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OnStage
What to see at Fringe Fest
A star (B) denotes a show recommended by our critics.
B CARRIE POTTER AT THE NEW MOON PROM
At Studio Theatre through July 24
This play is not for everyone. If you’re sensitive about magic, lesbians or Christianity, you should stay away or lighten up. As the Landless Theatre Company explains, “It’s just a play.” Carrie is an outcast at Predestined Magic School (PMS), thanks to her poor magical skills and Methodist lineage. Her only friends are a pathetic house ghost and a butch werewolf. The popular Heathers torment her at school while her mother abuses her at home for Judeo-Christian tendencies. Offering escape is He Who Shall Not Be Named, otherwise known as Jesus Christ. There are references here to satisfy all manner of geeks: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Star Wars,” 1980s romantic comedies.
Friday at 10:30, Wednesday at 8, July 23 at 6:30 and July 24 at 11:30 a.m. 1501 14th St. NW.
CHART TOPPERS OF 1349!
At the Bedroom at Fort Fringe through Saturday
As storyteller Tim Ereneta performs, the small stage is adorned with only a grinning skull on the seat of a ladder-back chair. This skull, we are told, belongs to Signore Kasem. Yep, that would be Casey Kasem, the DJ whose warm, anecdotal mode presides over Ereneta’s hour-long show. Ereneta has Kasem’s patter down cold as he introduces the popular tales that once took Europe by storm; he even serves up corny dedications from listeners. And listeners are all he has, naturally. Because this is 14th-century Italy, Ereneta is working in an oral form, and he makes barbed remarks about the evolving but unstable new technology that will eventually change the storytelling biz: print. The old stories are interesting, and Ereneta’s methodical manner and quiet wit are a refreshing change of pace.
Friday at 10, Saturday at 9. 612 L St. NW.
CHLAMYDIA DELL’ARTE: A SEX-ED BURLESQUE
At the Baldacchino Gypsy Tent Bar at Fort Fringe through July 25
This is a motley collection of songs, dances, skits and monologues delivered by two women who, thank goodness, never got that “girls can’t be funny” memo. Gigi Naglak and Meghann Williams change costumes during short video interludes of two cranky old ladies (played by Naglak and Williams) and interviews with real women about getting and giving the sex talk and other insights on how women think about sex in America. The skits range from sexy to funny. Some of the didactic
sex-education moments seem a bit out of place. It could be a bit more polished, but what it accomplishes is impressive: Naglak and Williams are so exuberant and unaffectedly positive about sex throughout that, in their hands, none of the material seems dirty.
Sunday at 4:45, Thursday at 8, July 24 at 10:30 and July 25 at 1. 607 New York Ave. NW.
THE CLOAK ROOM
At the Bedroom at Fort Fringe through July 24
JaBen Early plays Mansel, a guy who collects the coats of his long-gone loved ones and has conversations with himself in the guise of each person he has lost. Mansel is all crisis and no character; Early’s voice fluctuates between a whisper and a mutter, and neither is easy to understand. The only other corporeal person in the play is Ruby (K. Clare Johnson), Mansel’s girlfriend, who appears periodically to offer weird ultimatums and sexual propositions. How a man who can’t even remember to put a shirt on managed to land a girlfriend is never explained. It’s possible Ruby is a hallucination. It’s possible this whole play was a hallucination.
— F — Rachel Weiner
DO NOT KILL ME, KILLER ROBOTS At the Point through Sunday
Imagine, if you will, an age wherein humanity has been set upon and destroyed by an army of murderous robots who play ’80s songs before they kill. That’s the premise of Ben Egerman’s one-man show in which the last man alive makes his final stand against the machines, using the one thing we have that killer robots never will: humor. Egerman’s show attempts to entertain the robots with stories of space camp, play-by-plays of kittens battling sharks and imagined origin stories for the robot army. It’s solidly funny (if a bit scattered), and even though he often takes the easy joke, Egerman’s presence is engaging enough that the easy joke will serve.
— F
Saturday at 4:30, Sunday at 5:30. 1013 Seventh St. NW.
DUETS At the Clinic through July 25 — Nelson Pressley
For Fringe Festival newcomers, this might be just the thing for easing into the less-polished aspects of the festival, given that the group behind the show is No Rules Theatre. The acting is high quality, the stories are engaging and the backing musicians are skilled. The three vignettes are held together by the subject of relationships and the recurrence of actors Jonny Price and Bligh Voth. The first chapter — a Kurt Vonnegut short story set to music — is the quaint tale of an army private who goes AWOL for a girl. The sweet narrative in no way prepares the audience for the second piece, “Ex’s and O’s,” an occasionally raunchy, expletive-laced look at the awkwardness and expectations associated with meeting up with an ex. The final installment, based on portions of Dante’s “Inferno,” goes in the rock-musical direction and follows a man in hell confronting his childhood bully, ex-girlfriends and one reprehensible teacher in an effort to get to heaven. — Stephanie Merry
Saturday at 5:30, Tuesday at 10, July 25 at noon. 1006 Sixth St. NW.
BEIGHT — Fiona Zublin
At the Redrum at Fort Fringe through July 24
You get to decide which of eight monologues you will see, based on excerpts in the ballot. Each showing of
Sunday at 8, July 24 at 9:30. 612 L St. NW. .Z.
WAYARD THEATER The sci-fi morality playlet “Freud Meets Girl” is onstage at the Clinic. .Z.
“Eight” features four sketches. So the “Eight” you see may be different from the one reviewed here. All of these monologues, written by Ella Hickson, feature young, crumbling lives in an economically devastated society. Herself young, Hickson sketches with confidence and power a generation of struggling Brits. Barely employed Bobby (Dawn Collet) just wants to make a decent Christmas for her kids. Astrid cheats on, but can’t leave, her disappointing husband. The weakest link is Jude (Kevin M. Costello), a teenager who falls for a much older woman. Only Millie (Rachel Manteuffel), a prostitute catering to the dying British elite, can thrive in this world. She’s a reluctant vulture, feeding off what’s left.
Saturday at 11, Sunday at 1, July 24 at 7. 612 L St. NW.
BFREUD MEETS GIRL At the Clinic through July 23
Mix the technology out of control in “The Fly” with the one-eyebrow-raised giddiness of “Little Shop of Horrors,” and you come up with something close to “Freud Meets Girl,” a juicy sci-fi morality playlet. The brainchild of playwright Hunter Styles, this production imagines the scientific nightmare that might arise if a machine could explain our dreams. No matter that the behavioral science could use some shoring up. What’s fun is the way Styles plays with the conventions of cautionary drama, without using them for a more obvious brand of spoof. Though a couple of his supporting actors might consider ratcheting down the bluster a bit, director Randy Baker generally constructs a nifty entertainment, filled
with winning performances. — Peter Marks
Saturday at 3:30, Sunday at 11 a.m., Thursday at 8, July 23 at 10. 1006 Sixth St. NW.
THE HORRORS OF ONLINE DATING At the 1409 Playbill Cafe through July 25
— R.W.
Working in the Grand Guignol tradition, Molotov Theatre Group likes to spray a little blood. But the company’s new musical never quite lives up to the promise of its name. It’s way too long for a play with no character development and no real suspense beyond what weapon Judy will use next. Judy is a sad-sack serial killer whose only confidant is her cat and whose sole source of joy is finding men on the Internet and hacking them to death. The best thing about “Horrors” is the puppetry. A giant pill bottle sings an inspired ode to medical side effects. Judy’s sexy computer and foul-mouthed kitten create a persuasive aura of insanity. The torture scenes are surprisingly gross. There’s no lesson here, except that fake blood can shoot about 10 feet if aimed right. It’s not great art, but it would make a pretty great blind date.
Friday at 8, Sunday at 8, Wednesday at 8, Thursday at 8, July 23 at 8, July 24 at 8, July 25 at 8, July 28 at 8, July 29 at 8, July 30 at 8 and July 31 at 8. . 1409 14th St. NW.
B THE HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS At the Goethe-Institut through July 25
The Fringe makes it possible for some truly funny, strange, esoteric shows to find an audience — shows such as this one. Beethoven and Quasimodo have joined forces to discover a mysterious
sound described by Chekhov in the stage directions of “The Cherry Orchard”: “Suddenly, a distant sound is heard, coming as if out of the sky, like the sound of a string snapping, slowly and sadly dying away.” The two men spend 40 minutes summarizing their findings on what the sound is not: a didgeridoo, Quasimodo’s hands squelching together, a clay flute, the pages of a book. Both actors are funny and committed, but it’s the moments when we’re not laughing that make the play more than an extended joke about the uselessness of academe.
— F B MACBETH
At the Redrum at Fort Fringe through Sunday
— R.W.
Before Push/Pull Theater Company concludes its Fringe Festival run of “Macbeth,” an audience member may be impaled upon a bamboo pole. This is no cloak-and-dagger Scottish play; this is the condensed capoeira version. Capoeira (pronounced cap-o-WHERE-a) is an Afro-Brazilian hybrid of music, dance and martial arts. Before formally starting rehearsals, the “Macbeth” cast spent several evenings in director Jessica Aimone’s back yard, practicing acrobatic kicks. What the actors do in the show isn’t quite authentic, but it makes for great physical theater. “Macbeth” is already the shortest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and this 65-minute version
fringe continued on 39
Saturday at 6:30, July 25 at 5. 812 Seventh St. NW.
.Z.
THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010
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