Review of the San Francisco Fringe Festival 2005
by Robert Avila in the SF Bay Guardian September 14, 2005
CLICK HERE FOR RECENT REVIEWS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER CLICK ON PLAY FOR AUDIENCE REVIEWS FOR THAT PLAY
- 21/One: Twenty-One Shows in One Hour
3 Plays About Your Mom
Antarctica
ARE YA WORKING?
Being Something: Living "Young" and Growing "Old" in Oakland
Bound and Gagged
Brilliant Disguise
Brother #1
Cervix With A Smile
Chinese Clown Cabaret
CornTato
Divided We Fall
Do The Clam
El Camino Loco- Fear of a Brown Planet
Fresh Meat
Go Kibbitz
go!
Got Lucky
Green Bamboo Hermitage
Here to There
LOUNGE-ZILLA!
Love Scenes- Magnificence of the Disaster
MEDIAVOID
Name You Can Trust, A
nEO-sURREALISTS
Paper Dolls
Playing in the Dark- Politics on the Edge
Revolving Madness
SHIFTINGS
Show me where it hurts- Slow Moves, Rich Tales
Sperm Warfare
Thersites
Waiting for the Relevance
WALKING BACK TO BROOKLYN
Werewolf, The
When You Stand Alone
Yellow Tunic, The
You May Now Kiss.... My Sass
ON OPENING NIGHT of the San Francisco Fringe Festival last week, the back room of Original Joe's restaurant, on Taylor Street, was abuzz with anticipation and cocktails ahead of the eight o'clock show, Elisa DeCarlo's Cervix with a Smile. Those who had been there for the first show were still high on Chinese Clown Cabaret, which rated "best clown show" at last year's festival and served up another ferociously silly hour of sandbox punk-rock ukulele and deadpan, angst-laced, in-your-face cuteness from the fearlessly talented Jane Chen and her real-life mom, Tair. A show capable of wonderfully unnerving ridiculousness, often rooted in a sly send-up of the kind of familial and cultural dynamics inherent in its mother-daughter team, Chinese Clown Cabaret is also far more sophisticated than it would have you believe.
As for DeCarlo's Cervix, it's another favorite of Fringe audiences past, having won the best-of-Fringe vote in 1997 (her earlier I Love Drugs took those honors at Fringe '95, and her Toasted did the same in 2001). DeCarlo has the demeanor of a homemaker whose gentle earthiness seems a sanguine admission to having wrecked more homes than she's made. But beneath an unassuming surface lies a sharp satirist and skilled actor, with an added air of New York's neighborly hedonism about her. These qualities are put to overall fine effect in a series of lightly raunchy skits and ribald songs all adeptly spoofing the ups and downs of sexuality – such as a Martha Stewart-style walk through the marriage-spicing possibilities of dominance and submission; or an XXXmas ditty in which Santa becomes a lonely woman's sole stocking-stuffer. DeCarlo is a fine mimic, and some of her best material draws on what are apparently real-life encounters with a variety of colorful personalities, whose refashioned stories can be at times as poignant (without being sentimental) as they are humorous or absurd.
Cervix's return comes with some new material unceremoniously tossed in (DeCarlo's talent is as formidable as her transitions, and onstage costume changes are awkwardly casual), and the whole package somehow blends perfectly with the burbling ambience of the Depression-era Italian restaurant serving as a Fringe venue this year (so resolutely unchanged in nearly 70 years that you expect to find Willy Loman eating alone in a booth next to another crammed with rowdy goodfellas).
Such serendipity is the nature of the Fringe. The city's 14th annual installment, produced by the Exit Theatre, claims to be the largest in the country, presenting a total of 42 productions (most from the Bay Area, 10 or so from the wider United States, and a handful from Canada and beyond) in eight venues in and around the Exit Theatreplex. Fringe acts, each an hour or less in length and selected by lottery, typically remain hard to typify, especially in terms of quality, which can be high at one show and seemingly superfluous at the next. Fringe-goers revel in risk-taking, for the most part, knowing there's something to be said for even the incomprehensibly bad or flagrantly bizarre – and they often take the time to say it in posted reviews on the festival's Web site.
Among the shows glimpsed by opening weekend, there were at least two other highlights. San Francisco's Annie Larson and Karen Ripley play two time-hopping hobos in the political satire Show Me Where It Hurts, a razor-sharp ride, complete with musical accompaniment, through economic exploitation and depression as compelling and hilarious as it is seemingly laid-back – something like a blend of Laugh-In, Hee Haw, and Morecambe and Wise. Having performed together for years, Larson and Ripley possess an onstage chemistry that is irresistible and unflappable.
This year the Fringe once again serves as springboard for at least one new Bay Area theater company, Boxcar Theatre, whose debut production is a collaborative pastiche of local lore. Unfolding, in one fast-paced hour, 21 short scenes drawn from or inspired by San Francisco history and culture, as well as the personal experiences of the actors, 21/One presents a continually evolving showcase of performance styles against a backdrop of old film footage, photographs, and graphics, highlighting the beat generation, the Summer of Love, the latest, late-'90s gold rush, and various other strange and sundry episodes. As you might expect, not all scenes are created equal, and the actors' strengths are not evenly distributed across the full range of dramatic styles attempted. But if inevitably the best material flits by too soon, along the way the able and charismatic four-person company (Sarah Korda, Peter Matthews, Sarah Savage, and Nick A. Olivera) strikes a number of high notes while demonstrating a wide-ranging potential.