FringeNYC Roundup #5

FringeNYC is over, at least for this year. Some productions have already announced transfers and extensions. Lost — the Musical is getting a two-week run at the Connelly Theater, while the Attic People’s Drip is extended for a week at The Cherry Lane Alternative. We may soon hear of more transfers of Fringe shows but, in the meantime, here’s a look at some of the productions that our TheaterMania team of reviewers caught during the final week of the New York International Fringe Festival.

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Poseidon! An Upsidedown Musical

If you’ve never seen the 1972 disaster flick The Poseidon Adventure, it will be difficult to make sense of — much less enjoy — Poseidon! An Upsidedown Musical. A lot of the dialogue is lifted straight out of the movie, with only a few tweaks to punch up the humor or satirize the situation. The production is also littered with visual puns that are dependent upon a thorough working knowledge of the film.

Sections of the musical, directed by David Zak, are extremely funny. The capsizing of the ship, for example, is done well and makes the most of the large, 25-person ensemble to give the scene that epic feel. However, the score by David Cerda and Scott Lamberty is mostly unremarkable — though I did get a kick out of the Stella Stevens tribute “Just Panties (What Else Do I Need?)” and the vaudeville-inspired “The Only Way Is Up!”

Only a few performers are able to bring the parody to life. Ed Jones as Nonnie Parry is hilarious, capturing all the right qualities of the film character and exaggerating them to hysterical proportions. Molly Faithe is commanding as Linda Rogo, endowing the part with sex appeal and vigor. Unfortunately, Steve Kimbrough is a big (if you’ll pardon the expression) disappointment as Belle Rosen — the part made famous by Shelley Winters, here the butt of numerous fat jokes.

A framing device featuring a group of Poseidon Adventure fanatics watching the film and revealing their obsessions is the production’s biggest misstep. It slows down the pace of the show and is awkwardly handled. Additionally, a number of jokes fall flat — even if you have seen the movie.

— D.B.

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Blurring Shine

Zakiyyah Alexander’s Blurring Shine is a smart, funny, and incisive social satire on the marketing of the black male image. Luther (Ed Blunt), a corporate executive, enlists his younger half-brother, Shine (Mtume Gant), in what appears to be a market research project.

Shine is a typical boy from the ‘hood, which makes him perfect for his older brother’s purposes. He’s questioned extensively on everything from his clothing choices to the way he catcalls to women. As the stories he relates get more and more personal, the exact nature of this research becomes more and more suspect.

The ensemble cast, directed by Dominique Dawson, is excellent, with particular praise given out to Gant’s Shine for capturing both the character’s bravado and vulnerability. Alexander’s script could do with a bit of trimming — particularly in regard to some of Shine’s final interview sessions, which grow repetitive. But the playwright successfully captures the rhythm and language of hip-hop culture while simultaneously turning it on its head.

— D.B.

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Say You Love Satan

What would you do if your date told you he was the spawn of Satan? If you’re Andrew, your immediate reaction is to ask, “Who’s your mom?” Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Say You Love Satan is by far the funniest comedy I’ve seen at the Fringe. It’s brought to life by a splendid ensemble cast under the spirited and playful direction of Claire Lundberg. Andrew (Joe LaRue) falls for handsome stranger Jack (John Patrick Higgins), who claims to be the devil’s son — or is he, perhaps, Satan himself?

Aguirre-Sacasa has littered his script with pop culture references from the X-Men to Scooby-Doo. His dialogue is witty and somehow turns even the most clichéd phrases into comic fodder. The characters he creates are vibrant and lovable — even if one of them is evil incarnate. LaRue is especially effective as Andrew, displaying an easy rapport with both the audience and his fellow actors. Courtney Dickerson as Andrew’s best friend Bernadette is also winningly comic, while Higgins presents a perfect blend of charm, sleaze, and mystery.

Wilson Chin’s simple yet versatile set helps make the scene transitions move quickly. The pacing is flawless throughout this light-hearted relationship comedy that gives new meaning to the phrase “boyfriend from hell.”

— D.B.

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Suspect…a killer musical

Suspect was one of the Fringe’s more highly anticipated musical entries this year; its score is by Barry Harman and Keith Herrmann, who wrote the Broadway show Romance/Romance. The show does have some lovely melodies to offer, but the story is a bit of a mystery — and not necessarily in the sense that the authors intended.

Suspect lacks a consistent tone. On one hand, it has the look of an imaginative yet serious Victorian-era musical about a team of Scotland Yard detectives trying to bring two criminals to justice
— one an alleged murderess whose case they are re-enacting before a grand jury, the other an alleged rapist within their own ranks. Yet the proceedings are punctured by frequent moments of high camp that range from comic cross-dressing to the decidedly unsubtle sounds of shrieking violins and minor chords accompanying the story’s dramatic revelations. Both approaches are entertaining in their own right but they don’t cohere.

Futhermore, director James Warwick can’t seem to navigate the abrupt shifts in Harman’s book. For instance, we find out in the first scene that two of the detectives are gay lovers in a clandestine relationship, but then that subject is dropped until halfway through the first act when, in the middle of enacting a role in the criminal case he is helping to present, one of the men breaks into a love song to the other. It’s an awkward transition — if it can be called a transition at all — from the “play-acting” world back to reality, and this is only one of many such instances in the show.

Suspect does have the distinction of being one of the only Fringe musicals to sidestep wink-wink, nudge-nudge self-consciousness and to abstain from gratuitous profanity and vulgarity — quite an achievement in this year of Urinetown-wannabes. Here’s hoping that the authors will find a way to fix the problematic book and direction, and that composer Herrmann will gain access to a real orchestra instead of the lackluster, keyboard-simulated one he created for this production.

— B.P.

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One Hit Wonder

Ben Medley’s play with music One Hit Wonder is about Jack Harmony, a young Texan who wins a radio contest that allows him to appear live in concert with the hot British techno-pop duo Sexxx Machine. Thinking that this is going to be his big break, Jack is disappointed to learn upon his arrival in Tokyo that he will only be doing a brief walk-on; then he’ll have to return home to his parents and to his (sort of) girlfriend, next-door-neighbor Nicci. But, miraculously, Jack makes a connection with the aloof male half of Sexxx Machine, André. Soon enough, he is rehearsing his very own number to be performed with the group — much to the annoyance of its other half, Monique.

Jealousy, betrayal, and sexual identity crises all fit into this wacky send-up of the flaky pop music industry. It’s hard not to like the characters, especially Jack (Matthew D. McCallum), Nicci (Marguerite Stimpson), and Jack’s parents (the versatile Craig Baldwin and Charlotte Booker). As Sexxx Machine’s Monique and André, Raquel Hecker and Medley himself are perhaps too young to look convincing, but Medley’s original songs — arranged by Mike Shaieb and Brent Lord — are appropriately trashy and generic.

Overall, One Hit Wonder is a mixed bag. The music is good only as parody, and though Medley injects some originality into an old premise, the show as a whole feels a little weak. It never quite achieves its promise as “the theatrical lovechild of Showgirls, Beautiful Thing, and Hedwig.”

— B.P.

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Final Countdown

Subtitled “A Balkan Blues,” Final Countdown is a bizarre Romanian theater piece, written by Saviana Stanescu and adapted by Stanescu and Michael Johnson-Chase, that resists description. Essentially, it’s a series of vignettes about a woman called Zozo (played by Kathryn Foster, who won a FringeNYC award for her work here) and various people in her life, from strangers on a train to her strange family. The episodes include a look at her unhappy married life and glimpses of her pathetic childhood as the daughter of a gravedigger and a professional mourner who clearly love each other more than their child.

Though Zozo’s life is a sad thing — she has been driven to madness and homelessness by her circumstances — it’s presented here as if it were a comic entertainment. The cast of four frequently break into songs like “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'” and a woman standing on the sidelines (Stephanie Wissinger) provides accordion accompaniment. The performers wear odd, clown-like costumes, and all but Zozo don white face paint.

Still, the songs (original music by John Stone with lyrics by Stanescu) are enjoyable, the actors are wonderful, and most of the show is very — if darkly — funny. What it all adds up to is uncertain, but Final Countdown is an intriguing, twisted look at life in the Balkans.

— B.P.