Tag Archives: Cincinnati Fringe Festival

June 7, 2017 · 5:15 pm

CFF17: My Fringe Schedule: Day 8

Heading into the home stretch, I’m seeing two new participant performance tonight.

CFF_Where There Were WoodsFrom Seattle, Samara Lerman offers WHERE THERE WERE WOODS:

What happens when your family lineage stops with you? What happens to the stories and memories of generations past? When the ghost of her grandmother starts visiting her at night, Samara is compelled to travel through interwoven family stories of survival. WHERE THERE WERE WOODS is a train-hopping, border-crossing story of danger, adventure, magic, loss, and the power of storytelling.

CFF_Wilderness SurvivalThen it’s Jimmy Grzelak from Philadelphia with WILDERNESS SURVIVAL:

Jimmy Grzelak is an Eagle Scout, spiritual voyager, and “winningly offbeat imagination” (Washington Post). Sometime in the early 2000s, somewhere in rural America, young Jimmy was initiated into the ways of a world ruled by adolescent boys. In 2017, older Jimmy woke up and realized that knowledge is now nationally relevant. He comes to Cincinnati to do his duty as a scout – to serve as your guide into the wild.

 

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June 6, 2017 · 12:43 pm

CFF17: My Fringe Schedule: Day 7

Tonight is Two-fer Tuesday as I cross over into the two-show path.

CFF_Balls of YarnsFirst stop is BALLS OF YARNS, this year’s entry from the Troubadour of the Trailer Park, Paul Strickland:

Four-time Best of Fest Winner Paul Strickland’s new hilarious one-man musical adventure! David Lynch meets The Wizard of Oz. Songs! Yarns! Balls! In a strange town where creaky doors sing with you, libraries are separate from truth-braries, and extraordinary stories are shared through yarn and tin can, an ominous lurking evil has threatened to make things normal. NOT ON PAUL STRICKLAND’S WATCH. Jokes! More Yarns! Again, Balls!

CFF_Invisible GirlShow number two is INVISIBLE GIRL from ImagiNation Incorporated, a new local participant.

Sarah is the Invisible Girl; a fugitive who has taken residence in the bottom of the city sewer to avoid being bought and sold for currency in an alternate America. Her refuge, however, is short-lived as she is haunted by a series of specters that force her to confront her societal wounds. Loosely based on the Ralph Ellison novel, “Invisible Man,” Sarah’s invisibility is psychological rather than literal; a transformation through a series of vignettes.

After tonight, 19 shows down, 11 to go! Just keep fringe-ing.

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June 5, 2017 · 4:26 pm

CFF17: IS THAT ALL THERE IS? Review

IS THAT ALL THERE IS? presented by Cincinnati LAB Theatre as part of the 2017 Cincinnati Fringe Festival. You can read the show description here. 

CFF_Is That All There Is“I have not plans to stop singing. What are you going to do when you love music? It’s a terrible disease. You can’t stop.” -Peggy Lee

Jaren Doren handles the role of Ronald/Rita well, but I think he could safely go bigger in personality without becoming a caricature. I would also encourage more stage drinking to better establish his issues with alcohol.

As Ronald’s sister Tess, Danielle Muething strikes a nice emotional balance between sibling and in a way, rival. Her relationship with childhood friend Chad also felt genuine and she handles his original song very well.

Sean Michael Flowers is fun as Chad, but he seemed more comfortable behind the piano. I thought his original song was a good fit for the show.

I did enjoy how the visit from his sister happened mid-transformation from Ronald to “Rita.” The half completed make-up added a surreal quality and really emphasized his/her facial expressions.

While I understand that the playwright was being purposefully vague, there were several instances where few more tidbits of information could have made the dialogue seem less repetitive. Overall though, a strong first effort from Sara Mackie.

Three performances remain through June 10.

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June 5, 2017 · 4:18 pm

CFF17: GOD OF OBSIDIAN Review

GOD OF OBSIDIAN presented by Gideon Productions as part of the 2017 Cincinnati Fringe Festival. You can read the show description here. 

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief. –Wikipedia

CFF_God of Obsidian

Mac Rogers as Nathan & Rebecca Comtois as Alice.

Gideon Productions ups the creep factor with a strong, engaging script from playwright Mac Rogers. I enjoyed the Brothers Grimm undertones to the story.

As Alice, Rebecca Comtois is fascinating to watch as her new and happy relationship descends into one of mental abuse and manipulation. Emotionally, her performance rings true and believable as she struggles to remember who she is and reassert her independence.

Mac Rogers is equally strong as congenial and earnest Nathan. Even though the character doesn’t change much superficially, the machinations under the surface are there and fascinating to watch. He pretty much embodies that “he was quiet and kept to himself, but always seemed so nice” serial killer quality.

Director Jordana Williams keeps the pacing strong and uses the play space effectively. The upstage use of the bridge worked very well. There was one point near the middle of the performance where I felt it was starting to lose momentum but the show quickly rebounded.

At the performance I attended, part of the “fun” of the performance was the audience’s physical and verbal reactions as the story unfolded. Very interesting, well-written and strongly performed, but I felt like I needed a shower after it was over. The final performance is tonight, June 5th.

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June 5, 2017 · 9:55 am

CFF17: My Fringe Schedule: Day 6

I’m kicking off the second week of Fringe with three more production on Monday.

CFF_Pet FishFirst up is winner of the 2017 longest title award, pet fish are for killing by accident somehow it’s really quite inevitable from local new participant, Dehydrated Mermaid Productions:

Tabitha is questioning her relationship of nine years with Marc – with a “C.” Antioch is smugly secure in her relationship with grad school. And whiskey. Marla has a pet fish. Also, everything is terrible. What is love? Baby don’t hurt me.

Written by Sara Tripp Swartout and directed by Shelby Becker, the cast includes: Sarah Durham, Candice Handy & Erin Ward.

CFF_mOtherNext, Stacey Vespaziani of Odds and Ends Productions returns to the Cincinnati Fringe Festival for the 5th time this year with her new solo show, mOTHER:

What happens when you find yourself questioning a perceived norm and ultimately choose to step outside of it? This is the query that the solo show mOTHER examines through one woman’s first person journey of exploring and ultimately rejecting motherhood.

Her previous fringe shows include: BETTER/WORSE (2008), I TAKE IT BACK! (2007), RUNNING MY ASS OFF AND GETTING NOWHERE (2006) and BRITNEY SPEARS AND ALL THE OTHER SHIT WE DEAL WITH! (2005).

CFF_Nine Short Plays logoI end the night with NINE SHORT PLAYS FOR THE THEATRE, written and directed by Joe Stollenwerk:

A fast-paced and fun collection of short pieces that explore various facets of theatre, performance, and storytelling, ranging in topics from race and casting to falling in love with theatre, and from Henrik Ibsen to Shirley Bassey. It is an eclectic collage in a variety of styles from realism to meta-theatre, autobiography to absurdism, parody to poignancy, including group pieces and monologues.

The cast includes Burgess Byrd, Joe Hornbaker, Barbara Karol, Mindy Seibert & Tara Williams.

Stollenwerk’s previous fringe entry was CATALINA in 2013. Long time local theater patrons may remember Joe as the Artistic Director of the late, great Ovation Theatre Company for nearly a decade. Most recently, Stollenwerk wrote the acclaimed adaptation of THE HANDMAID’S TALE presented by Know Theatre of Cincinnati in early 2015.

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