Fringe Festival Reviews: Part III
Image credit: Rogues Gallery Arts
Entwined is a seemingly complete work in progress
By Morgan Halaska
You might recognize Amy Salloway’s Entwined—a so-called work-in-progress—from the 2010 Fringe. In the program, Salloway admits this story has been with her for 10 years, and she’s still perfecting it. But it’s an ideal act for the Fringe—isn’t this type of workshopping (part of) what it’s all about anyway? Salloway encouraged the audience for feedback in their preferred medium for future revisions.
The staging was simple: Salloway and H.R. Britton as Bean read from their respective scripts with no physical interaction, just words. It wasn’t really a play, but it wasn’t just a reading either. The narrative was everything you’d hope for in a good short story: originality, complete with tragically flawed characters and a little humor in spite of it all (not the knee-slapping kind, but the I-shouldn’t-be-laughing-at-this kind). In parts that were in danger of dragging, Britton pulled his guitar from behind his back and sang a plot-relevant song. I couldn’t help but think that this is the kind of weird, unhealthy relationship shit that is the genesis for many good love songs—and works of art for that matter.
HUGE Improv Theater
Wednesday, 8/10 10 p.m.
Thursday, 8/11 7 p.m.
Saturday, 8/13 5:30 p.m.
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Holy Buckets! (and Tap Shoes)
By Quinton Skinner
Having witnessed Andy and Rick Ausland’s captivating hello-world Buckets and Tap Shoes turn at the 2004 Minnesota Fringe, it was with a good deal of curiosity that one approaches the 2011 version. Sure, our hometown boys have taken their hybrid act to the wider world—all the better, since their ebullient, hyper-precise show really should be seen by as many folks as possible—but how precisely have the intervening years influenced what they do?
For the better, overall. They still bang out complex polyrhythms on plastic buckets, tap dance like hell and throw some electric funk into the stew. They’ve expanded their instrumental palate (organ, some brass) and shed some of the unevenness of their earlier incarnation. The fact remains, these guys put on a massively appealing, frequently thrilling and improbably silly show. If you don’t like it, you probably don’t like yourself.
U of M Rarig Center Proscenium
Tuesday, 8/9 10 p.m.
Friday, 8/12 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, 8/13 10 p.m.
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The 612’s short tongue-in-cheek skits poke fun at the quirky identities of the Twin Cities
By Will Wlizlo
You know the stereotypes of Twin Cities folk. Passive aggressive. Minnesota nice. Liberal to a fault. St. Paul is the bookish older brother with a slow, comfortable future to look forward to; Minneapolis is the popular younger sister just looking for a good time. The inseparable, inescapable identities of the Twin Cities are the topic of The 612, a whimsical—and sometimes hokey—collection of short skits playing at Cult Status.
“Strike”—by far the best of the program’s four performances—draws on Minnesota’s violent history of organized labor activism to comment on our tradition of civic engagement, intellectualism, heady idealism and class tension. While “Strike” is serious, “Polar Expeditions” is light-hearted. In it, a suburban Minnesota native brings his girlfriend home from Los Angeles during a three-foot blizzard. Frustrated with each other, they argue about how to get their rental car unstuck from the snow. The couple’s stubborn pride of their respective birthplaces explodes. “Do you ever want to have sex again?” the woman asks her boyfriend, implying that he’d better start calling hotdish “casserole.”
There’s a reason we scoff at the The Jersey Shore’s man-tanned machismo, the scripted melodramatics of The Real Housewives of Atlanta and the faux punksterisms of Miami Ink. There’s also a reason that everyone else rolls their eyes when A Prairie Home Companion comes on the radio. As a country, we’re all pretty incomprehensible—just for different reasons.
Cult Status
Tuesday, 8/9 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, 8/11 7:00 p.m.
Friday, 8/12 7:00 p.m.
Friday, 8/12 10:00 p.m.
Saturday, 8/13 2:30 p.m.
Saturday, 8/13 8:30 p.m.
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Minnesota Middle Finger makes you want to be a better Minnesotan
By Morgan Halaska
Passive aggression is not unique to Minnesota; it’s called being “Minnesota nice.” And, no, it has nothing to do with midwestern hospitality. Snowstorms, also, are not a unique cross that only Minnesota bears. And yet these are what our state is known for. Neighbors Adam (Tim Hellendrung), Florence (Leigha Horton) and Thomas Mason (John Middleton) find themselves trapped in each other’s company as an apocalyptic snowstorm has made it entirely impossible to escape. The dynamic between the three is defensive and a little obnoxious, but Middleton’s performance provides necessary relief. The story line isn’t Promethean, nor is the conversation that ensues between people on verge of imminent and potentially life-ending danger. But despite the show’s highly predictable humor and plot development, it’s undeniably relatable.
Theatre in the Round
Thursday, 8/11 10 p.m.
Friday, 8/12 4 p.m.
Saturday, 8/13 7 p.m.
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