Fringe Reviews – Day 9

Even with two shows yesterday, I managed to watch a couple of shows to close out the fringe.  Reviews are not particularly helpful at this juncture but I shall write them just the same.

Joe Dowling’s Romeo and Juliet on the Moon with Kate Mulgrew as Lady Capulet

The play uses Romeo and Juliet as a starting off point to explore how different people can respond to the same play in different ways.  It shows how we bring our own baggage into the theatre with us and that baggage will, inevitably, color how we view that show.

Pretty heady stuff, perhaps, but it is handled in a light manner that, I think makes the whole idea easily digestible in 50 minutes.  That they managed to get across a heady idea while simultaneously working through an entire (abridged) performance of Romeo and Juliet is admirable.

Mary Mack’s Anti-One Woman Show: Shit Makes Flowers Grow

This stand up show was a great way to close out the Fringe year.  There were no heavy ideas, no lofty pathos and no political messages.  There was just a very funny woman on stage telling jokes.

As a producer, I found it particularly cathartic when she used a portion of the show to read from the Fringe Producer’s handbook and her audience reviews.  I would have enjoyed it even more had she asked the producers in the audience to bring her their own bad reviews so we could have all enjoyed the catharsis together.

To be fair, it was her show.

So that’s it.  While not a hardcore fringer (I skipped two nights), I still managed to see well over 20 shows while appearing in two of my own.

Fringe would not be what it is with out the extraordinary number of volunteers, staff and artists who come together once a year to make all this happy.  We should all count ourselves lucky that we live in such a vibrant theatrical community.

And yeah, I’m already thinking about ideas for next year.