Just when you thought you’ve heard all the stories you could stand about the “peculiar institution,” this amazing tale serves as a reminder of the countless others that remain untold, tucked away, and forever buried.  With a sure and steady approach to the work, Lynne Marie Brown adapted a harrowing story of Harriet A. Jacobs, a young enslaved woman whose faith and perseverance garnered her hard-won freedom.  [Read more...]

There are those Fringe shows that contain racy material or crude language or both, but this is not one of them. The Sleeping Beauty – A Puppet Ballet by Pointless Theatre Co. is a clever and creative adaptation of the story by Charles Perrault [Read more...]

Who is that handsome, brilliant man who calls himself Genesis, and has been committed to a mental institution for believing he is a fallen angel? Is he delusional? Has he been unjustly committed? Is he as dangerous as his fellow inmates try to convince us he is as the play begins? Is he The Devil as the angry Chaplain professes? [Read more...]

One of the challenges of reviewing Fringe theater is determining how much weight to give earnest performance over clumsy material. But with so many productions to choose from, with your time and money on the line, I’d rather be blunt than kind. [Read more...]

This is definitely an unusual play – at times hard to follow, quirky, and certainly original, so yes,  it’s a text-book example of Fringe at its best!   It proves challenging to draw in an audience, but it may still be worth your while to see it.

Cavers is 80 minutes long but actually seems longer – never a good thing to say about a play,  of course.

Still and all, there are good things to say about it also, starting with the fact that the content is so off-the-wall strange -speleologists(cavers) meetup with spelunkey monkeys!  And also with country-cranky yet cool Gertie Stoval (played and cracking wise by Raven Bonniwell), owner with her half-brother George Stoval (Tom Eisman, dour but dignified as a county commissioner who also”grows certrain illegal cash crops”) of a collapsing farmhouse sitting atop a wondrous cavern with a curative potential to make the American Dream come true!  How’s that for a catchy premise?

But wait, as they say on TV infomercials, there’s more!

The two speleologists are Charlie Tuggle (played with gawky charm by Vanita Kalra) and Dr. Polly Eidelweiss (Abri O’Connor), a lesbian on the prowl for winsome Charlie, as she comes on to her saying “you’re cute in a grad student sort of way.” They meet in turn Samantha Dean (Molly Coyle), who wants to use the magic cave to stage Godspell while the two academics debate how to harvest grants for medical research from it, and god-fearing Gertie, denying evolution with every breath,  meanwhile “thinks small,” having no idea what the stakes really are and simply wants to give tours there. Another scheme is to use the space to store radioactive waste products.

Possible uses of the cave are much discussed and most of the play is set underground in a darkened place filled with cave monkeys (why – of course!),spurring much talk of evolutionary theory (who really is descended from whom, Mr. Darwin?). Playwright Mark Rigney, now a stay-at-home-dad with two young sons, and a novelist and short-story writer in Evansville Indiana, seems to know his scientific stuff.

Messy property rights are also at issue in Cavers.  Who has the right to exploit the wondrous properties of this magical cavern? Like Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon,” the cavern is something that dreams are made of, but whose dream shall prevail?

Basically, stay away from this one unless you don’t mind the longeurs of being bored by long stretches of pointless dialogue and digressive mystifications.  But if you’re fascinated with caves, then this rates at best a definite maybe.

Cavers

Produced by Nu Sass Productions
Reviewed by David Hoffman

Running time:  80 minutes

Read all the reviews and check out the full Capital Fringe schedule here.

Did you see the show?  What did you think?

If you want to know why Greek tragedy is still vital to modern theater, go see paperStrangers Performance Group’s adaptation of Medea. Striking use of movement and multimedia combine to bring very intense moments of madness to life. [Read more...]

Don’t be fooled – Chart Toppers of 1349! is not what you think it is going to be. While this humble reviewer cannot really know what you, the potential audience member, is thinking- rest assured, you are probably wrong.  [Read more...]

There is no patron saint of eating, but, really, isn’t it the nicest thing you do? Meet somebody you discover you like, and the next thing you know he’s over at your house, sharing samosas and s’mores with you. If you seek to relax a feral or otherwise skittish animal, do you not first feed it? And is the third beatitude not “blessed are the hungry, for they shall be satisfied?” And could that hungry person not be you, after a hard day of labor or other nonsense? [Read more...]

O.K., so this has probably happened to you some time in your life. You’re Arlecchino, (Ryan Sellers), servant to the young Leilo (Arturo Tolentino), who loves the beauteous Isabella (Leigh Anna Fry). This is fortunate for you, since Isabella is the daughter of the great Dottore (Jeff Hylden), who also employs the beauteous Colombina (Aniko Olah), who you love. [Read more...]

There’s not much point to Happenstance Theater & Banished Productions’s Handbook for Hosts except to create an atmosphere. But what an atmosphere! From the moment the ensemble begins teasing audience members with spot-on film noir accents and prettily coiffed hair, you willingly enter the parlance of the 1930′s and ’40′s. [Read more...]