Blogs: Author Archive

I started watching Dance Moms because Toddlers & Tiaras looked too creepy. Then Dance Moms got too ugly, so I switched to … um, Toddlers & Tiaras. Now I’ve seen Little Miss Fringe Festival, and I’m thinking I should probably be on a list somewhere. Jeff Jones plays our host, a sleazy kids’-pageant impresario who’s sort of like Marcus...
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Once upon a time, some of the most elaborate Orlando Fringe shows were those with a distinctly local focus. As costs and ambitions rose, however, that seemed to become less and less the case. Who’s going to go to the trouble of writing, scoring and staging an entire musical that can never play out...
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Would you like to see a Broadway musical integrated into a TV game show, seamlessly and organically? Then girlfriend, keep your ass away from Michael Wanzie. The point of an outing like his Celebrity Match Game is to perpetually and defiantly court utter collapse with a performance that gratuitously mashes up two already-gratuitous festival tropes....
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I have seen God. And I’m elated to report that He’s everything we always hoped He would be. First of all, He’s a brilliant standup comedian with a wicked sense of humor (as you may have already surmised from the way your life has turned out since high school). For another, He is indeed...
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This is how it happens. You see the promotional materials for Carolann Valentino’s Burnt at the Steak. You read that it is a comedic portrayal of her experiences working in a New York steakhouse. You think to yourself that this could be fun – Hell’s Kitchen as a one-woman show, perhaps. Mere minutes into the...
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RibbitRePublic Theatre’s Boygroove (2005) was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen at the Orlando Fringe: a sendup of a seemingly one-dimensional subject (boy bands) that revealed layers upon layers of motivation and semiotics. The Canadian company’s Be a Man (which actually predates Boygroove) is almost identical when it comes to structure, with a four-man ensemble...
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When a show is titled Hitler’s Li’l Abomination, you feel kind of weird telling people “I loved it! It reminded me of all my relatives!” But if you grew up among Germans – especially ones who were only a few years removed from The Old Country – you’ll be beside yourself with nostalgic laughter as monologist...
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Tommy Nugent wants to tell you a story. He wants you to know how he evolved from a jaded, politically disengaged Fringe-circuit monologist into a zealous champion of the 99 percent – all because the Occupy movement came to his hometown of Detroit. He wants to tell you what he saw there, who he...
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The critical lexicon shouldn’t include phrases like “Hey, I couldn’t do it.” It’s hard to keep that thought at bay, though, when you’re watching someone like Robb Zeiser perform his feats of dexterity and concentration. He juggles metal tumblers. He holds cardboard blocks aloft in precarious, Escher-like formations. He balances more things on his...
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“Cute without being cutesy” is a tough needle to thread, but The Boxer manages it pretty ably. In writer Matt Lyle’s Depression-era romcom (previously staged in Dallas, Chicago and New York), a young woman (Gemma Fearn) poses as a man in order to stay afloat in a brutal economy. The best gig she finds is...
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