Harry Nilsson once sang that “one is the loneliest number,” but you actually have a goodly amount of company if you’re a 2011 Cincinnati Fringe Festival performer. Close to one-third of the acts included in the eighth annual Fringe, commencing this week, are solo performers — and quite a few of them are veterans who take their one-person shows from festival to festival.
Joe Hutcheson from New York has been at it for four years. His first work, The Purpose of Matter in the Universe, was named the best solo show in the 2007 Midtown International Theatre Festival. His next piece, Miss Magnolia Beaumont Goes to Provincetown, enjoyed a critically acclaimed run at the Cherry Lane Studio during the 2010 New York International Fringe Festival where it garnered a Fringe NYC Overall Excellence Award.
Miss Magnolia is a Southern debutante who finds herself trapped in the body of Joe, a gay New Yorker visiting Provincetown, Mass. BackStage.com gave Hutcheson’s show a “critic’s pick” and called it “original and inventive, as touching as it is funny — this show is rich, wise and deeply human.” Another New York writer called it “one of the nicest surprises of the year.” First performance is Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
The Cincinnati Fringe Festival continues through this week. Go here to read Rick Pender’s full story.
This article appears in May 25-31, 2011.
