Don’t go thinking that Cincinnati Shakespeare Company doesn’t have a sense of humor about what they do. In fact, they’ve now decided to make this amusing send-up an annual tradition. Compl  

The most successful Cincinnati Fringe Festival since the annual event’s launch in 2004 wrapped up on June 9, boasting a nearly 9 percent increase in overall attendance compared to 2011, from 7,177 to 7,728. More than 230 artists performed, and the number of sold-out performances, 24, set a new record.  

As CityBeat’s June 6 issue goes to press, the 2012 Cincinnati Fringe Festival is about half over. All 29 shows have opened and a few have concluded their runs. You still have several chances to see some great shows before the Fringe concludes on Saturday.
  

One of the highlights of the 2011 Fringe Festival was an evening produced by the David Levy and Jeff Groh, who mastermind the quarterly “True Theatre.” For “True Fringe,” they recruited Fringe  

And now for something completely different, as the Monty Python guys used to say: Four Humors Theater, back for another year at the Cincinnati Fringe, brings a wholly different — and totally charming — piece for audiences of all ages, Bombus and Berrylinne.  

In her director’s notes for The Doppelganger Cometh and Overtaketh, Leah Strasser says, “We hope you find this play as funny as we do, because we still laugh every time we hear it.” If that was the goal of Strasser, who also plays a central role, and her colleagues who have announced the birth of Homegrown Theater, a new local company, I’m afraid I need to say “Better luck next time.”  

Kevin J. Thornton tells stories from his life with great humor, constantly connecting with the audience and responding to their hilarity at his outlandish tales of gay life and adolescent sex. He breaks things up with musical interludes, playing his grandfather’s acoustic guitar with an electric pick-up and singing Pop tunes that illustrate or reflect some of his themes. (He opened the evening with Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.”)  

Radio drama was a distinct art form in the middle of the 20th century, and Tanya O’Debra’s Fringe show, Radio Star, evokes that evocative mode of storytelling, complete with sound effects, with a distinctly modern filter.   

There’s more theater and performance than you can shake a stick at in Over-the-Rhine this weekend, thanks to the 2012 Cincinnati Fringe Festival. (In fact, if you stand on a corner in OTR and shake a stick, you could be mistaken for a Fringe act …) You can read about all the Fringe productions that are up and running   

A musical based on an iconic supernatural comedy from 1984 is the kind of show we’ve come to expect during the Cincinnati Fringe. But there’s nothing expectable about Don’t Cross the Streams, which begins with that notion and then processes and reprocesses the idea to a point of ridiculous hilarity.