May 31 – Jun 7, 2017
Road Tripping: Drive-worthy destinations for film buffs, music enthusiasts, sports fans and young wizards
FRINGE 2017: ‘Zelda and Hadley: Together at Last’
“Thank god — I thought I was going to have to do this sober,” shouts Hadley, pouring herself a drink. “A toast!” quips Zelda. “To our husbands and our boyfriends. May they never meet.” This sets the tone for Zelda and Hadley: Together at Last from E Cubed Productions and writer/director Eileen Earnest. Elizabeth Chinn…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Velveteen, or How to Be Real’
Welcome to Book Club! Today we have gathered to discuss The Velveteen Rabbit — Fringe producers Thought Plane Theatre hope you have read this week’s selection in advance. If you haven’t, fear not. Velveteen, or How to Be Real begins with a low-tech theatrical interpretation of the book’s basic story: A boy receives a stuffed rabbit for…
Kroger, city officials announce plan for downtown grocery
Downtown Cincinnati by 2019 will see its first downtown grocery store in decades, city officials and Kroger announced today. Urbanists and city elected leaders have salivated at the idea of a downtown store for years — the city’s last one, a Kroger on Race Street, closed in 1969 — but before now, the pieces had…
Morning News: Tensing jury could be selected today; will Rhinegeist owners jump into medicinal weed biz?; Ohio cities sue drug companies over opioid crisis
Hello all. Here are some quick news bits for you this morning. Are hopes for federal funding for a Brent Spence Bridge replacement sunk because Cincinnati is a sanctuary city? Probably not, but we could get more hints about that soon. As we mentioned yesterday, President Donald Trump will be in Cincinnati tomorrow at 1…
Morning News: Trump to visit Cincinnati Wednesday; media sues again over access to Tensing trial; SORTA asks for $225K more for streetcar
Hello all. Let’s get right to it and talk about some news. President Donald Trump will be in Greater Cincinnati Wednesday to talk about work on the $1 trillion infrastructure revamp he promised during his campaign last year. Trump will be traveling around the country throughout the week to present his vision for fixing a…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Play for Now’
This is an ambitious, 60-minute script by Highlands High School student Vicky Alcorn, staged by Lydia Wira. The subject is a child dealing with grief. Sam’s best friend is Charlotte. Despite teasing from other kids about how a boy shouldn’t have a girl for his best friend, 8-year-old Sam appreciates her strength as she assertively…
FRINGE 2017: ‘bed (a fever dream)’
Performance Gallery has participated in all 14 Cincinnati Fringe Festivals, and this year’s entry, bed (a fever dream), reflects what this interesting company is all about: expressing basic human themes in provocative ways, using a mix of imagery, dialogue, music and movement to achieve an end-product that is usually more than the sum of its…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Lady Macbeth and Her Pal, Megan’
The unfortunate dichotomy bestowed upon women in Western society is the virgin or the whore. Megan Gogerty, however, puts forth the idea that women don’t have to be either, but can instead be a witch. In this solo performance by Gogerty and her Cornfed Productions from Iowa City in Lady Macbeth and Her Pal, Megan the…
FRINGE 2017: ‘The Monster Songs’
Billed as a “macabre cabaret,” The Monster Songs seems right at home in its Fringe venue. Sort of. Performed at Coffee Emporium, it’s a parody of the kind of show you might see in coffee shops around the world — except with tons of humor and weird little songs about… well, monsters. And mummies and…
FRINGE 2017: ‘The Pink Hulk’
The very same week that Wonder Woman lands in movie theaters across the country for the first time, Valerie David arrives in Cincinnati, offering her own version of a superhero live and in person. The Pink Hulk is the playwright and actor’s passionate and comical solo show about her second battle with cancer. Just at the dawn…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Vapers at the Gate’
Vapers at the Gate from The Burying Beetles is a creative imagining of the collapse of our society, told through a decidedly political lens. We follow three people, Wayer (Mafer Del Real), Harley (Daniel Britt) and Hampshire (Kearston Johnson) as unlikely companions on the run from some sort of urban collapse (maybe from a terrorist…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Spy in the House of Men’
Spy in the House of Men is a heartfelt, comedic confessional. It's written and performed by New York’s Penny Sterling, a transgender artist whose ability to guide the audience through her life’s story is profoundly sophisticated. Sterling’s talent is in subverting expectations while garnering a lot of serious laughs. Are you a social justice warrior who’s an…
FRINGE 2017: ‘kates’
The opening performance of kates was packed with well-wishers from Playhouse in the Park, celebrating kates director and producer Cait Robinson, also a resident director at the Playhouse. Robinson has cast several Playhouse acting interns in the show, including both Kates in the title roles: Tatum Hunter and Candice Handy. kates is a “new fairy…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Is That All There Is?’
Is That All There Is, presented by the Cincinnati LAB Theatre, is something of a tease. This fairly straightforward one-act play by Sara Mackie follows the dressing room banter of a successful drag act whose run at a popular venue has been canceled by management. At lights up, we are introduced to Ron, played by…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Home’
Theater is unique in how it can utilize a setting like no other medium. Home, written by Ben Dudley and directed by Buz Davis, is basically a horror movie. But what makes it truly stand apart from the standard thriller or slasher is the fourth-dimensional aspect that the stage allows. Dudley and Davis’ sixth contribution…
FRINGE 2017: ‘The Great Invention’
The Great Invention is complete, exhilarating joy. If that sounds like hyperbole, it’s not. Nor does this show resemble anything you’re likely to see anytime soon. It’s the brainchild of Jess Bryant and Peter Seifarth, longtime collaborators from North Carolina as Panda Head Theatre. They have trained for the last decade in a combination of…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Invisible Girl’
Invisible Girl brings together a strong ensemble (there was no program for opening night, and an email snafu prevented the delivery of performers’ names) under the helm of recent Northern Kentucky University grad Syreeta Briggs. The show description tells us Sarah is the “invisible girl” who has taken refuge in a sewer to avoid being…
CRITIC’S PICK: ‘Mind Mechanics’
“In 1887, a journalist by the name of Elizabeth Cochren went undercover as a mentally ill patient to report on the truly horrific conditions within psychiatric hospitals,” proclaims a voiceover track. The voice continues in the dark at Gabriel’s Corner, introducing various studies on sanity, including one where researchers planted “sane” patients in mental hospitals…
CRITIC’S PICK: ‘Balls of Yarns’
Paul Strickland’s Balls of Yarns is a little tough to characterize. The publicity calls it a “weird-larious one-man musical adventure,” and I suppose a show that includes an actor singing duets with a squeaky door (in harmony, no less) certainly qualifies. But Balls of Yarns is much more than that and, by the end, I…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Place/Setting’
Calling Pones Inc. a dance company doesn’t come close to describing what they accomplish year after year. Diminutive Executive Director Kim Popa has big visions for her troupe, whose mission statement says, “Pones believes that art creates powerful change.” That kind of thinking results in a multifaceted work like Place/Setting, Pones’ tenth production for Cincy…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Wilderness Survival’
Jimmy Grzelak is an Eagle Scout, the highest order of Boy Scouts. On Thursday night, he opened his poignant solo show in the renovated basement studio of historic Memorial Hall and told a renovated tale of boyhood scouting. At open, which just so happened to be a few hours after President Trump abandoned the Paris…
FRINGE 2017: ‘White Privilege’
You might not think you want to listen to a huge shirtless white guy, with a big belly, big beard and big shock of wild white hair talk about race for a full 50 minutes — but trust me, you do. That is exactly what you get with Jim Hopkins’ often hilarious, humble and humiliating…
Review: ‘Sumatran Rhino’
This is a difficult show to review without giving away important elements. From the devilishly wicked mind of Mike Hall and Hugo West Productions, Sumatran Rhino is part nature documentary, part family drama with enough Fringe-y twists and shocking surprises to delight the audience. No spoilers here — and if you see it, you should…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Sa’idah’
A young Syrian refugee who has lost her family and her arm is adopted by a famous movie actress, and brought from a hospital in Jordan to the celebrity’s home in Los Angeles. That’s the setup for Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell’s hour-long play Sa’idah, directed very ably by Cara Hinh. The title character, played with great…
Review: ‘Rumi’s Field’
I suspect that Rumi’s Field is the kind of show that meets your expectations, regardless of what those expectations might be. If the show’s description as “a dance-theater work” using “a rich Indian Classical and semi-Classical soundscape” that “reaffirms our intimate connection with nature” gives you goose bumps, you’re likely to love it. But if…
Review: ‘Reaper’
Dance is all about communicating through physical movement. In that way it has to go for big, broad themes and ideas or it will get bogged down in contradictory purposes. Reaper, a FringeNext production by the Blackbird Dance Theatre group from Lexington, Kentucky, tells a simple story with gripping imagery and iconography. But at times…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Busted Bumpers and Other Metaphors’
Cram. Stack. Bury. These are the words to live by. Anger can be something that overwhelms a person’s life if they don’t learn how to deal with it. Busted Bumpers and Other Metaphors is how years of denial can build and build and finally take their toll, in this case on a young woman’s life.…
City officials pledge ‘refresh’ to Collaborative Agreement
Cincinnati officials today announced a "voluntary" refresh of the city's historic 2003 Collaborative Agreement, which arose from federal court-ordered mediation after the 2001 police shooting of an unarmed 19-year-old named Timothy Thomas by Cincinnati Police officer Stephen Roach. Thomas was black and Roach was white, setting off already-bubbling racial tension around policing that culminated in…
Review: ‘mOTHER, a play’
Playwright and performer Stacey Vespaziani bares all in her solo show about the societal dichotomy between being a woman and being a mother. With nothing but a projector screen and a few sound cues to back her up, she walks onto a bare stage and launches immediately into one of the most uncertain and defining…
Your Weekend To Do List (June 2-4)
FRIDAY 02 MUSIC: The massive BUNBURY MUSIC FESTIVAL descends on Sawyer Point and Yeatman’s Cove with three days of diverse headliners and local acts. Read about some reason to arrive early in this week's Sound Advice. MUSIC: THE DOPAMINES It’s been a momentous seven years since my last official conversation with Cincinnati’s The Dopamines. The…
Morning News: jury selection underway again in Tensing trial; local leaders decry Trump’s withdrawal from climate accords; mental health care cuts could loom for local public schools
Good morning all. It’s apparently National Donut Day, and I’m observing. I wasn’t able to snag any free donuts, but when a certain iconic local ice cream company runs its bakery within smelling distance of your house, any day could potentially be donut day. Or Danish day. Or cheese crown day. But enough about pastries.…
Stage Door: Fringe Picks
Of course, the Cincinnati Fringe Festival is under way, with more than 30 of its 41 primary productions opening this week. As in the past, CityBeat has assembled a team of critics who are catching the first performance of each show and writing reviews for the website's Fringe hub. It’s your chance to choose a…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Reagachev’
Oftentimes the best things arise from the most rare of places. Reagachev, a FringeNext production by high school students Fiona Blackburn and Julia James, was just that — the strangest ingredients oddly making something quite resplendent. After all, what’s better than a political bromance with a side of flaming homosexuality? Blackburn and James’ show gave…
CityBeat’s 2017 Fringe Reviews
Attending Cincinnati’s annual Fringe Festival can be an arduous task. It’s fun, to be sure, but it can be a big challenge to identify which shows to see and navigate your way through during the 13 days of performances at 13 venues across Over-the-Rhine. That's where CityBeat's intrepid team of reviewers comes in, led by…
FRINGE 2017: ‘My Darling Dilophosaurus’
The music sets the stage: John Williams’ theme from Steven Spielberg’s historic, prehistoric blockbuster Jurassic Park. In his program notes, writer-director Sean P. Mette says he hopes you’ll “find some of the magic that you had when you were a kid, when dinosaurs filled your imaginations with limitless possibilities.” Mette, a regular with OTRimprov and…
FRINGE 2017: ‘FloatBrilliance’
Four female dancers, clad in petal pink, enter the darkened Memorial Hall ballroom. In alternating duets and quartets, these members of Chicago’s dropshift dance (the individual dancers’ names are not provided) perform FloatBrilliance, an ethereal and constantly shifting modern dance exploration of “timelessness, a soft sternum and heart, and quirky gestural conversations between bodies.” If…
FRINGE 2017: ‘What She Found There’
What She Found There is a devised work by Caroline Stine and InBocca Performance that theatrically deconstructs and reconstructs the French fairy tale of Bluebeard (a tale that also holds prominence in Queen City Flash’s The Disappearance of Nicole Jacobs). Six white-gowned women (Ashley Morton, Katelyn Crotty, Mandy May Miller, Kellyn Dolezal, Ellie Conniff and…
FRINGE 2017: ‘pet fish are for killing by accident somehow it’s really quite inevitable’
Marla might as well kill her fish Steve. He’s going to die anyway, just like the last one. That’s what pet fish do: They die. And so will Marla, someday. And if that’s true, why should she bother with love and dreams and her future? This is where we meet the Fringe production pet fish…
CRITIC’S PICK: ‘Totally Untrue Stories — Totally Unlike Any Nocturnal Flying Insect’
You’ve heard of Gulliver’s Travels? This show might be labeled “Gullible’s” Travels. Out of the mind and mouth of storyteller, author and recording artist Bil Lepp flows Totally Untrue Stories, well-written, side-splitting ruminations about growing up in 1980s rural West Virginia in the town of Half Dollar. This is storytelling at its finest. Lepp is…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Nine Short Plays for the Theatre’
The title of Nine Short Plays for the Theatre, written and directed by Joe Stollenwerk, pretty much says what it is: a collection of quirky, often comical takes on the world of the stage and its literature. One of the more successful vignettes is “Mavis Rents a VHS,” a nicely varied monologue delivered by Barbara…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Anonymous’
Writer/director/choreographer/performer Mandie Reiber set out to capture the emotional complexity of life in the city by interviewing Over-the-Rhine residents about their struggles. The result is Anonymous, a collection of nine true stories of dark desperation told through dance, spoken word poetry and song. Subject matter includes suicide, domestic abuse, drug addiction, prostitution, rape, extreme poverty,…
Review: ‘Larry 13:2’
A man waits in a seedy motel room while the rain roars outside. Suddenly, someone bangs on the door. A tall woman in a blue poncho enters and tosses the gentleman an envelope full of money. That’s the opening sequence of Muwhahaha Productions' presentation of Tracy’s Hoida's 30-minute play, Larry 13:2. What follows is a…
CRITIC’S PICK: ‘God of Obsidian’
It’s the idea of a man explaining to someone, almost surely a woman, in a way that is pedantic and condescending. In the case of this two-person play, heavy on dialogue and strong on metaphor, mansplaining is weaponized to instill insecurity and destroy any sense of self-worth. Dealing in themes of mental health and gender,…
FRINGE 2017: ‘Gen and Mabel’
At its heart, Gen and Mabel is a story about two perfectly lovely people who just aren’t meant to be together, no matter how badly they want to be. From the very beginning of the show, we know that Gen and Mabel don’t make it. The description in the Fringe guide calls it a show…
Review: ‘Fight for 52¢’
“Time is a flat circle.” So says Rust Cohle in the first season of HBO’s True Detective. With that philosophy of pessimism comes the idea that history repeats itself. But playwright and actor Howard Petrick hopes that Americans in 2017 can learn from the past and change their future. Petrick, in reality, met Vincent Raymond…
FRINGE 2017: ‘The Disappearance of Nicole Jacobs, Part 1: The Sister’
Writer Trey Tatum and director Bridget Leak are at the helm of this Queen City Flash tale of a missing teen in Tatum’s wonderfully awry Alabama. Nicole Jacobs (lovely Cassie Delicath) has disappeared, and her older sister Crystal (always delightful Miranda McGee) sits an insomniac’s vigil with the stuffed-animal memorial every night, the dark obfuscating…
FRINGE 2017: ‘8×10’
The thought of being locked in solitary confinement is a paralyzing fear for some. For those who think it might not be so bad to be away from modern civilization as we know it, 8×10 from Brooklyn’s Solitary Project will shed new light. What is it like to be alone for 23 hours a day? What…
Morning News: Cincinnati gets new parks director; city will again track racial bias in policing; Ohio sues drug companies over opioid addiction
Hello all. Here’s some news this morning. Cincinnati’s Board of Park Commissioners yesterday named a new director for the city’s park system. Wade Walcott, from Columbus, will take the reigns from outgoing director Willie Carden July 17. Walcott is currently the director of Greensboro, N.C.’s parks and recreation department. He’ll make $11,000 more a year…
What a Week! May 24-30
WEDNESDAY, MAY 24 ABC’s Dirty Dancing TV adaptation premiered Wednesday, and you don’t need to have seen it to know it was a hot mess. These TV musical reboots are generally SAD, especially when they try to recreate the magic of Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze/comment on 1960s underground abortions. And it didn’t even have the…
Final ‘Leftovers’ leaves unanswered questions
As the last-ever episode of The Leftovers (Series Finale, 9 p.m. Sunday, HBO) approaches, fans are left with endless questions, many of which have been lingering since the very first episode. On Oct. 14, 2011, 2 percent of the human race — 140 million people — vanished into thin air in a mysterious worldwide event. Where…
Emily Dickinson’s Glowing ‘Quiet Passion’
To live a life of willful obscurity seems impossible in today’s reality. Who would dare avoid having a social media presence, a place where every uttered word or impromptu selfie offers proof of life and the very act of living — especially when we are all poets and philosophers (in 140 characters), photographic chroniclers of…
Critic’s Pick: ‘Damn Yankees’ at the Incline
Cincinnati Landmark’s producers have excellent instincts about shows to please their “Summer Classics” audiences — people they once drew to the Showboat Majestic. They’ve scored a grand slam — almost literally — with the production of a 62-year-old musical, Damn Yankees, at Price Hill’s Warsaw Federal Incline Theater. It’s a musical about baseball and a darn…
Comedian Henry Phillips now a video star
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and then there are times when fiction influences truth. Such has been the case with comedian Henry Phillips. In 2009, he starred in and co-wrote a feature film called Punching the Clown. Playing a fictionalized version of himself, he delivered a film that drew critical praise. Amazon Prime members currently…
Tamia Stinson’s ‘Tether’ will be a sourcebook for local image makers
Tamia Stinson is all about networking. The Cincinnati stylist and recent recipient of a $100,000 People’s Liberty fellowship knows the image making community — photographers, stylists, creative directors, hair and makeup artists, wardrobe and fashion designers and models. She also knows the advertising agencies, branding companies, design firms and others that hire them. “I’m a spreadsheet…
Road Tripping: Your guide to eclectic summertime sites
Summer in the conveniently located Midwestern city of Cincinnati means that with just a couple of hours and a tank of gas, you can spend the weekend somewhere else — Nashville, Chicago, Red River Gorge or, like, Dayton, depending on your interests. We’ve curated a few quick trips for resident film buffs, music enthusiasts, sports…
Sites Behind the Sounds
Cincinnatians hopefully know about their city’s rich musical heritage thanks to the rise in grassroots and even civic efforts to memorialize things that had a big impact on the music world, like the groundbreaking King Records. Taken as a whole, Ohio’s contributions to music are indispensable. Besides going to a concert or festival, when you…
Reds-Inspired Roadies
There are times when someone you know wants to go on an out of town trip during the summer even though Cincinnati has everything you could ever want. The best thing to do in this situation is to plan the excursion loosely around watching baseball. The easiest way to do so is to check out…
Offbeat Accommodations
The Wilds Where: 14000 International Road, Cumberland, thewilds.columbuszoo.org Drive Time: 3 hours If seeing animals on exhibit at the zoo isn’t close enough for you, The Wilds — a 10,000-acre nonprofit conservation center located on reclaimed mining land — brings the African (and Asian) safari experience to southeastern Ohio. Created in partnership with political, civic and…
Fairly Close Fests
Banana Split Festival When: 4-10 p.m. June 9; 10 a.m.-10 p.m. June 10 Where: 1326 Fife Ave., Wilmington, Ohio Drive Time: 1 hour Which state is the birthplace of the classic banana split? Well, it depends on who you ask — Ohio and Pennsylvania have both vehemently claimed the title since the early 1900s. Wilmington, Ohio refuses…
More Beer and Ice Cream Collabs
June will be packed with endless beer activities, such as Cincinnati Beer Week, brewery expansions and anniversaries and more beer and ice cream collaborations, including the release of Fifty West’s Tastee Whip ICA and Rhinegeist’s first beer-infused ice cream with United Dairy Farmers. Let’s start with the sweet: Rhinegeist is now in the ice cream…
A Connecticut Lobster Roll on Court Street
A few years ago while visiting Boston, relatives offered to take me out for lobster. After all, it’s one of New England’s chief attractions in my opinion: plentiful, affordable “lobstah.” I put on a nice dress and we went to a place on the ocean in Plymouth. But then imagine my dismay when the only lobster…
CAC’s new performances will seek to unite us
If you detect a certain urgency to the programs that comprise the Contemporary Arts Center’s 2017-18 Black Box Performance Series, it’s intentional. The performance curator, Drew Klein, had a theme in mind. “A big part of this year is about the assembly of people — I wanted to have people come together,” he says. “We’re…
Cincinnati’s The Dopamines bring old spirit and a new maturity to ‘Tales of Interest’
It’s been a momentous seven years since my last official conversation with Cincinnati’s The Dopamines. The band won a 2011 Cincinnati Entertainment Award, released its third album, 2012’s blistering, blustery Vice, and did two European tours. Bassist Jon Weiner partnered with DAAP Girls’ Stuart MacKenzie as owners/operators of the Northside Yacht Club, touring guitarist Josh…
Swim Team’s debut album gets vinyl release
Last year, Cincinnati foursome Swim Team released its debut album through respected indie label Infinity Cat Recordings, but the release came with a catch — it was released on cassette, a part of a limited-edition subscription series from the label. The series sold out, but those who missed it get another crack at owning the…
Sound Advice: Bunbury Music Festival
For this week’s Sound Advice, we offer a few reasons to arrive early to this year’s Bunbury Music Festival, which returns to the riverfront’s Sawyer Point this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The big attractions include headliners as diverse as Muse, Wiz Khalifa, The 1975, Death Cab for Cutie and Bassnectar, but the following are just…
The once high-achieving Cincinnati school that no one wants to talk about
What was a supernova on the Cincinnati educational scene in the mid-2000s now looks like a flameout. From 2006 to 2014, Robert A. Taft Information Technology High School became a nationally celebrated beacon for urban public schools overcoming poverty and crime. From the bottom of the pack, Taft soared past the city’s other mostly black…
