a summer team go to their first big meet, and inter-personal drama threatens to get in the way. The seven-person cast (Constance Brevell, Danielle Krivinchuk, Michelle Casali, Sarah Parker, Starla Larson, Sulia Altenberg, and director Rebekah Rentzel filling in when I saw the show) are all pretty adorable tween girls with all their drama and seriousness and note-writing and glee. In fact it's such an accurate (if exaggerated) depiction of that difficult age I almost felt sick to my stomach remembering the trauma! The costumes (designed by Sulia) are spot on with the stone-washed jeans and array of swimming suits, as is the styling, complete with side ponies. And seriously, that routine is the best!

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

"Big Money" by Sandbox Theatre at Park Square Theatre

In 1984, a man named Michael Larson won over $100,000 on the game show Press Your Luck. A career con man, he accomplished this by studying every episode of the show and figuring out the pattern in the game of chance at the center of the show. Sandbox Theatre has chosen this stranger-than-fiction true story as the subject of their latest new work. In addition to recreating the infamous episode of Press Your Luck (available on youtube) in all its cheesy '80s game show glory, they explore Michael's personal life and the things he sacrificed in his endless pursuit of the perfect get-rich-quick scheme. The result is a funny, sad, inventive, and fascinating look at genius wasted.

"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: "Reinventing the Wolf"

Day: 6

Show: 27

Title: Reinventing the Wolf

Category: Comedy

By: Burntail Arts

Created by: Sofia Lindgren Galloway and Anna Hopps

Location: Ritz Theater Studio

Summary: A fun Friday night with a group of college friends turns serious as they're able to open up about sexual assault through the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood.

Highlights: These five women (Becca Hart, Hannah Neville, Kiara Jackson, Nastacia Nicole Foster, Sarah Parker) are all really natural actors and feel like friends, and there's a light-hearted party atmosphere for the first half of the show as they talk and joke and drink, preparing to go to a party. They're also all great singers as they sing meaningful and well-constructed montages of pop songs. Things turn a little serious about halfway through when one of the girls, Sorrel, asks the other girls to write a story as if they're Little Red Riding Hood to help with an essay she's writing. They're all beautifully written and filled with hidden meaning. Finally Sorrel is able to tell her friends why she doesn't want to go to the party, because she was sexually assaulted at the last party. This allows others to share their stories, listen, and support each other. Reinventing the Wolf doesn't get too deep into the issue of campus sexual assault, but it does allow for a conversation to begin and an acknowledges that this is part of college women's experience and needs to be addressed.