- Berserker
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69 Moments of Life
Actor, You're Killing Me
Air Tight Security
Almost True Adventures ...
Amazing Improvised Musical
Animal Farm
Ballerina on a Horse
Beautiful Man
Berserker
Caffe di Amore or ...
Check the Box
Clearing Hedges
Corned Beef
Countless
Crime & Variations
Death Blow II: ...
Demon Pope
Diagnosis: Jew Pain ...
Disco Prophecies
Ethan's Gift
Far From Springer
Fixed Boundry
Forty Love
Got Water
I Can't Believe They're Not Oriental!
Idiot Machine: ...
In Cahoots
John Muir: Watch, Pray, Fight
Late Night Talk Show
Ludlow and Canal
Magic at the Fringe
Man 1, Bank 0
Marx in Soho
Mixed Signal
Mother: A Modern Buddhist ...
Naked Inqisition
nEO - surrealists present: ...
Neon's Crazy Blue
Nharcolepsy
Original Action Pack
Park - N - Ride
Passages
Sandwich
Scabaret!
Searching for God in Kerala
Seventh Game of the World Series
Shadow Kissers
Strobe Vision
This World is Not My Home
Total Improvisation - ...
Train Stories
Tripping on the Equator ...
Twinspeak
Play: Berserker
Reviewer: Eric KLein
Reviewer Email: futonyessir@yahoo.com
Rating: 5 Stars
I liked this plenty. Some I spoke with were confused by the play, but I
didn't feel that way. Non-sequetors are interesting, and often there was
plenty of logical continuity between "characters" and their speaches.
He made a big mess, which is always fun, and he was a real professional with the performance. I saw the show at the end of the night with a small audience and he still delivered with power and grace. It was special.
Play: Berserker
Reviewer: Jeff Thompson
Reviewer Email:
Rating: 4 Stars
Paul Outlaw is an extremely talented performer and Berserker has many chilling,stunning
moments but for me, for now, the piece does not come together as a whole.
That being said I'm very glad I saw it and I will go out of my way to see
his next work.
Play: Berserker
Reviewer: MaRk
Reviewer Email: skippymac@earthlink.net
Rating: 4 Stars
Great performance art. Truly what the Finge Festival should be about...
come on, how many performers have the guts (and/or creativity) to crawl
naked out of a garbage bag as a revitalized dead slasher victim? Lots of
suprising props. Lots of suprising ideas. Lots of mess. Lost of fun. Lots
of thinking. A little too much of the Gay/Afro-American as victim theme.
But over-all, one of the best Fringe performances I've seen.
Play: Berzerker
Reviewer: Carl Thelin
Reviewer Email: parchedcamel@yahoo.com
Rating: 4 Stars
Both intellectually and emotionally challenging, this show is well worth
seeing. Outlaw is a brilliant performer too. The only two flaws I can find
is that some of the physicality is overly literal and belabored to match
the text, interfering with, rather than ellucidating it, and the three threads
of storytelling, which riff off of each other so beautifully most of the
the time are ultimately not adequately tied together. All the same, go see
this show. It might make you look at the world a little differently, and
that is what theatre is all about.
Play: Bezerker
Reviewer: Jack
Reviewer Email:
Rating: 5 Stars
An amazing and unsettling performance. In my opinion this is the embodiment
of a solo Fringe performance. Wildly creative and unusual, it is definitely
not for the faint of heart. The topics is a nutshell are homosexual sex,
race war, and murder. If that doesn't put you off definitely go see it!
It is in a similar vein as last year's Winterkill, but far more thought
provoking than disturbing.
Play: Berserker
Reviewer: Vince Vitale
Reviewer Email: WorldGazer@aol.com
Rating: 4 Stars
Paul Outlaw weaves the words of Nat Turner, Jeffrey Dahmer, Essex Hemphill
and Samuel Delany to create a disarming monologue about mass murder, serial
killing, homoerotic coming of age and racial identity. The flaw is it is
often unclear who is speaking, and it’s never certain why these elements
belong in the same pot together, apart from the racial thread. If the object
is to make the audience uneasy in this mix, then Outlaw clearly succeeds.
Central to “Berserker” is Outlaw’s superb performance in
portrayal. Different lighting for each personality to mark one from the
other would have made the performance stronger.
Play: Berserker
Reviewer: Nash
Reviewer Email: bnash@rmw.com
Rating: 3 Stars
Difficult to assess - - character incorporates three personalities that
change throughout the piece. Representation of criminal violence is appropriately
repulsive. Conclusion invokes love for the patriotic ideal of USA - - seems
non sequiter. Excellent use of visual sense.
Play: berserker
Reviewer: steven
Reviewer Email:
Rating: 3 Stars
Some good, some bad. Had Mr. Outlaw been able to find a way to pull all
the disparate threads of this piece together, it could have been enormously
powerful. Instead, they remained stubbornly separate, neither working individually,
setting up resonances between them, nor coming together in anything resembling
a cohesive whole. (I was especially irked, in this context, by the tedious
rehash of '70s/'80s performance art techniques involving LOTS of messy foodstuffs
-- hackneyed, added nothing, and made a real mess of the theatre which I'm
sure was difficult to clean thoroughly for the next performers. And I'm
certain the back wall is going to have to be re-painted once the Festival
is over.) Outlaw is a solid, if at this point still somewhat awkward, performer,
unable to make this one coalesce.
Play: Berserker
Reviewer: Alan Ostri
Reviewer Email: aostrike@yahoo.com
Rating: 3 Stars
Paul Outlaw is an intense performer. The subject matter was diverse but
compelling. But I thought all the technical bells and whistles sometimes
got in the way. All in all, it wasn't my favorite show, but definitely worth
seeing.
Play: Berserker
Reviewer: MaRk
Reviewer Email: skippymac@earthlink.net
Rating: 4 Stars
Great performance art. Truly what the Finge Festival should be about...
come on, how many performers have the guts (and/or creativity) to crawl
naked out of a garbage bag as a revitalized dead slasher victim? Lots of
suprising props. Lots of suprising ideas. Lots of mess. Lost of fun. Lots
of thinking. A little too much of the Gay/Afro-American as victim theme.
But over-all, one of the best Fringe performances I've seen.
Play: Berserker
Reviewer: j kanuch
Reviewer Email: j_kanuch@yahoo.com
Rating: 1 Star
Berserkers, we are told, were Viking warriers who went insane w/ destruction
in battle. This one-man play is about how oppression or stifling of some
sort leads to consuming rage.
Paul Outlaw uses words and stories of Nat Turner, Jeffrey Dahmer, Essex Hemphill & Samuel Delany in "Berserker." That's a lot of material to work with on the subjects of race, racism, and racial violence, and homophobia, and Outlaw doesn't tie things together well for a coherent 1-hour piece. It's not always clear who is speaking, especially early on: I agree with the earlier reviewer that lighting changes to match each character would have been helpful. Props like shredded wet plastic, colored popcorn and tomatoes smashed with mallets don't add much but clutter. This seems like one of those works-in-progress that masquerades as a Fringe play.
Play: Berserker
Reviewer: Mia
Reviewer Email:
Rating: 5 Stars
Visceral, intelligent, poetic, this play is extremely well-crafted (especially
with regards to the direction and sound design) and beautifully performed.
One of the truest plays I have ever seen. A must-see.
Play: berserker
Reviewer: annika
Reviewer Email:
Rating: 1 Star
This play seemed to me to be overwhelmingly self-indulgent and racist. We
learn very little about Nat Turner and Jeffrey Dahmer; although Nat Turner
fits the definition of a berserker, it's not clear from the text that Dahmer's
killings fit that term. Half the play features performer Paul Outlaw's description
of himself and his sister as berserkers: he is berserk because he's "too
white", and gets bent out of shape because he's light enough to get
sunburnt; his sister is berserk because she hates white people, and her
nieces and nephews are part PuertoRican, Pacific Islander, and Irish, and
so "their blackness is getting bleached out." I can't imagine
a white performer getting away with claiming a similar distress at his progeny
getting darker. We also learn that Mr. Outlaw finds Jeffrey Dahmer sexually
attractive, and found the gay sex scene in Berlin very exciting until he
decided Germans are too white, and what is more, they have suburbs like
middle-America.