Onstage: Reviews: Cincy Fringe Festival Favorites

There’s one more weekend for the 2008 Cincinnati Fringe Festival. You might not have time to see everything, so you’ll need to choose wisely. CityBeat‘s review team has been on the job since Day One (you can read their full commentaries on dozens of Fringe shows at blogs.citybeat.com/fringe08).

Here are a few abbreviated commentaries about shows earning “Critic’s Picks” that continue this week:

RSVP by the Satori Group: Actually it’s not a play at all, but it might be the “fringiest” thing this year. You are seated at a café table. Your co-experiencer faces you. There are some common items on the table: a carafe of water; two small glasses; a mug containing a rolled up piece of paper; an instant camera. Via an audio headset you hear instructions to do a series of simple things: To pour water; to stand; to sit; to look about you and to look closely at your tablemate. What’s expected of each participant is a literal translation of the phrase “RSVP” — allow yourself to respond openly. Each pair of participants will achieve a moment of direct, intimate communication in a public place.

What it means to any individual is whether you approach it with open anticipation and a willingness to acquire a new experience. No two responses are likely to be the same. (Tom McElfresh)

IN REHEARSAL by Alison Vodnoy: She wrote this hour-long script, she performs it and she uses her dancer’s body to tell the story of Akiva, whose love affairs go wrong with regularity. We learn that true love seemed possible with a director, a Republican, a wine connoisseur, a married man, even a nice Jewish girl. Vodnoy’s neat twist is that we not only hear Akiva’s side of the story, we also find out what the guys (and the gal) have to say. With the aid of the props and garments, she takes on each character and rounds out her romantic vignettes. Akiva wants someone to accept her as she is, but doesn’t seem to extend that courtesy to her lovers. She is, however, very funny in her search. I hope this is a work in progress because its bones are excellent. A little sharpening and paring down will make it a truly polished show. (Jane Durrell)

FRICATIVE by Performance Gallery: This piece uses eight sober-faced performers, four men and four women, in formal attire at music stands. But what you’ll hear is neither formal nor sober: It’s a riot of nonsense syllables, sort of a May Festival on drugs. The performers’ delivery is serious and impeccably rendered. They hum; they chant. Their sound is rhythmic at times, harmonic at others. Sometimes there are sequential utterances. At other times they spit solo lines in rapid-fire. One piece doesn’t even use syllables, but rather mouth noises: clicking, smacking, swishing, sucking, kissing and even — amusingly — a fit of coughing. Performed with artistry and passion in 45 minutes, this piece is remarkably different from anything else you will see during Fringe 2008. (Rick Pender)

THE FACTORY by Pones, Inc., Laboratory of Movement: This multimedia dance work revisits the continuing struggle for women’s rights via a “factory” that manufactures and exploits women, robbing them of their identity. Presented throughout the Contemporary Arts Center, it begins with a lecture illustrated by five dancers who perform herky-jerky, automaton-like movements. Next is a mini-operetta of the Factory’s CEO and his assistant, dressed as a French maid, satirically demonstrating her value as a sexual object rather than a leader. A man and woman dance with Plexiglas panels that symbolize the glass ceiling limiting a woman’s workplace. She is eventually encased by the panels, like an urban Snow White in a casket. A training film offers a narrator with a vacuous smile who tells women employees the do’s and don’ts when one of them is sexually harassed. With a malevolent charm, he suggests they submit to their predator bosses if they want to get ahead. It’s lamentable that a work like The Factory still remains highly relevant today. (Jerry Stein)

MORTEM CAPIENDUM by Four Humors Theater: In the high-tech Media Bridges space, you step back in time to the age of traveling hucksters, miracle tonics and ointments that cure all ills. Two hootin’, hollerin’ pitchmen take the stage and begin their sales call to the “wise” people of Hamilton County. Mortem Capiendum nails its atmosphere from the start. Like it or not, while you’re sitting in front of them, you’re transported. There’s a mysterious trunk onstage, “to capture death,” we’re told. Could the hucksters’ bizarre tale of finding and cheating death scientifically explain the tonic they’ve created that enables buyers to delay eternal rest? It’s a good yarn, spun with energy and that certain devil-may-care attitude of confident performers. (Rodger Pille)

WHAT THE DEUCE! by Devil’s Deuce Productions: Sketch comedians Dylan Shelton and Annie Kalahurka wrote the script and deliver it energetically. Over the course of an hour they try to determine what kind of couple they are — Punk Rock, redneck and mail-order are a few possibilities — with puppets, song and rhyme through six onstage sketches (a New Age Couple, a “Female White Rapper”) and five how-we-met video segments. The show focuses on the nastiness of love (like when farting is no longer taboo between partners). But there is sweetness, too. A highlight is an improv skit, “Fill in the Break Up.” Shelton and Kalahurka make audience-provided explanations like “You’re too ugly” work well in settings also suggested by those in attendance. (Jessica Canterbury).

This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2008.