CityBeat Fringe Festival Coverage

Mad

From the first word uttered on stage, it's clear the audience is eavesdropping on a family in pain. Indeed, writer-producer Jen Dalton with her Fringe Festival production Mad seems to want badly to take strangers where they otherwise clearly should never be: inside.

Inside the house, where a family is forced to cope with and quickly understand their son's recent diagnosis of schizophrenia. Inside a marriage, where the once happy couple struggles to stay together in the face of the illness. And inside a mind, tortured and broken, that still manages to show flashes of compassion and love.

Dalton should know. It was, after all, her brother's illness and her family's difficult story on which Mad was based. It's challenging theatre, to be sure — hard to watch and hard to perform. And yet it's necessary. To see and to tell.

As Mad opens, Rob (played with care by Andrew Bernhard) is moving back into his parents' house. His recent strange behavior, including leaving his car running to steal another car and lead police on a three-county chase, has been blamed on mental illness.

The family had a choice: leave him at a hospital or care for him themselves. Deciding, easily, that Rob would be better with them, Mother (Sue Breving) and Father (Scott Fitzgerald) open their house and their arms and hope that prescribed medicine will be the cure.

The problem is, Rob doesn't take to the pills, explaining that they make "the voices go away, and I miss them when they're gone. They’re the only friends I've got."

His behavior, as he bounces between medication and cold reality, becomes erratic and violent, leading the family to wonder whether home is the best place for Rob.

Dalton presents the personal story straightforwardly. This tale needs no devices or embellishment. It's heart-wrenching enough as it is. One exception is the use of actors as the voices in Rob's head, staged by co-directors Ed Cohen and Dan Doerger. The voices taunt, tease and dare Rob, overlapping conversations he's actually having with conversations going on internally. The effect is effectively maddening.

Mad also illustrates how two people can react so differently to the same situation. When Father walks in on Rob, who is playing The Doors far too loud for the late hour, Rob explains that he's going to be a Rock star. Father starts to interject, then sighs, "Never mind." Mother, on the heels of the diagnosis, at first is in denial. Later, she blames herself: "Something must have happened while I was carrying him." It's the only explanation she can muster.

Mad is, in effect, a love letter Dalton wrote not only to her brother but to her parents. It's a touching ode to familial strength and unconditional love. And the result is great theater. Grade: A

— Rodger Pille

Lusthaus (1914)

This is one of those inter-disciplinary performance pieces that find their natural milieu in Fringe Festivals — just as it's exactly the sort of demi-spectacle upon which successful Fringe Festivals thrive. And, bless conceptor-director Gabe Johnson, it delivers a nicely Fringe-y blend of sensory and intellectual exhilaration.

A bare platform in the backroom at InkTank. A handful of well-placed, well-used white lights. An avalanche of sound and music, mostly 19th-century, designed by Heather Brown. Four chairs. Four bodies — two women, two men — appear in (and out of) muslin-white costumes, designed by Hannah Dringenburg to suggest turn-of-the-20th-century under-garments.

Johnson and the four members of the company devised and polished the series of precise movements. Here it's lyrical, sensual, even sleepy. There it's designedly crude, even clumsy. Often there's an edge of threat, even doom.

Is it theater? Not in any expected sense, though there is a script of sorts. Nor is it quite dance. It's more a living, moving gallery exhibit that makes — then artfully breaks — its own rules.

The bodies become fluid sculpture. The words spoken might be descriptive paragraphs pasted to walls beside objects in a museum.

Back in 1986, dancer-choreographer Martha Clarke presented Lusthaus: Vienna in New York, using music, snippets of disconnected dialogue by historian and playwright Charles Mee and semi-dance movement patterns to investigate the spirit of Vienna in 1900 — a time when old disciplines and restraints were crumbling, when of-the-moment sensory experience was all that seemed to anchor or comfort society. New York Times theater critic Frank Rich greeted the piece with enthusiasm. In 2003, Clarke revisited the idea with less success in Washington, D.C.

Now Johnson and company, using similar movement concepts and some of the script from the Clarke event, revisit Vienna at a later date, 1914 — when World War I simmered on the wind and would soon sweep away the last structures and strictures of the old empire. It was a time, Johnson said, "when men were finding voices and roles in a new society" and when "women who had been held down by society were freeing themselves through sexual means."

Whether all that is put on view in a performance of Lusthaus (1914) is not actually important. Plenty is on view. At times the piece is rife with that sort of relishing nostalgia people can have for times and places they can't actually remember. At other times the piece eliminates detail and exhibits pure emotion shorn of context.

Johnson and most of his company are products of the theater program at Northern Kentucky University, where Lusthaus (1914) was created and presented in workshop performances this spring. The company members are Josh Beshears (who also appears in another Fringe 2007 entry, Stephen Hunter’s On Edge), Katie Kershaw, Michael Stone and Jen Spillane (who appeared in her own solo show, Virtue, in the 2006 Cincinnati Fringe). Grade: B+

— Tom McElfresh

Christmas in Bakersfield

Les Kurkendaal's solo performance in Christmas in Bakersfield, which opened the Cincinnati Fringe Festival for me, was at the same time simple and winning. He poses the following loaded question for his audience: What happens when a man brings his male lover home to his family in Bakersfield, Calif., for the holidays?

Oh, but this isn't really the crux of the problem: The family has recently and grudgingly accepted their son Mike's sexual orientation. The real problem begins as Les steps across the threshold of the family's pricey, gated suburban home. Mike "forgot" to tell his family that his lover is an African American (Les, who is telling us the story).

The fun begins in this autobiographical tale as Mike's family tries to hold in their prejudicial reactions to this quite obviously black man. But they are unable to keep from compulsively making racial slurs. At one point, Mike's father Jeff (who talks like a cross between a used car salesman and a vacuum cleaner) asks Les whether he had any work done on his face, because his nose isn't wide enough to be a black nose.

What makes the performance work is that Kurkendaal obviously doesn't have any rancor for the white folks he encounters. He breezes through his social critique and largely allows the audience to come up with the horrified reactions. The way he tells the tale, which he claims is completely true, the entire situation is quite funny and the various family members come to life with well meaning comments that inadvertently expose their limited experience and views.

Kurkendaal's solo orchestration of the tale makes the performance work. We hear from mother and father first, in satirical tones that suggest both outer decorum and inner impulses. Then other family members are allowed to have their say. First there is Jeff Jr., who sounds a lot like Dad. Then comes Linda, a Latina sister-in-law who actually empathizes with Kurkendaal's predicament, having been in the same position some years before.

Eventually we hear from some shocked neighbors, and finally the extended family on Christmas Eve. The dreaded Grandma arrives (every time her name is mentioned an eerie siren goes off, followed by some music that sounds like something from a '50s cop show). Not one to give away an ending, I will refrain from describing the action of the piece further.

While watching the performance, I began to wonder where lover Mike was in all of this family hubbub. I would have liked to see his reaction to his family's crassness. I eventually decided that Kurkendaal probably needed to keep his lover well out of satirical range. In any case, the play was about the reactions of his lover’s family, not about Mike.

Another small suggestion is that the sound effect for Grandma worked so well, why not try this technique a bit more — perhaps a foghorn sound for Jeff Sr.? There were a few obviously bobbled lines that weren't covered, but I assume this problem will smooth itself out as the festival continues.

Christmas in Bakersfield is a performance that explores the borders — the fringes, if you will — of a society still strongly divided across racial lines. It's a report from the front lines, where county-clubbing whites and urban blacks seldom mix, at least not socially.

Although Kurkendaal tosses off his satire of race relations in a congenial and humorous manner, we never quite forget that he is the victim of institutionalized abuse. Grade: B+

— Mark Sterner

Extreme Puppet Theatre

You’re going to think that I don’t like raunchy puppetry, but actually I do. The first time Triumph the Insult Comic Dog appeared on Conan O’Brien, I absolutely fell apart. I’ve never laughed so hard as I did watching Robert Smiegel’s canine counterpart pump a prize-winning poodle at the world-renowned Westminster Dog Show. It was dirty and daring, filled with raucous (or rock us) energy. So rudeness doesn’t turn me off. But laziness does. And that’s the primary fault that dogs Soque du Soleil’s 60-minute presentation of Extreme Puppet Theatre.

There are some promising comic setups — a recurring documentary-style “Great Moments in Puppet History” and a series of episodes that follow the romance between a glove and a sock. As expected, the players offer a barrage of puns, some of which are amusing, especially a Sapphic mispronunciation of Elizabethan England and a list of Jimi “Hand-ricks” songs played at Woodsock. Near misses include a debate among puppet versions of the great Greek philosophers (mediated, of course, by Sockrates), and a French Revolution fronted by the very cakes that Marie Antoinette (shortened for this evening’s purposes to Marionette) urged her malcontented subjects to eat.

But the performances are slipshod, and the opening night delivery felt like an early dress rehearsal where everyone is just half-hearted and joking around. The skits end without warning or resolution, giving the audience no clue or invitation to applaud. There is no program, so none of the performers or writers are identified for praise or blame. That being said, I commend the lone female puppeteer for being more game and stage-worthy than her two male company members, one of whom played a slovenly circus ringmaster with the moniker Ned Bater, whose surname becomes the source of several easily anticipated jokes midway through the show.

Comedy, however blue or bawdy, still requires energy and timing, and passion for your own material is not optional. In fact, for a show that is truly fare for the Fringe, it’s the only currency you have. A company that seems almost bored with its own show cannot expect an audience to be otherwise. Still, I hope that Soque returns next year with an approach that really shows what it means to go on the offensive. But for this year’s entry, Extreme Puppet Theatre is no Triumph. Grade: D

— Nicholas Korn

The Kid in the Dark

What began as a series of writings in response to losing a loved one has been developed by lyricist Mark Halpin, composer Andrew Smithson and director Richard Hess into what might be one of the high points of this year’s Fringe Festival. The Kid in the Dark is performed by a capable cast of five, which includes Justin Scott Brown, Megan Campanile, Beau Landry, Patrick Martin and Sara Shepherd. While none of them is a vocal powerhouse, their talents are evenly matched and their technique is fine enough to convey the many shades of feeling that sift and shift through the 17 songs that make for a very smart 50-minute set.

However, the standout performance of The Kid in the Dark belongs to Halpin’s lyrics. Each song comes from a well-defined point of view and quickly declares both its ironic take on themes of relationships and loss, while never letting go of the emotions that follow. There is an implicit understanding that everyone involved is there to support Halpin’s lines and, as a result, this is a show you listen to intently for what is said and how.

That challenge is present in the opening number, “Worst Case Scenario,” in which the company asks, when faced with catastrophe, “Who will you be?” Although the issues and questions are serious, Halpin and company give us plenty to laugh about. “The Sum of Us” observes how couples often transpose their feelings for each other to their dogs, and “It’s All Going to End’ details in tango how a jilted lover finds consolation in a series of desserts. Also notable are “Not a Gay Anthem,” which proclaims that “though I’m gay, I’m not political,” and “You Could Do Worse,” a lover’s plea that compares favorably to many well-known Broadway standards.

A song that hits a little closer to the nerve is “A Blank Sheet of Paper,” in which an artist tries to re-create the features of the one he loves, praying ‘Lord, let me render them well.” I also liked “If I’d Only Brought You Flowers,” which wonders if we ever can ever do enough to prove how much we love the people in our lives.

Smithson has composed a series of delightful and engaging melodies that move neatly into minor chords when the moment requires reflection or irony. Director Richard Hess deftly uses a stage bare of everything but his cast and three chairs to efficiently define a series of romantic tensions, as well as moments of regret and revelation. He pairs the actors in alternately straight and gay relationships, suggesting that love and loss are universals that remain blind to gender or preference.

Although the greater part of the evening is devoted to song, the words to “Did You Know” are delivered as a rhyming monologue by Patrick Martin. These few spoken moments tell of a father who is able to remember a trove of Hollywood trivia long after Alzheimer’s has stripped away any memory of his son.

The show ends with the title number, “The Kid in the Dark,” a childhood reminiscence that merges the worlds of theater and life. Because of the magic that takes shape there, it becomes a place we never want to leave. Grade: A

— Nicholas Korn

Let's Get This Party Started

Welcome to Cincinnati Fringe Festival 4.0. Here's where you'll find reviews of all 29 Fringe productions by CityBeat writers and editors. We'll see each show when it opens and post reviews here, ideally on the next day.

Click here for our Hot Issue Fringe Festival preview package.

Enjoy the festival!