Mitzi Morris (a.k.a. playwright Kevin Kriegel) has everything a swinging 60s super-spy needs: a M-like English authority figure (Michael Colavolpe), a bedazzled PPK and a handbag full of lethal gadgets, and a John Barry-esque theme song (composed by John deHaas). Likewise, her second Orlando Fringe outing If Looks Could Kill! has everything an effervescent espionage spoof should have: a voluptuous villainess (Jamie-Lynn Markos) with a gynecological appellation and a platoon of disposable henchmen (Austin Romero), slapstick kung-fu smack-downs, and wink-wink-nudge-nudge innuendo in every other line.

Director Kevin Bee has the talented cast of this likable lightweight lark ticking like a time bomb, turning out the tightest comic timing I seen so far at Fringe. Mitzi's Monte Carlo caper, which involves an elaborate diamond-for-blueprints exchange, comes to a completely arbitrary conclusion, but as Agent 69 herself might say, at least it comes. If drag and double entendre are your bag, you could do a lot worse than a date with this dazzling dame.

Mitzi Morris in “If Looks Could Kill!”

Silver Dollar Productions (Orlando, FL)

Rating: G-14 (comic violence, adult language, innuendo)

Run Time: 60 minutes

Yellow Venue

$10

Genre: Musical, Comedy

Websites: www.mitzimorris.com

www.facebook.com/mitzimorrisfanpage

http://orlandofringe.ticketleap.com/mitzi-morris-in-if-looks-could-kill/

Show Times:

Sun, May 19 2013, 7:45p.m. – 8:45p.m.

Mon, May 20 2013, 9:00p.m. – 10:00p.m.

Wed, May 22 2013, 7:15p.m. – 8:15p.m.

Fri, May 24 2013, 11:30p.m. – Sat, May 25 2013, 12:30a.m.

Sat, May 25 2013, 9:30p.m. – 10:30p.m.

A waitress (Kelly Coy) and wanderer (Sage Starkey) meet-cute in an all-night diner and take off to see the widely-advertised Rock City. A geeky guy (Wesley Slade) waits alone in Roswell for the aliens to land. An adoring granddaughter (Kelly Coy) takes her ailing, inarticulate Grampy (James Meadows) to the Alamo to reunite with his late wife. A jittery bride (Kayla Alvarez) detours from the chapel to tour Niagra Falls with an unconventional guide (Chris Siciliano). The three stories — along with preppie frenemies at play in Coney Island, and estranged sisters scattering ashes in Glacier Bay — support the loosely connected vignettes that form Adam Mathias' and Brad Alexander's Off-Broadway musical See Rock City and Other Destinations.

Director Joel Warren, transplanting this production from a recent mounting at Eustis' Bay Street Players, has produced a pleasantly polished piece populated with engaging young players, and the theme of forming human connections jerked a tear or two from me. The pop-pastiche music, while easy enough on the ears, is never earth-shaking, with a couple minor key numbers grow monotonous; musical director Timothy D. Turner's two-piece band sometimes drowns out the unamplified vocals, so try to sit down front. See Rock City is more fully-formed than most Fringe musicals this year, and boasts some fine performances, but could use a peppier pace. I was with it for the first 70 minutes or so, but frankly my focus started to fade before its 90 minutes were up.

See Rock City & Other Destinations

Bay Street Players, Inc. (Eustis, FL)

Rating: G14 (Language)

Run Time: 90 minutes

Silver Venue

$10

Genre: Musical, Comedy

Websites: www.baystreetplayers.org

http://orlandofringe.ticketleap.com/see-rock-city–other-destinations/

Show Times:

Tue, May 21 2013, 7:45p.m. – 9:15p.m.

Fri, May 24 2013, 5:15p.m. – 6:45p.m.

Sun, May 26 2013, 12:00p.m. – 1:30p.m.

Read all our Fringe coverage HERE!

I've been eagerly anticipating The Three Pussy Riot Sisters as the homecoming of Fringe-favorite writer/director David Lee (Jaws The Musical, Pie-Face), and expected another sly serio-comic sendup along the lines of Aunt Vanya and Nirvanov, the first two installments of his “Chekhov Mash-Up Trilogy.” What I found instead was something much more profound; rather than a campy fictional drama, this show is an impassioned and powerful multimedia polemic painstakingly pulled verbatim from primary sources.

Nadya (Sarah Mathews), Masha (Courtney Moors), and Katya (Sarah Hankin) made international headlines when they were arrested in 2012 for performing their song “Punk Prayer: Mother of God Dive Putin Away” inside a Russian Orthodox cathedral to protest the collusion between Putin's repressively regime and the corrupt state church, currently led by an ex-KGB crony. The case, which landed the members in a Soviet-style gulag in the same town Chekhov's literary Three Sisters longed to escape from, became a cause célèbre in the western media, but I was unaware of the depth of the girls' political convictions until hearing their erudite closing courtroom statements quoted at length. Chekhov's novel becomes a framing device that ties the legal transcripts and jailhouse interviews together, creating parallels between the sisters' naive dream of a more civilized Russia and Pussy Riot's equally hopeless idealism, as the the actresses recite relevant passages from the book in alternating unison like a Cyrillic spin on Macbeth's witches.

Pussy Riot's brand of feminist agitprop provocatively challenges not only Putin's oppression, but the entire patriarchal corporate state structure that western civilization is built on, and their litany of failures of Russia's school system and social services sounds frightening familiar to this American. Like the jailed rockers, these three attractive, articulate actresses “destroy the stereotype that a feminist is an ugly frustrated harridan,” and Lee (with assistance from Casey Blanton's cleverly cut video) has done a masterful job researching and editing the ripped-from-reality text. The Three Pussy Riot Sisters is easily the most intellectually agitating and anger-inducing show I've seen at Fringe in ages, and I mean that as a high compliment.

The Three Pussy Riot Sisters

Kangagirl and Ant Farm Productions (New York, NY)

Rating: G14 (Adult themes)

Run Time: 70 minutes

Silver Venue

$11

Genre: Solo, Comedy, Drama, and Multimedia

Websites: https://www.facebook.com/events/297153220414372/?context=create

http://orlandofringe.ticketleap.com/the-three-pussy-riot-sisters/

Video: Info and interviews: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UzE_8yEzyU&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Free Pussy Riot!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLRn_yZkU9s&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Show Times:

Sun, May 19 2013, 6:15p.m. – 7:45p.m.

Wed, May 22 2013, 11:00p.m. – Thu, May 23 2013, 12:30a.m.

Sat, May 25 2013, 10:15p.m. – 11:45p.m.

Sun, May 26 2013, 4:20p.m. – 5:50p.m.

Read all our Fringe coverage HERE!

In 2012 I named Danny Feedback's Crack Rock Opera the “Worst, Worst, Worst Anything Anywhere Anytime” that I'd seen on stage (and yes, I've seen Spider-Man: Turn Out The Dark). So I was understandably apprehensive about returning to the re-mounted show at Fringe; after all, at least the production I saw at the Parliament House allowed you to order alcohol during the show. As it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the show has been given a radical overhaul for this incarnation. It may never rise to the level of “good,” but this makeover elevated it from “utterly abominable” up to “intermittently interesting among the awfulness.”

This version of The Crack Rock Opera appears to actually be a prequel to the show I saw previously. Danielle Feedback desperately wants to have a baby, but her paralyzing fear of fellatio (known as “Lovelace Syndrome”) is getting in the way. Aided by a Yiddish hot dog psychiatrist (he got his degree in phallic Rorschach from “Hebrew National University”) and a Reno 911-reject cop, Danielle is finally impregnated during a game of dirty Twister by a time-traveling hermaphrodite with a neon dildo, who knocks her up while getting her hooked on “jenkem,” a halucinagenic made from fermented shit. For the grand finale, Danielle finally gives birth to a werewolf, a frankfurter, and an infant with an enormous penis which she immediately sticks in her mouth. And, scene.

In the plus column, Evan Shafran's art direction has an appealingly amateurish “avant-garbage” circa 1986 aesthetic, and the dialogue includes a few clever single-entendre quips (“You don't have a cervix.”/”I have a colon.”/”More like a semi colon!”) and obscene puns: wait until you see the “kitty porn.” (Or don't.) Sadly, the music seems to have taken a big step backwards, as the drugged-out Floydian songs I semi-enjoyed were replaced with bass-centric tuneless tunes that sound like they were composed in a couple minutes on a toy Casio keyboard, all sung in a tone-deaf falsetto that effs up any chance of understanding the lyrics.

Unlike the last production, this time the cast seems to have rehearsed some (or at least read the script before stepping on stage) but Crack Rock Opera is still the poster child for “hot mess.” At one point on opening night, a technical miscue made the harried stagehand shout “Sorry!” from backstage, and a particularly prurient portion prompted a poor audience member to loudly proclaim “I'm never having sex again!” I know how they both felt. But don't lose hope, Danny Feedback fans: at the rate this show is developing, in a couple years they may have something trash culture cultists can call “so bad it's almost fun.”

Crack Rock Opera, The

Danny Feedback (Orlando, FL)

Rating: M (Adult language, Strong sexual content)

Run Time: 60 minutes

Green Venue

$11

Genre: A Comedy, with Music

Websites: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Crack-Rock-Opera/133062356771897

http://orlandofringe.ticketleap.com/the-crack-rock-opera/

Show Times:

Sun, May 19 2013, 11:15p.m. – Mon, May 20 2013, 1:00a.m.

Mon, May 20 2013, 8:30p.m. – 9:30p.m.

Wed, May 22 2013, 9:45p.m. – 10:45p.m.

Fri, May 24 2013, 10:45p.m. – 11:45p.m.

Sat, May 25 2013, 12:00a.m. – 1:00a.m.

Sun, May 26 2013, 9:30p.m. – 10:30p.m.

Read all of our Fringe coverage HERE!

At its best, acting is an exercise in artistic empathy in which one person inhabits the soul of another, and that's exactly what the two-person cast of Brutal Imagination achieves with breathtaking impact. In 1994, Susan Smith (Melissa Landy) notoriously drove her car into a lake, drowning her young boys in the back seat, and blamed it on a phantom black carjacker. In an inspired twist, Robert Wright portrays the mythical kidnapper and engages Smith in an elliptical dialogue on race, community, and forgiveness.

Far from a straightforward crime procedural, Cornelius Eady's script is layered with evocative abstract imagery, freely bending reality in the recounting of this infamous atrocity. An impressive set of fragmented dockwork and an original cinematic score by Igor Yachmenov make for an appropriate backdrop, and Austen Edwards' direction effectively emphaizes the piece's poetry as the performers breathe in unison or pace in parallel figure-eights, cradling teddy bears like babies.

There are many moments that sparkle with dramatic tension, as when Wright exhorts “Uncle Tom in heaven” to make sense of society's eager acceptance of imaginary African American assailants. Wright, who has the impassioned intensity of a young Terrence Howard, is so talented that he nearly overshadows his co-star, but Landy holds her own in the hysterics department when the walls of her deceipt finally crumble. If this represents the quality of artists currently coming out of UCF's drama program, I have firm faith in our theatrical future.

Brutal Imagination

Project Spotlight (Orlando, FL)

Rating: G14 (adult language, adult themes)

Run Time: 50 minutes

Orange Venue

$7

Genre: Drama

Websites: www.facebook.com/ProjectSpotlightUCF

http://orlandofringe.ticketleap.com/brutal-imagination/

Show Times:

Fri, May 17 2013, 5:30p.m. – 6:30p.m.

Tue, May 21 2013, 9:15p.m. – 10:15p.m.

Thu, May 23 2013, 7:45p.m. – 8:45p.m.

Sun, May 26 2013, 12:00p.m. – 1:00p.m.

See all of our Fringe coverage HERE!

Every year at Fringe I seem to find a fantastical freak-show of physical theater to fall in love with, like Miss Hiccup (who returns to the Festival this year), Poofy Du Vey, or Schave & Reilly. This time around, Wonderheads won my Fringe Crush fealty with their touching triumph LOON.

When we first meet Francis (Kate Braidwood), he's trying futilely to spread his beloved late mother's ashes in the rain, only to smear them on his shabby suit. Slogging back to his lonely apartment, which literally fits inside a suitcase, Francis spends his time mopping movie theater floors and waiting hopefully for the connection from his telephone dating service (Bachelor #378: Favorite color, plaid; talents, none) that never comes.

If this was the plot of a conventional play, it would be hideously depressing. But because Francis wears a giant bulbous, balding mask-head and communicates solely through gestures and movements, his plight becomes pathetically endearing instead of simply morose. Inspired by the sci-fi comic books he finds comfort in, Francis eventually abandons uncaring reality and climbs to the heavens, retrieving the moon to be his mistress. It's hard to have a LTR with a celestial object, and despite their whirlwind romance she inevitably wanes.

LOON bathes its audience in the purest magic of imaginative theatre, needing little more than the movement of a simple glowing orb to make viewers gasp with childlike delight. Whether slouching, swaggering, or slipping into a brief unexpected Bollywood dance break, Braidwood's body language so expressive that Francis' frozen countenance actually seems to change. My only regret is recommending this show in my preview to families with small children. While there is nothing offensive or objectionable in it, the dark emotions explored are definitely intended for adults, and I'm not ashamed to admit LOON's bittersweet ending brought me to tears. Not to be missed.

LOON

Wonderheads (Portland, OR)

Rating: General

Run Time: 60 minutes

Green Venue

$11

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Mask, Physical Theatre, Puppetry, Living Cartoon

Websites: www.wonderheads.com

http://orlandofringe.ticketleap.com/loon/

Video: www.vimeo.com/channels/wonderheads

Show Times:

Sat, May 18 2013, 11:45a.m. – 12:45p.m.

Sun, May 19 2013, 2:15p.m. – 3:15p.m.

Tue, May 21 2013, 7:00p.m. – 8:00p.m.

Fri, May 24 2013, 5:30p.m. – 6:30p.m.

Sat, May 25 2013, 8:30p.m. – 9:30p.m.

Sun, May 26 2013, 12:45p.m. – 1:45p.m.

See all our Fringe coverage HERE!

Bruce Wayne throws a hell of a party (even if they do occasionally end in mayhem or improvised tantrums). MAP Foundation and A Comic Shop are hoping to rival those extravagant bashes and nod to Tim Burton’s opening scene in his 1989 version of Batman with a Wayne Casino Night at the Geek Easy. It’ll be a Batman-themed night of casino-style gaming with live music from Marc with a C and Chyna Maykit and giveaways including passes to Universal Studios. It’s a free event but donations are encouraged, as the event will benefit the Zebra Coalition, an LGBT-leaning community resource for youth in crisis. To top it all off, there’s karaoke, which would be the perfect opportunity to embrace glorious dark knight-related pop like Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” or U2’s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” so long as Bearaoke’s songlist is Batman movie soundtrack-obliging. May luck be a lady (preferably of the Vicki Vale variety). – Ashley Belanger

We all love movie music. Even those who say they don’t hum movie music to themselves when no one’s looking. If you’re one of these secret soundtrack lovers, be not afraid, for now you can love your favorites vicariously through one of O-Town’s most beloved ensembles. The Orlando Gay Chorus, letting you experience your musical indulgences since 1982, is ready for their close-up this weekend at the Plaza Live, as they present their 2013 spring concert, We’re Ready for Our Close-Up: A Tribute to the Music of the Movies. Under the direction of artistic director and conductor Jim Brown, the Orlando Gay Chorus will take you on a musical trip spanning decades through the world of Hollywood music, and by extension, through our own attachments to those films. Whether you hum in secret or sing out loud, this is a trip down memory lane that you won’t want to miss. – Katherine Ramirez Massey

Tod Kimbro’s voice was also nothing short of impressive. The duo covered several recognizable songs by artists ranging from Louis Armstrong to Wiz Khalifa. Almost all of the songs performed were related to the color black (hence the show’s title), though there was one medley that paid tribute to all the colours of the rainbow. It is Fringe, after all. Another nod to the color black came at the very beginning of the show: Apparently, the lighting tech missed a cue, resulting in a quip reminding him not to take the show’s title too literally. Scripted or flubbed, it worked.

Their cohort, Tanisha, made a valiant effort to steal the spotlight, but Blue clearly wasn’t going to be upstaged in her own theater. She came back with several more numbers that reminded the audience whose house they were in. I left the theater with the sense that Orlando is better as a whole for having her. Blue’s talents help Orlando’s arts compete on both the national and international stage.

Cocktail service was available during the show, a service not permitted during any other show in the festival. Such a luxury truly enhanced the cabaret experience.

Blue & Tod: In the Black

Baby BLUESTAR Productions and Tod Kimbro present  – Orlando, FL

Rating: M

Warnings:

Run Time: 60 minutes

Black Venue

$11

Genre: Music, comedy, dance

Website

Show Times:

Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 11:00 PM

Friday, May 17, 2013, 11:00 PM

Saturday, May 18, 2013, 8:15 PM – 9:15 PM

Wednesday, May 22, 2013, 10:30 PM

Friday, May 24, 2013, 11:00 PM

Saturday, May 25, 2013, 9:30 PM

Sunday, May 26, 2013, 4:20 PM

Read all our Fringe coverage HERE!

Jim Loucks swerved seamlessly in and out of different personas, singlehandedly representing the townsfolk of a rural community. His garb was unassuming, and the stage was completely barren with the exception of a lone bench. There wasn’t even a soundtrack to aid him. Loucks masterfully pulled the audience in using only his craft. Of the assortment of characters portrayed by Loucks, his representation of a Baptist preacher stood out as the most gripping. Audiences may feel as if they’ve been transported to a chapel somewhere in Montgomery, far away from the Fringe Festival.

Cemetery Golf

Jim Loucks – Venice, CA

Rating: G

Warnings: N/A

Run Time: 70 minutes

Black Venue

$10

Genre: Solo show, Comedy, Drama, Storytelling

Website
Show Times:

Thursday, May 16, 2013, 8:30 PM – 9:40 PM

Sunday, May 19, 2013, 4:30 PM – 5:40 PM

Monday, May 20, 2013, 10:30 PM – 11:40 PM

Thursday, May 23, 2013, 6:00 PM – 7:10 PM

Friday, May 24, 2013, 5:45 PM – 6:55 PM

Saturday, May 25, 2013, 5:45 PM – 6:55 PM

Sunday, May 26, 2013, 7:45 PM – 8:55 PM

Read all our Fringe coverage HERE!