A Review Roundup of Fringe Festival Shows
It says a lot about New York that a man dressed as a penguin attracted so little attention. The man was Xavier Toby, an Australian comic and coal miner, and the occasion was the 18th annual New York International Fringe Festival, which features Mr. Toby’s high-concept, low-comedy walking tour, “2014:
When We Were Idiots.”
After
donning fluorescent yellow safety vests, you and a couple of dozen
others trail Mr. Toby around the Lower East Side. The tour is ostensibly
set in 2114, when earth has become a peaceful and verdant utopia.
Except for Manhattan. Buried under masses of trash and recently
excavated, it has been repopulated by historical re-enactors. During the
90-minute stroll, the apple-cheeked and penguin-beaked Mr. Toby would
approach passers-by and say, “Who are you acting as today?”
“Myself,” said a man.
“A cookie eater,” said a woman with her mouth full.
“Uh ... a dragon?” replied a teenager in sweatpants.
Mr.
Toby’s idea is terrific, but his execution could be sharper. His
conception of the new society (travel by water slides, upcycling) is
pretty fuzzy, and so is his vision of the old. Most of his jokes urge
participants to various crimes: theft, assault, telling pig jokes to
police officers. “Remember that sometimes this walking tour is a running
tour,” he said cheerfully, before delivering us back to Fringe Central
on Norfolk Street.
When
the Fringe began in 1997, it was concentrated around just a few Lower
East Side blocks. It has since sprawled far beyond Mr. Toby’s ambit to
compass some 200 productions in 18 locations. Last weekend, I rushed to
nine shows in three days (it would have been 10, but one ran 15 minutes
over). Still, it’s quite possible to wander downtown without realizing
there’s a festival at all. I saw far more people watching street
basketball games or drinking wine at outdoor tables than I saw clustered
around any theater.
I wish a few of those rosé drinkers had made their way to “The King of Kong: A Musical Parody,” a joyfully daft adaptation of the 2007 documentary
about pursuing the highest score in Donkey Kong. Written and performed
by Lauren Van Kurin and Amber Ruffin, the show has a synth-pop score
that pits the dweeby science teacher Steve Wiebe against the
Machiavellian hot sauce king Billy Mitchell. The women play the
competitors, as well as wives, children and referees, often running back
onstage out of breath, costumes askew.
Ms.
Van Kurin and Ms. Ruffin are both accomplished comedians, but some of
the best writing comes straight from the documentary. “Not even Helen of
Troy got this much attention!” Ms. Ruffin’s Mitchell crows. Then Ms.
Ruffin turns to the audience, in exasperation and amazement: “Yes. He
actually said that.”
In
“King of Kong,” the women sing of fistfuls of quarters, but if money’s
tight and you’re over 21, the best Fringe deal may be “The Imbible: A
Spirited History of Drinking.” Written by the genial Anthony Caporale,
the director of Beverage Studies at the Institute of Culinary Education,
it includes three drinks in its ticket price: a rusty ale (Drambuie and
IPA), a Drambuie old-fashioned (Drambuie and bitters) and a gin and
tonic (no discernible Drambuie).
Why
Mr. Caporale felt the need to vary his lecture with songs like “Old
Mill Stream” and “Walk Like an Egyptian” is anyone’s guess, but after
the second drink, no one seemed to mind. “I get funnier with every sip,”
Mr. Caporale said.
Perhaps
the producers of “Dancing Monk Ippen” should have distributed sake
instead of paper cranes. A new musical about a medieval terpsichorean
Buddhist, it is performed in Japanese without benefit of supertitles.
The result is befuddling, though the singing is energetic and the fight
choreography splendid — these are pretty aggressive Buddhists.
Religion
and violence also intersect in “Vestments of the Gods,” an ambitious,
scattershot musical, with a script by Owen Panettieri, that is based on
“Antigone.” Set on Halloween
(“On a day when sugar’s everywhere, what could go wrong?”), it concerns
elementary school students who run afoul of the principal and the
P.T.A. Mr. Panettieri’s anti-bullying message is commendable, but the
plot sits unsteadily on its Sophoclean scaffolding.
A more orderly if less compelling musical, “Held Momentarily,” centers on straphangers trapped in a stalled car. Like “Vestments,” it features an adorable young cast.
The
talented composer of “Held Momentarily,” Oliver Houser, has written an
aria acclaiming the Metropolitan Transportation Authority motto, “If you
see something, say something.”
I saw it, so I should mention “Seven Seductions of Taylor Swift,”
a sweet, sour and slapdash show written by seven women and performed by
Thaddeus Shafer as Ms. Swift’s various conquests. Mr. Shafer’s
increasingly awful wigs are probably the funniest thing in it.
“The Internet!:
A Complete History (Abridged)” has better jokes, but except for a song
about memes, there is little to equal the divine inanity of the writers’
previous Fringe offering, “I Can Has Cheezburger: The MusicLOL!,” which some cat-loving producer should immediately revive.
My
three-day binge of theater, Drambuie, dollar pizza and feeble
air-conditioning concluded with “Joel Creasey Rock God.” An ebullient
Australian in vise-tight pants, Mr. Creasey
delivers mildly naughty gags about small-town life, like accompanying
his mother to a zumba class and offending an entire municipality with a
joke about chocolate cookies. Discussing his hometown, Perth, “the shark
attack capital of the world,” he looked out from the stage into the
dingy environs of the theater and beamed. “It’s just so great to be in
New York,” he said.
That
seemed to be the mood — eager, appreciative — at most of the shows,
good and bad. At the close of Mr. Toby’s tour, one audience member even
seemed reluctant to part with the scratchy safety vest she’d been forced
to wear. “I want to keep it,” she told her friend. “I can use it for
when I go running.”
