CityBeat - Fringe http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/articles.sec-196-1-fringe.html <![CDATA[Delicious - ]]> Family-friendly Fringe shows aren’t common, but Psophonia brings a playful, even childlike romp to the Festival with Delicious. As frequent Cincy Fringe participants, the Houston-based, all-female modern dance company more often has focused on women’s issues. But as with their previous Fringe shows, Co-Artistic Directors Sonia Noriega and Sophia L. Torres once again go all out on eye-catching costumes, props and other visual elements in this series of brief vignettes.

]]> <![CDATA[Bombus and Berrylinne (Recommended) - ]]> 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.

]]> <![CDATA[Nothing (Recommended) - ]]> Nothing, Nic Balthazar’s piece about bullying, makes it U.S. premiere as Unity Productions’ Fringe production, presented at Know Theatre. A one-man show, the multimedia play uses video and music to move the story forward. Nothing mixes forms and does it well: one part engrossing stage drama and one part, documentary.

]]> <![CDATA[Kiss Kiss Missiles: A Retrospectacle (Recommended) - ]]> The most engaging of the three dances presented by The Space/Movement Project in Kiss Kiss Missiles: A Retrospectacle is the first, with all five of the company’s dancers barefoot and wearing costumes that could almost have come out of their everyday closets with a sash or a ribbon added for the stage. A dancer wearing a flaring red skirt and dark top appears in movement as slim and supple as pulled taffy.

]]> <![CDATA[The Doppelganger Cometh and Overtaketh - ]]> 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.”

]]> <![CDATA[On Her Pillow: Too True Tales of Black Little White Girl - ]]>

Honour Pillow probably already knows that she’s going to have a tough time making you feel sorry for her when she takes the stage for her solo show at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Having spent the early part of her career as a runway model in New York, she bears a fine resemblance to Julia Roberts with Halle Berry’s complexion, and it’s that issue of racial identity that fuels the better part of this personal history and emotional travelogue.

]]> <![CDATA[Tainted Love: A Zombie-Human Love Story - ]]> This particular romp is by local playwright Alan Jozwiak and was adapted from a short story he had published in a zombie quarterly. Directed by Kevin Crowley and gamely acted by a cast of 10, including a quintet of mainly high-school-aged zombies, it is beyond harmless and moves toward the genuinely charming.

]]> <![CDATA[A Hands On Guide to the Apocalypse (Recommended) - ]]> If you’ve had it up to here with Love Thy Neighbor, this is the show for you. A Hands On Guide to the Apocalypse arrives just in time, since 2012 — as we’re being frequently reminded — is the year the Mayans tagged for the end of the world.

]]> <![CDATA[Love Knots - ]]>

Love Knots, this year’s Fringe submission from Cincinnati’s Essex Theatre Arts Studio, has good, even sweet, intentions: five 10-minute plays by Phil Paradis, each trying to untangle love. The production’s weak writing and flat, uninspired staging sours the experience of a piece that should have been frothy, warm, and kind of tingly — day-old coffee when you wanted a latte. But an obviously talented cast brings to life a few tender and endearing moments.

]]> <![CDATA[Third Quarter Moon - ]]> The Twilight Saga has already provided plenty of opportunities for parody, and the bare-bones performance outfit, Ornamental Messiah from Newport, adds another to the list with their 60-minute production of Third Quarter Moon.

]]> <![CDATA[Project Activate (Recommended) - ]]>

A performance based on social activism isn’t in and of itself very fringy. Lots of artists till that field in their works. But when a performance ambitiously asks audiences to participate in social experiments and does so in a strangely uplifting way, well, that’s utterly Fringe.

]]> <![CDATA[The Mistakes Madeline Made (Recommended) - ]]> The mistakes Madeline made, which give title to this 75-minute excursion into wanton lack of bathing and job despair, are exactly those our heroine Edna adopts as her personal route to coming of age and meeting life on its own terms. A how-do-we-get-grown-up story seems appropriate for the annual intern project at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati (ETC), this year the work of five actors, directed by fellow intern Jenny Estill.

]]> <![CDATA[Strange Dreamz - ]]> 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.”)

]]> <![CDATA[Radio Star (Recommended) - ]]>

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.

]]> <![CDATA[Dances For a Recession - ]]> If you’re concerned about seeing modern dance and not “getting it,” fear not. Pas de Monkéy Dance Project from Akron wants to keep dance accessible — friendly, even. The young company affiliated with the University of Akron might be gaining the training and the chops for serious dance, but they don’t take themselves too seriously.

]]> <![CDATA[Don’t Cross the Streams (Recommended) - ]]>

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.

]]> <![CDATA[American Badass in Cincy - ]]>

Tommy Nugent is a familiar Cincinnati Fringe performer: Starting in 2007, he’s been here with Tommy Nugent’s The Show and Tommy Nugent’s Burning Man Redux. He’s a monologist grounded in public speaking — not exactly a theater guy, but someone who’s totally comfortable in front of an audience. Although in the program for this year’s Fringe offering, American Badass in Cincy, he writes, “I’m no longer compelled to put my name in every show title,” his subject matter is focused completely on … Tommy Nugent.

]]> <![CDATA[Where Is My Mind? (Recommended) - ]]> I’m not inclined to give you more detail than the program notes about what is “in” the show. Yes, indeed, there is mesmerizing mindreading, crazy karaoke, ventriloquist figures, a soulful song (oh my god, it is really, really soulful) and he does make out with a puppet. You also learn the secret trick as to how you too can get a one-man show in the Cincinnati Fringe.

]]> <![CDATA[Latitude (Recommended) - ]]>

Jeanne MamLuft is a brainy director and accomplished choreographer (and filmmaker), and it shows. Latitude, at the Hanke 1 performance space on Main Street, gives MamLuft & Co. Dance the latitude, or room for maneuver, if you will, to present modern dance in a fresh way.

]]> <![CDATA[Trapped in a Box (Recommended) - ]]> The box Audrey is trapped in is a theater box office, and she is the voice on the phone. Audrey’s calling is indeed the theater, but her goal is the stage itself, not selling tickets to the audience. This funny exercise in frustration was written by Casey Pilkenton, who also plays Audrey and recorded all the various voices of those who call.

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