Onstage: Picking Over the Fringe

With this issue of CityBeat, the 2007 Cincinnati Fringe Festival finds itself at the halfway point. Seven reviewers have been catching the openings of each Fringe performance and writing online reviews.

By this point almost everything has been performed at least once, and critics and audiences are engaged in what’s worth seeing. Performances continue through Saturday evening, with a Pick of the Fringe on Sunday.

Here are selected opinions from CityBeat‘s reviewers. Each of these performances earned an A or a B+ from our critics. (For all 29 reviews, go to blogs.citybeat.com/fringe07.)

THE KID IN THE DARK: What began as a series of writings in response to losing a loved one has been developed by lyricist Mark Halpin, composer Andrew Smithson and director Richard Hess into what might be one of the high points of this year’s Fringe Festival. The Kid in the Dark is performed by a capable cast of five, which includes Justin Scott Brown, Megan Campanile, Beau Landry, Patrick Martin and Sara Shepherd. While none of them is a vocal powerhouse, their talents are evenly matched and their technique is fine enough to convey the many shades of feeling that sift and shift through the 17 songs that make for a very smart 50-minute set.

The standout performance of The Kid in the Dark, however, belongs to Halpin’s lyrics.

Each song comes from a well-defined point of view and quickly declares both its ironic take on themes of relationships and loss, while never letting go of the emotions that follow. There’s an implicit understanding that everyone involved is there to support Halpin’s lines and, as a result, this is a show you listen to intently for what is said and how. (The Kid in the Dark will be presented Saturday at Know Theatre.) (Nicholas Korn)

MAD: From the first word uttered on stage, it’s clear the audience is eavesdropping on a family in pain. Indeed, writer/producer Jennifer Dalton seems to want badly to take strangers where they otherwise clearly should never be: inside. Inside the house, where a family is forced to cope with and quickly understand their son’s recent diagnosis of schizophrenia. Inside a marriage, where the once happy couple struggles to stay together in the face of the illness. And inside a mind, tortured and broken, that still manages to show flashes of compassion and love.

Dalton should know. It was, after all, her brother’s illness and her family’s difficult story on which Mad was based. It’s challenging theater, to be sure — hard to watch and hard to perform. And yet it’s necessary. In effect, it’s a love letter Dalton wrote not only to her brother but to her parents, a touching ode to familial strength and unconditional love. The result is great theater. (Mad will be presented Thursday and Friday at New Stage Collective.) (Rodger Pille)

GIRLFIGHT: This is not the edgy, urban and Hip Hop-inflected rant on race, class and gender that its title might suggest. Instead, the members of Cincinnati’s Performance Gallery have assembled a strange and startling show that’s cerebral and silly and, for the most part, a lot of fun to watch. The action begins at the end and works backward Memento-style, while an onstage flipchart tags each scene with a subtitle and time elapsed from the opening image of the show: the four cast members at each other’s throats in a frozen moment of comic aggression.

The series of scenes that follow record in reverse chronology a feud between two unnamed women — one a fast-talking, fastidious type-A socialite and the other a vegetarian neurotic with a fixation on the Dalai Lama. Local favorites Aretta Baumgartner and Regina Pugh play the opposing pair with a tense ferocity that makes you think either one could explode at any moment while darting though a dizzy range of emotional peaks and valleys. These are great performances by two fiercely funny artists who know their craft. George Alexander provides narration, mediation and the occasional male perspective, giving almost every line a hilarious twist while powerfully but playfully sharing the stage without ever giving an inch of it away. (Girlfight will be presented Wednesday and Saturday at Know Theatre.) (Nicholas Korn)

iLOVE:: Be prepared to analyze any and every romantic relationship you’ve ever had. Maybe you’ll shoot one of your friends an e-mail or text message after doing so, and that will precisely prove New Stage Collective’s point with this production, that our cultural environment informs — in many cases dictates — everything we do, specifically when it comes to love. iLove: takes on some heady topics: how we live in and around love in a technologically advancing society, how we define love, how we change as Americans and how all of these facts affect each other. And it’s not all idealized imagery. Being alone is part of it. (iLove will be presented Thursday, Friday and Saturday at Know Theatre.) (Jessica Canterbury)

CHRISTMAS IN BAKERSFIELD: Les Kurkendaal’s solo performance in Christmas in Bakersfield is at the same time simple and winning. He poses the following loaded question: What happens when a man brings his male lover home to his family in Bakersfield, Calif., for the holidays? Oh, but this isn’t really the crux of the problem: The family has recently and grudgingly accepted their son Mike’s sexual orientation.

The real problem begins as Les steps across the threshold of the family’s pricey, gated suburban home. Mike “forgot” to tell his family that his lover is an African American — Les, who is telling us the story. (Christmas in Bakersfield will be presented Thursday and Saturday at Below Zero.) (Mark Sterner)

This article appears in Jun 6-12, 2007.