Now this is a monologue. Although there were only four sins (including calling that soupy Manhattan he was drinking a Martini), but who’s counting, James Judd’s high-speed, high-octane jet-ski through his amazing and ridiculous life is one of the Cardinal Virtues of the Fringe. Imagine Oscar Wilde stoked up in the land of Starbucks, and you get some picture of Mr. Judd. His life is a testament to good food, good drugs, good booze, good sex…and then in the sixth grade…
Look: to call Judd a drama queen would be like calling Adrian Fenty a type-A personality. It doesn’t do the subject justice. If you read the promos you know that Judd did his fifth-grade book report on My Search for Patty Hearst, by Steven Weed. What you may not know is that he did so in order to win a competition against a deadly princess of a rival. Having failed at that (and nearly gotten himself thrown out of school in the process), Judd, using moves he learned by watching his mother’s soaps (and quite against his inclination), sets things to right by giving his rival an enormous, theatrical kiss which reduces her to tears of longing. Judd, having earned the right to do so, moves off into the shadows.
Judd moves into the shadows a lot. He becomes, successively, a corporate slacker, a law school litigator (his client is an 80-pound maniac), a know-nothing technology writer (he learns the gestures) and what he is now, a comic monologist. He recalls the mantra in Kurt Vonnegut’s brilliant Sirens of Titans: I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.
Judd, who as promised fit a 75-minute monologue into 60 minutes, is a master of compression. I will be too. 7 Sins has only two more shows here, both today (July 19), before he goes to the Fringe Festival in Edinboro, Scotland. Go see one of them.
- Running Time: 60 Minutes
- Tickets: 7 Sins
- Remaining Shows: Sat, July 19 at 2 . Sat, July 19 at 9
- Where: Goethe Institute, 812 7th Street, NW
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