~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SF Fringe Festival 2004

review Robert Avila, SF Bay Guardian September 15, 2004

 

 

Lunatic Fringe
'War' breaks out at an antic San Francisco Fringe Festival.
By Robert Avila

SAMPLING THE 46 -play buffet at the 13th annual San Francisco Fringe Festival amounts to a feast that's neither fish nor fowl but has plenty of bananas, eggs, chocolate, and greasepaint to go around. With the randomness that's part of all things fringe, here are a few highlights recently encountered.

As the lights go down and some faint recorded harpsichord music comes up (briefly causing many in the audience to fumble for their cell phones), we're in Paris at the Palais Royale in 1671. Playwright-actor Tim Mooney has become playwright-actor Jean Baptiste de Poquelin, a.k.a. Molière (chances are you've heard of at least one of them), in Molière Than Thou, a showcase of the comedic work of the great 17th-century French dramatist, done in Mooney's own artful translations. Appearing alone onstage (with the exigency of having to raise bail for his rowdy troupe), Molière entertains his audience with some of his favorite parts and scenes, including the outrageous imposter-hypocrite Tartuffe pitching forbidden woo; Don Juan's servant Sganarelle in a fit of hilariously tortured moralizing (directed indirectly at his libertine master); and a farcically prolix diagnosis of a mute by the eponymous charlatan in A Doctor in Spite of Himself. Mooney, a smooth and genial performer with a touch of Dana Carvey in his comedic style, may leave some purists nonplussed, but between his cleverly wrought introduction and what I hear of the guy who raps The Canterbury Tales, the humanities are in safe hands this year.

Less safe, but appealing in their recklessness, are Fringe stalwarts the Neo-Surrealists and their Half-Baked but Well Done program. You should probably know, however, that high art here means artists on crack – or, more precisely, actors dropping microphones into the back of their trousers. Microwaved meat, mashed see-food, packing-box wrestling, and gleeful streaking about the stage are the kind of kidlike high jinks that infest this semi-impromptu show for adults of all ages.

More adults behaving badly? See Tonight: The Harsh, Gritty, Violent World (of Bubbles), an evening of TV-inspired investigative infotainment from sketch comedy group Old Man McGinty (featuring Meredith Croslay, Ryan Gowland, Christopher Kuckenbaker, Sean Owens, Heather Peroni, and Michelle Talgarow). Including everything from the insensitive Indian summer forecast of a boorish meteorologist to a surrealist cooking show called Dalí Doesn't Cook, deft performances and some fine comedy writing ensure genuine laughs.

For revenge exacted on adults who have behaved badly, see Hooray for Speech Therapy. This autobiographical solo show by Kurt Fitzpatrick details his childhood attempts to get help for a speech impediment from various ineffectual professional louts, as well as the opportunity he had later in life to get back at one of his more sadistic therapists. A surprisingly nice guy for someone so maladjusted, the thirtysomething Fitzpatrick muses along the way on the origins and nature of his stutter and its place in the development of his personality and career. The show's narrative comes over a bit choppily, and the humor can verge at times on the corny or the abrasive, but the outlines of Fitzpatrick's story and his natural charm give this still-rough show an inherent interest and potential.

Meanwhile, in Flower Murderer, writer-performer Sabrina Stevenson and director Karen Aschenbach gather a set of delicate character sketches, plucking at the petals of intimacy to reveal the slim but resilient stem of self. With insight and good humor, as well as a captivating intensity, Stevenson's alternately comic and dramatic characters negotiate their identities and desires on the parched ground of human relationships. Covering the mundane to the eccentric – a transvestite recalling his flirtation with the Baha'i faith while his wife quietly expounds the virtues of a man who wears pantyhose to bed, for instance; or a young woman's scathing reply to her maid's intrusive notes, which suggests Jean Genet by way of the San Fernando Valley – these vignettes are not equally worthy or always subtle, but they do contain an intriguingly mordant thread, fatalistic and defiant, that nicely complements Stevenson's mischievous, vaguely disquieting performance.

But when it comes to love, sex, relationships, and all other election-year themes, let the final word on the ineffable go to Fringe Festival champs Banana, Bag, and Bodice (Gulag Ha Ha, Sandwich), who this year unleash Jason Craig's The Young War. Beautifully staged and adroitly performed, this is a standout piece of theater, certain, at the very least, to end up a Fringe favorite.

Composed as a bizarre panel discussion on the nature of relations between the sexes, The Young War quickly expands into an impressionistic, highly choreographed piece of avant-garde theater. In a ballet of order superimposed on quicksand, a deadpan panel of four (Craig, Jessica Jelliffe, Rod Hipskind, and Heather Peroni) – and a stage technician (Peter Blomquist), who gradually disrupts the already unraveling proceedings – use fruit fruitlessly, spell out words meaninglessly, avail themselves of the pose and the podium, stifle their own thoughts, break into song, assert authority with the service bell, and deliver contradictory, complementary, and overlapping accounts of themselves. Craig's absurd and poetic wordplay, for all the humor and evocative force of its juxtapositions, becomes no more or less than the other objects we see meticulously arranged on the stage. A microphone, a jar of pencils, a bunch of bananas, a sack of yellowish liquid – all are like the words, or for that matter the subjects themselves, the authorities they play, and the sexes they represent: objects to be presented, mused on, delivered, debated, turned over in silence, or better still, with a dull, monotone "oh."

Home / Now Playing & Coming Soon / Back to Media List / To email us