It's the last week of "The Festival." This time next week I think I may be going through withdrawal.
THE GRECIAN FORMULA. I'd call this show mildly amusing. Certainly not the laugh riot the creators were likely aiming for, but I laughed enough. This is a comedy about the creation of drama in ancient Greece. The funniest parts of the show are the ones that refer to the current state of theatre (like when the seer starts channeling the musicals currently playing on Broadway), and the ruler organizing the first theatrical festival starts planning on premium seating, and theatre restoration charges. Another hilarious highlight, is one of the shows of the festival that combines "Death of a Salesman," "The Glass Menagerie," "Long Days Journey Into Night" and "August: Osage County" into one lump dysfunctional family drama. When the judges were picking the winning play at the end, I was sort of rooting for that one to win - even though we're supposed to be rooting for the mediocre "Orpheus and Eurydice" adaptation that we've been watching the creation of the entire time. That show's presentation - the longest of the ones we're shown, is really kind of flat, other than a positively hilarious gospel song they throw in at the end. One problem with the show as a whole, was that it seemed to drag on for too long after the "Orpheus" production was presented. Enough quibbles though, the show is pleasant and fun enough, especially for a Fringe show.
WALLS. A really awful premise made into a fine drama. The show is about a couple who discover a wall has popped up between them, dividing their home in two, and on the day of their anniversary. I'd think I'm sort of stating the obvious by revealing that the wall represents the problems in their marriage, and it only slowly comes down as they tell each other their deep dark secrets. Even if this sounds like a lame example of just taking a metaphor literally, thanks to two excellent performances from the actors playing the couple, and some quite fine playwriting, the show manages to really be fascinating to watch. And kudos to the set designer for figuring out an interesting way - especially on a Fringe budget - of finding a creative way to represent the wall and it's reaction to each revealed secret. A pleasant surprise.
USHER. "The Grecian Formula" ended up cutting its intermission due to an "emergency" that caused them to start ten minutes late, and as I was sitting there, I was thinking how amazed I was that I hadn't left any shows an intermission, at this year's Fringe, after having lost patience with no many last year. Well, that would all change with "Usher," a dreadful musical based on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." The show felt like a college production of a moldy 80s pop-opera. Well, it is technically a college production - it's both written and performed by Yale students. The show was written as a senior project by an undergrad student, and I will say that someone so young could have written something like this is impressive. Not that it makes the show good, but that it's as accomplished as it is, is pretty surprising. The show sort of feels like a cross between the musicals of "Jane Eyre" (by Paul Gordon) and "The Secret Garden" (by Lucy Simon), except combining the worst aspects of each. The songs, while all fairly pretty and melodic, are just so repetitive. I felt like the choruses were just repeated over and over again, with the central melody and lyric of each song, just pounded into my head. And though admittedly I've never read "The Fall of the House of Usher," the show didn't really feel Poe like at all - it felt much more like a Charlotte Bronte soap opera, full of cheesy romance, and the voice of the mysterious woman hidden in the house. I found the show absolutely excruciating to sit through, and with the intermission coming at a random point in the story, leaving absolutely nothing in the story to entice an audience member to want to suffer through a second hour, I just left. I was especially annoyed, as I was debating between picking this show or "Krapp 39." "Krapp 39" had been getting rave reviews, and I knew nothing about "Usher" other than the music on the website that intrigued me. But I only had room in my schedule to pick one, and well, I obviously chose wrong. C'est la vie. I can always hope "Krapp 39" will be part of the Fringe Encores series.
THE GOLDEN AURORA. A play about a man who falls in love with a dog. And when I say "falls in love," I really mean love. Like he has sex with the dog. Bestiality is a touchy subject, and I think it takes a careful playwriting not to let it fall into unintentional camp. It's the difference between Albee's fabulous "The Goat or Who is Sylvia" and that awful play, "Prymate" that played on Broadway a few seasons ago. This show starts out promisingly enough, and I think if the playwright had perhaps stuck just to the subject of the man-dog romance, it might have worked. But instead, he gives all but one character really bizarre neuroses, so that the whole thing just turns into some sort of awful freak show, causing unintentional laughter from the audience, and expressions that likely resembled those of the audience for "Springtime for Hitler." In the plays defense, I was at least never bored when watching it. It was almost impossible to tear my eyes away, but more in the way of watching an oncoming train wreck than a fine drama. Not necessarily an awful idea, just a bit too wacky for an audience to stomach.
BLANCHE SURVIVES KATRINA IN A FEMA TRAILER NAMED DESIRE. There was lots of great buzz on this, so I had high hopes. I just didn't get the appeal at all. The people around me were laughing hysterically at every little thing, so maybe it's because I'm not a Southerner (I did hear a lot of non-native New Yorker accents around me), but I just didn't find this at all funny. The premise, as far as I could tell, was this guy goes to his wreck of a home in New Orleans, and every time he puts on a wig, he turns into Blanche DuBois (of "A Streetcar Named Desire"), and (s)he recounts the post-Katrina experience, through the eyes of Miss DuBois, from life in the Superdome, to a seedy motel, to working at a Popeyes in Phoenix. I just didn't find this at all amusing or intersting. As far as I'm concerned, Tennessee Williams should be rolling his grave.
THE LONGEST RUNNING JOKE OF THE 20TH CENTURY. This was a reminder that all Fringe shows don't get packed houses.I think everything else I'd seen at this year's festival, had been fairly crowded, if not close to sold out. But this one had I think around twelve people in the audience. Which I found kind of sad, because I sort of liked the show. I guess that's what happens when you don't have a cast of twenty, to bring all of their friends and family to see your show. This is a solo play about written by and starring a playwright who went from working at Eddie Bauer to a seventeen year job as a social worker, in a program what I guess was sort of a halfway-house type program mentally disturbed individuals. The premise is good, and the stories were interesting and sometimes moving, but I found it a bit to be just story after story, with not enough connective material in-between each. I mean, the stories of the patients were somewhat interesting, but after a while I started to wonder whether the play was ever going to come to a point, or if it was just a random selection of snapshots. I think the raw ideas for a good play are definitely there, but it could use some work. Also Stephen O'Rourke (the actor/playwright) is not really much of an actor, and future productions could probably benefit from either a more experienced actor performing the play, or perhaps some acting lessons for Mr.O'Rourke. The play may not be perfect, but I found quite a few of the stories to be really quite funny or touching, and if I read about a future revised production, I would certainly be curious to give it a second chance. This was certainly better than some of the other bigger buzz shows I've seen at this year's festival.
