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| Mac Williams, Peter Matthews and Sarah Korda in 21/One |
The clock is ticking! Every 90 minutes a show moves into an intimate downtown theatre, sets up, runs the play, closes it up, and moves out for the next show! It’s quite a whirlwind! Now in their 15th year, the SF Fringe Festival offers a wild variety of theatre by up-and-coming writers and performers as well as seasoned veterans. This year’s Festival brings 39 shows to 10 different venues in just 12 days! And a variety of glbtq fare are part of frantic fun.
From outrageous, scream-out-loud farces, to absurdist offerings, to intense dramas, the Festival has something for everyone. Some of the shows are great, some are less-than great, and discovering which is which is part of the fun. Word of mouth spreads instantaneously as people leaving theatres are queried by those waiting in line. The excitement is palpable… and the low price is terrific!
If you miss the extremely limited run of a show, fear not. You might have one more chance — soon after the completion of the Festival, four plays will be selected for “Best of Fringe” and will receive an additional performance each on September 29 and 30. Also, some shows will continue their runs or be reprised at various local venues.
Below are brief reviews of a sampling of the Festival’s fare. Whether you see one show or go for major marathons, consider checking out the 2006 SF Fringe Festival.
All tickets are $9 (or less) at the theatre or $10 online; $65 for 10-show pass; $35 for 5-show pass. For a complete listing of venues, shows, dates, and times as well as tickets, call (415) 673-3847 or go to www.sffringe.org
- Tom W. Kelly
21/One
How many embarrassing things could you do in one hour? Especially if it were your last fling, your bachelorette party? Now put that all aboard a bus full of strangers. It would be an experience not to forget. Boxcar Theatre’s 21/One bus tour is a rolling party where everyone has a checklist beginning with Jell-O shots.
The guests board a big charter bus festooned with balloons and crepe paper hangings. The bride-to-be is Sarah Korda, and she introduces her maid of honor — Pete Matthews. “He’s gay,” she explains, “very gay.” “Thank you for sharing that,” he replies, and the bus takes off with cheers to Sarah over the shots.
Emcee Mac Williams guides everyone through the checklist, encouraging Sarah to give someone a lap dance, tell about the sexiest body part of her intended, and to run around outside the bus doing the chicken dance. Most of this is improvised acting. After all, how can you write a script for faking an orgasm?
The route of the bus circles through the Flower Mart/Design Center area to Octavia Park, past St. Mary’s Cathedral, and back to the starting point at the EXIT Theatre. Several times, the bus stops at prearranged places so the audience can observe external scenes, such as a puppet show from the windows of a parked car while sounds of a squabbling couple play in the bus, or Sarah spotting her wedding dress hanging under a palm tree. Sarah’s #17 on the checklist is to blow up a condom. Outside, someone is in a balloon tent that drifts in the wind like thin latex. Sarah jumps off to dance with a manikin, then rejoins the party and has an unpleasant reaction.
The overall artistic concept of this tour combines audience participation, unanticipated actions, and a short tour of The City. It is daring to take a chance that something could go wrong on or off the bus, but that’s part of the experience. It’s just like a party where the guest of honor gets a little bit out of control.
21/One continues on Sept. 14 (Thurs. 7pm & 8:30pm), Sept. 15 (Fri. 8:30pm & 10:15pm) and Sept. 16 (Sat. 6pm, 7:30pm & 9pm). Tickets to ride are available by calling 415-776-1747 or online at www.boxcartheatre.org
-Albert Goodwyn
A Boy Called Noise
If you’re a boy wearing blue eye shadow in small-town Texas, you’d better expect some grief from the locals. Murder was not on the menu, but it arrived anyway. Julia Steele Allen’s multi-character exploration of people’s reactions, titled A Boy Called Noise, fill this one-woman show (produced by Wise Fool of Santa Fe, New Mexico) with lots of anger and some good singing.
Slender and lithe Julia enters the stage in tattered jeans and a tat-revealing black top to demand that the audience help identify which character she is portraying. She holds up hand lettered signs with names like Beth Ann, father, or prisoner # so-and-so. As she proffers the signs, the audience dutifully reads them aloud for her.
On a set with tables and chairs, she details the efforts of friends and relatives of the only queer boy in town to cope with his slaying. Julia enacts the struggles of Noise’s father, mother, sister, cousin, and lover to accept what happened. She uses some costume accessories to differentiate the characters, but each one and her overall message speak of uncomprehending rage.
She intersperses the character scenes with her guitar and singing. As an actress, she is totally involved with the energy of her characterizations, but she seems to be so introspective, so in touch with the guts of each one that she loses the actor’s sense; she talks for herself and sometimes swallows lines. But when she is playing and singing, she enunciates perfectly and can make even whispering qualities come through.
With her androgynous looks, cowboy gestures and sad country songs, Julia herself presents an appealing waif, regardless of the tragic story. You feel like she could break at any moment, but her overwhelming fierceness reassures.
A Boy Called Noise continues on Sept. 15 (Fri. 10pm) and Sept. 16 (Sat. 2:30pm) at the EXIT on Taylor, 277 Taylor St., SF.
-Albert Goodwyn
Fuse
The Alloy Project presents Jennifer Franklin’s Fuse, a collection of monologues and dialogues in the style of theatre of testimony, directed by Janna Sobel. This multimedia piece employs photography and film as well as live performance to explore multiracial identity among women and men, ages 25-35, who grew up in the USA’s post-civil rights era. Seven actors of mixed ethnic heritage move through their past and present lives, recalling experiences that shaped their identities in this country whose general population doesn’t understand race, let alone same-sex preferences.
Fuse is most successful in its filmed interviews and when onstage couples have specific dramatic stakes. This is best exemplified when a non-Asian young man is trying to get Irish/Chinese Sheila (Fiona Cheung) to go out with him. Sheila had learned in her predominantly-white high school that “straight teeth, permed hair, and Guess jeans” were the ticket to social acceptance. But in college, she became militantly aware of the oppression of the Asian/Pacific Islander’s part of her history, and she overcompensated, baffling her family and hurting her white mother in the process.
Kyle (Ed Cho) — with a white father and a Korean mother — was born and raised in Minnesota. When he meets his Korean cousins, he has as much difficulty relating to them as his mother had when she left in the first place. Jenn (Jenn Franklin) never learned the Spanish of her Puerto Rican mother and inherited some of the dour expressions from her German father’s side. An added challenge was coming out as a lesbian to her family.
What they all have in common is the need to feel safe, which causes these young people to find who will “work alongside them in any ethnic group” as they try to ignore the voices that pull them in different directions. The acting ensemble is strongly committed to the material and would have benefited from more technical rehearsal time to better incorporate the mixed-media elements. Although the simple set of seven low tables is used in a variety of configurations, rearranging them sometimes slows the forward action as does some of the busy physical choreography that draws focus from the featured monologues.
While Fuse’s subject matter is worthy of attention, writer Franklin has yet to create a strong dramatic arc (with beginning, middle, and end) that will strengthen its impact.
Fuse continues on Sept. 16 (Sat. 7pm) at EXIT Stage Left, 156 Eddy St., SF.
- Linda Ayres-Frederick
Get It? Got It. Good!
For a head-scratching evening of daunting deconstruction, check out Get It? Got It. Good! by local playwright Dan Wilson (mounted by Cassandra’s Call Productions). Control issues proliferate this quirky Pirandello-esque script (it’s “Eight Actors in Search of… Something”).
Three short acts comprise this one-act play. Hmmm, that’s odd. Indeed. In act one (the “get it”), disparate characters desperately seek… something. In act two (the “got it”), a nutty narrator and control freak loses his cool during constant interruptions. And in act three (the “good”), a preacher denounces recreational sex while cunnilingus takes place a few feet away, and the rest of the rebellious cast talk candidly to each other and the audience about the play itself and the playwright.
The ensemble fully invests in their characters, lending the mysterious proceedings a goofy gravitas. Interactions between Stefanie Goldstein and beefy Kevin Karrick succinctly capture the weariness of a couple seeking an unidentified “something” to help them establish equilibrium despite their control issues. Catz Forman conveys an edginess that amply amps the play’s provocative nature. Poor Paul Jennings, who must rant and rave his way through act two, could explore intensity over volume within such an intimate space. And completing the great ensemble are David Austin-Gröen, Stephanie DeMott, Hal Savage, and Sam Shaw.
Local playwright Dan Wilson, who recently brought SF audiences Vagina Dentata (this guy has range!), here experiments with non-linear, self-referential, and provocative theatre, much of which is written in the negative space (figure that out!). Perfect fare for an anything-goes Fringe Festival! GIGIG is ultimately a riddle, possibly without an answer, that challenges the audience to think way outside the box. Is there a specific meaning herein, or is it a clever invitation to the audience to stretch their imaginations?
Directed by Wilson, the intent of each moment is clearly delineated, and the meaning of each moment is purposely elusive. The extremely episodic script (where some scenes may last just a heartbeat or two) demands and receives a quick pace. He valiantly tries to maintain audience interest despite the eventual frustration some may feel from not “getting it.”
Get It? Got It. Good! may confound you. And then again, if you just let the mysteries flow past you, you can enjoy the non-stop series of surprises. Recommended for those crave something decidedly different.
Get It? Got It. Good! continues on Sept. 15 (Fri. 8:30pm) ONLY at the EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy St., SF.
- Tom W. Kelly
Kingdom of Not
The most brilliant and imaginatively creative mind inhabits one Dan Carbone, who conjures his sorcery in the premiere of his latest solo performance titled Kingdom of Not. This is one of those rare Fringe shows that you should RUN, not walk, to see. Carbone is one of those geniuses who only gets better with age. And lucky are we to see his work as it has grown.
With only a baby carriage and white rocking chair, the quirky Carbone creates an entire world and a world of characters, each with a unique noise and distinct physical characteristics (including the old house they inhabit) that have you, between tears of amazement and tears of laughter, on the edge of your psyche. Buh, buh, buh Baby Randall, whose “father was a train whistle and mother was …more complex,” comes to life along with Anita Hummmmmm, who adopts him as her own after her sister Bonnie shot herself in the head.
This is one instance where meandering sidesteps — including the incredibly extant two-year, one-billion-ant voyage of the sugar ant scout across the floor, up the wall, along the sink, up to the cabinet, and into the blissful ecstasy of the crystalline white stuff — always magnify the central journey of his characters. All of Dan’s pieces fit so exquisitely together that by the end, one feels as blissed out as that ant by the perfection of it all. And we are thankful to have “borne witness” to the one who sometimes “feels pressed up against a huge balloon …just holding onto the edges trying to see it and see things coming together.”
They come together all right. While all hell is breaking loose right there in “Turkey Bluff with biggest town gossip Rebecca Nagle, who looks like a “marshmallow Easter Peep,” all the creatures in the rug are calling to Randall who is banging his head on the wall at the spot he later manages to crawl through to get to the other side!
If all this sounds bizarre, it is and yet, it all makes sense by the end. Heading for a run at NYC’s Cherry Lane Theatre after its Fringe performances, Carbone’s Kingdom of Not will probably take NYC by surreal storm. See him here first where he started out! Kingdom of Not is a MUST SEE!
Kingdom of Not continues on Sept. 14 (Thurs. 7pm), Sept. 15 (Fri. 8:30pm), and Sept. 16 (Sat. 10pm) at Original Joe’s Cabaret Room, 144 Taylor St., SF.
- Linda Ayres-Frederick
Pomp & Circumstance
It’s the same old case of the exploding schmeckle. And what does a good Jew do? He sues, of course. And the law firm representing him is trying to balance its caseload against problems of generational succession, office romance and competition, and a murder charge against Othello for killing Desdemona.
David Rouda’s comedy about legal drama, titled Pomp & Circumstance (mounted by Shtickle Productions), is a slimmed-down version of a recent, previous production. The Ebersohn father and son partners are at odds over Max’s impending retirement and Zach’s lack of billable hours. The energetic John Cornwell as Zach wants to take on two cases at once so he can show up Barb, the office bitch (played with icy authority by Dorothy Gallagher), and so he can impress junior partner Diane (Amanda Sykes) with his courtroom prowess.
He prosecutes the suit brought against a drug company by Randy (Robin Schild) who took five Viagras at once and now needs microsurgery to both repair his damaged schlong and regain his wife’s consortium. He also defends the case of an African-American method actor who believes he has killed a woman because his Iago told him so.
In the best Perry Mason style, several scenes lead up to the courtroom pyrotechnics finale. And along the way, the humor is liberally deposed. The main thrust of the comedy is the almost credible, preposterous court cases. Playwright Rouda is a practicing lawyer, and his direction keeps the plot moving along briskly, but some of the legalistic niceties mean more to him than to most audiences. His abridged, one-hour version of Pomp & Circumstance works very well, especially with a cast of fifteen.
Pomp & Circumstance continues on Sept. 16 (Sat. 2:30pm) and Sept. 17 (Sun. 8:30pm) at the EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy St., SF.
- Albert Goodwyn
This Lily Was (Fontana)
Mia Paschal, solo performer/ writer dares to begin This Lily Was (Fontana) speaking in complete darkness. At first one wonders if this is a technical mistake but soon realizes it is a conscious choice. Given the density of her poetic language, it’s easier to become accustomed to hearing it first without being distracted by her lithe, limber, swaying torso. Fortunately, there are enough variously-voiced characters and repetitions of the material to grasp it.
Her personal story includes seriously heavy subject matter, including incest, parental abuse, and suicide attempts. If that weren’t enough, she loses the one family member, her brother, with whom she has a supportive, soulful relationship. Her understanding of the dynamics of a “cutter” is more than skin deep. A survivor of incest, she managed to live by smiling on the outside when she wanted to cry. “She wasn’t trying to kill herself,” she protests, but was attempting “to shatter the numbness to see where it began.”
Previous to her father’s sexual advances, she “was a lily.” One of the voices that gives her advice on how to deal with her experience is that of a wise old southern woman, based on the voice of an aunt. Some of the most interesting passages — besides those about her brother — come as Mia describes her dramatic escape from a Hungarian heroin addict holding her at gunpoint, especially in her noting the irony of wanting to survive while previously she had been so self-destructive.
The strength of Lily builds as the personalized stories support her many philosophical realizations: “Nothing is a betrayal, if nothing is promised.” And though the story line is not always completely clear — dipping occasionally into the pov of the helpless, hapless victim — it’s rescued by Mia’s self awareness, shown in her talented use of language both to transcend pain and to immerse herself and her audience in poetic metaphor to describe her life. Currently, the number of humorous moments do not contrast enough with the disturbing subject matter. And perhaps trimming back some of the too-often-repeated material will increase its overall clarity (more than three repetitions is excessive).
Founder and Artistic Director of Chaotic Heart Productions and Heroes Theatre Company, Mia and her director Mark Wilson have succeeded in their attempt to show a multidimensional view of the human psyche in This Lily Was (Fontana).
This Lily Was (Fontana) continues on Sept. 14 (Thurs. 8:30pm), Sept. 15 (Fri. 10pm), and Sept. 16 (Sat. 7pm) at Original Joe’s Cabaret Room, 144 Taylor St. SF.
- Linda Ayres-Frederick
Tilting at Transformations
From the scent of a slave’s sweat to interspecies romance (with a reptile), Tilting at Transformations illuminates characters from ancient Egypt to modern psychos. In 54 minutes, Brookside Repertory Theatre presents five plays (written by Molly Rhodes, Mae Ziglin Meidav, Bill Bivins, Patricia Milton, and Edna Coulson Hall) interspersed with each other. By using shorter plays as interludes between slightly longer ones, artistic director Meidav has created an entertaining, lively program.
In a succession of quick shifts, Tilting mocks two suburban dilettantes and their superficial responses to a play, mocks the play itself with exaggerated sexual innuendo, leaves the slave resisting the advances of the pharoah’s wife to visit a superhero failing an eye exam, returns to the pharaoh being thrilled by his wife’s recounting of her escapades with the slave, to a narrative of an animal rescue gone horribly wrong, back to the pharaoh trying to seduce the slave, to end with a worried man confronting his wife’s imaginary friend. Directed by Chela Noto, the vivid simplicity of the set changes and the versatility of the six actors involved in multiple parts accentuate the wide variety of the settings and the eccentric plots.
To begin, Rachel Garza and Sabrina Stewart portray socialite subscribers during intermission. The quality of the drinks they are served seems more important than what’s on stage. Then we see part of the play. Elena Ruggiero as Potiphor’s Wife is determined to have the clownish Joseph, played with broad mugging by Matthew Engel, service her sexually under the guise of a massage.
Before scene 2 of Joseph and Potiphor’s Wife, Sabrina returns as a doctor to diagnose the myopia of a superhero named Viscosity (A. K. Conrad), whose extraordinary power is projectile vomiting. Then Potiphor (Gary Dailey) listens to his wife’s assertions that Joseph attacked her. Dailey’s voyeuristic enjoyment of the story is a treat to watch. Then Rachel and Gary as a suburban couple adopt a tortoise. The neglected husband bonds with his slow-moving guest. After Potiphor abuses the slave, the final scene explores the question of how a figment of the wife’s imagination managed to scrape all the cream out of the Oreos.
The density of each of these one-acts, with the fast pace of the scene changes provides an intense hour of amusing, innovative theatre.
Tilting at Transformations continues on Sept. 15 (Fri. 7pm) and Sept. 16 (Sat. 4pm) at the EXIT on Taylor, 277 Taylor St., SF.
- Albert Goodwyn
Visiting Bertha
Local gay playwright Joe Besecker’s Visiting Bertha riffs on several minor characters in Tennessee Williams’ early drama titled The Fugitive Kind. As a member of the “world’s oldest profession,” Bertha (Maggie Grant) doesn’t have a heart of gold, but she does offer good advice to three gentlemen callers in her 1937 St. Louis hovel. This world premiere (produced by J.B. Enterprises) offers rich use of language, strong characters, and intense situations.
Opening the show, Pete (Jake Limbert) engages in some post-coital conversation that references other times and places, which lessens dramatic impact, but sets up a great payoff later on. Supposedly to collect the rent, “moralist” Herman (Lee Corbett) bullies the buxom, blond bombshell, eventually bordering on rape. Ah, the vagaries of the horizontal service industry. And finally, disenfranchised Leo (Matt Socha) finds unexpected friendship and solace.
Grant as Bertha counterbalances her character’s sweet, giving qualities against her harder-hearted, nigh-smug business side. Her sing-song Southern lilt works beautifully, adding melody to the play’s lyricism. Limbert is saddled with most of the play’s exposition and gets only a brief moment of eleventh-hour passion. Corbett as the dastardly rent collector presents a villainous mix of pseudo-morality with lechery. Basing his performance in a studied reality, you love to hate him. And Socha sensitively communicates a lost soul, possibly too tender to survive in a moving performance with a broad, yet subtle, emotional range.
Playwright Besecker knows how to quickly set up characters and situations in intensely dramatic moments. Moral ambiguity thrives as characters reveal both their good and bad natures. His sumptuous use of language interweaves into complex tapestries of words and images. Piggy-backing on a lesser work by a great playwright provides a fascinating challenge, and Besecker succeeds admirably.
Clearly respecting the script, director Janet O’Hair keeps the blocking well motivated and simple. The set is appropriately sparse with minimal lighting and sound, all vividly creating the feeling of a tiny safe haven within a desperately harsh world.
Visiting Bertha is recommended for those who love dramatic theatre and especially for fans of the late, great Tennessee Williams.
Visiting Bertha continues on Sept. 16 (Sat. 8:30pm) and Sept. 17 (Sun. 7pm) ONLY at the EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy St., SF.
- Tom W. Kelly
Waiting for Bordeaux
Waiting for Bordeaux (mounted by Rib Turtle Productions) successfully draws from the Absurdist tradition to find the inner connoisseur. While a couple in a restaurant try to cope with a late arrival and a recalcitrant waiter, they discuss the philosophical implications of vintage. The play is a dialogue at a café table, interrupted by a deliberately slow, incompetent service person.
Hannah (L Bose) and Jake (Bryan McKeon) are seated at the table as the lights come up. They get plastic cutlery and paper plates. They nervously continue to look off stage left, but the waiter always enters from the right. Bose plays her part with an openly expressive face and a conciliatory manner. McKeon is overwhelmed by impatience. When Colin Johnson as the Waiter finally comes on, he is a perfect picture of dismissiveness, looking at them like they were a botanical oddity, maybe weeds he will pull someday.
Jake and Hannah’s desultory conversation draws the audience into their interpersonal relations, but slowly. Gordon, the person they were waiting for, finally shows up, and immediately sparks a conflict about Jake’s philistinism. “I meant it in the kindest sense of the word,” Gordon explains. George Epsilanty’s acting as Gordon is filled with frenetic mannerisms and a well-focused demeanor, fit for his character. But McKeon recites and poses like a big butch guy trying to act nelly. Hannah meanwhile collapses on the table and the slightly sinister Waiter delivers the wrong wine.
As Gordon and Jake wait for Hannah to return from the toilet, and the waiter brings the wrong wine again, they argue about art. Gordon eventually leaves, Hannah returns, and the Waiter ignores them. Like Waiting for Godot, the most salient point of the play is the waiting.
Many people hate Godot, and for good reason, considering its typically inferior productions. It is an intellectually-dense play with sympathetic characters. Waiting for Bordeaux has that too, but it needs more time to develop its potential. It is worth seeing for the supercilious, contemptuous waiter.
Waiting for Bordeaux continues on Sept. 16 (Sat. 8:30pm) and Sept. 17 (Sun. 1pm) at EXIT on Taylor, 277 Taylor St., SF.
- Albert Goodwyn
Where the Sun Don’t Shine
Delightfully revealing the perverted underbelly of the “perfect” 1950s, Where the Sun Don’t Shine revels in double entendres, quirky situations, kooky characters, and scream-out-loud humor. This new “speculative” (what would happen if) play by Peter Budinger and DC Scarpelli (produced by doctor emile’s Theatre Tremendo) solidly entertains with tongue planted firmly in cheek.
Three short “episodes” comprise this send-up of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. In “Chapter One: A Queer and Present Danger,” a virulently homophobic FBI agent wakes up one morning to discover that sexual expression has taken a queer turn. In “Chapter Two: Don’t Touch That Dial,” a husband and wife learn that their new radio tunes into their neighbor’s dirty doings. And in “Chapter Three: Little Green Men,” powerful aliens must decide whether the Earth will continue to exist.
The ensemble is excellent! From Michael Berlin’s suave impression of Rod Serling to Floriana Alessandria’s three manic characterizations, the cast captures just the right gradations of reality and unreality. Alessandria especially shines as a doom-spouting psychotic child and a nymphomaniacal Cold-War cutie. Wesley Cayabyab packs his FBI agent with a surfeit of homophobic rhetoric. Paul Dana is brilliant as the snoopy radio-obsessed husband. And handsome Budinger (also writer/director) broadly portrays a gay TV cowboy and Kennedy-esque Prez. Completing the kooky cast are Liz Anderson, DC Scarpelli, and Kevin Kraynak.
Playwrights Budinger and Scarpelli savvily lampoon the superficial perfection of the 1950s with razor-sharp wit. They aim at sexual hypocrisy, privacy, paranoia, mankind’s violent tendencies, xenophobia, and oh-so-much more! The virulently homophobic rhetoric in the first segment is uncomfortable for a gay audience, though it’s a clear set-up for an eventual reversal (yet, it’s too close to home in its virulent, Fred-Phelps-flavored hatred). The radio segment needs either to escalate in its growing prurience or perhaps be shorter. But these quibbles aside, the writing is terrific, and the playwrights will hopefully give us many more screwball scripts.
Directed by Scarpelli and Budinger, the swift pacing keeps the audience off their disbelieving feet long enough to jump into a story and quickly jump out. They cleverly use black and white costumes and sets to capture the feel of those analog days of b/w television in the black-and-white morality of the ‘50s.
Overall, Where the Sun Don’t Shine is most highly recommended!
Where the Sun Don’t Shine continues on Sept. 16 (Sat. 4pm) ONLY at the EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy St., SF.
- Tom W. Kelly
