2017 Fringe Shows Part Four (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

The last of my reviews for the 2017 Hollywood Fringe Festival...

Shakes-lesque won a bunch of awards this year, and deserved to (although my own votes went to more dramatic pieces).  A sexy very funny romp through the Bard's works a la The Wizard of Oz.  Kinda sorta.  Sleeping off a drunken night of debauchery, Shakespeare dreams pretty much his entire canon mish-mashed with modern music and burlesque.  I almost cried I was laughing so hard!

The Death of Eurydice gave me some seriously mixed feelings.  Because sometimes the two person show matched the quality of their postcard design at left (really that is so gorgeous) but sometimes it did not.  So my review ends up "mixed" but not for anything bad but rather what seems like a few missteps.  But I enjoyed it, was moved and intrigued.

The Definition of Man is a two character work that describes itself as "a sexier, more violent Waiting for Godot."  Cannot agree.  Becket's play is fundamentally about Nothing whereas this work--for all its setting of the end of the world--is about Everything.  The moment.  The truth of two people communicating at long last, breaking down their barriers and finding in each other something more than fear or desire.

Got a Minute is part of the so-called "You Project" which marks a collaboration between The Lake Arrowhead Repertory Theatre Company and The Project.  We the audience in theory sit down at a social gathering--it looks like an almost-cocktail party--to hear people talk about their lives.  It works, although not always with consistent interest or passion.  Yet I felt moved, part of these folks' lives (one of whom shared an extremely interesting common life event with your's truly...).

Just Sayin' is from the same collaboration, but seemed the stronger of the two (there were four in all--alas could not make the other two).  This one was the more stylized, without a specif "anchor" in the real world and with the audience more clearly playing the part of whoever-each-person needed to address.  That may have had something to do with it, plus the frankly more mature content.