It should be a recipe for a delightfully subversive evening: DC’s own talented commedia dell’arte troupe, Faction of Fools, performing a sly comedy by none other than Machiavelli, reinterpreting his classic satire The Mandrake with commedia characters and big-nosed masks.

If you want to see two likable, funny, complicated people being kind of silly about falling in love, then No Rules Theatre Company’s production of Stop Kiss should be on your going-out list in the next two weeks.

It seems unfair to consider Who’s Your Baghdaddy? or How I Started the Iraq War as part of the Fringe festival, since the production values are at a professional level. Then again, the show does depict the Deputy Director of the CIA as the Pope, so maybe it fits in Fringe, after all. Especially because it’s just plain fun.

John Feffer is a bona fide Capital Fringe star, and he’s back for the third year in a row with The Bird, his latest solo show, spinning a variety of yarns into a profound and entertaining fabric.

Night Sky might be the least Fringe-y show ever put on at Capital Fringe. It’s a straight play — fourth wall resolutely in place — about the drama between a stubborn and lively older woman and the people close to her over, deciding whether she is going to be put into a nursing home or boldly strike out to get a mortgage and stay independent.

Karim Muasher and Carrie Brown have the comfortable camaraderie, polished stage presence and patiently-honed wackiness typical of Fringe festival circuit regulars. Their well-traveled The VindleVoss Family Circus Spectacular! is a pleasant road-tested little package of offbeat clowning with just a touch of poignancy.

There are only two ways to engage with CRAVE. Either you set yourself at an appreciative distance, admire the passionate efforts of the actors and then walk out at the end as if you had just watched a well-performed string quartet, your day proceeding as normal. Or you can connect to it, and be deeply affected.

My Name is Pablo Picasso technically has a twist, but it’s so standard and obvious that you may guess it from this review alone. The twist isn’t the selling point; the engaging debate that ensues is.

UPheaval: fearless, talented and extremely lithe air-dancers from the DC Aerial Collective do their thing. What more do you need to know?

Look, ma, they made The Oregon Trail: The Generational-Touchstone Computer Game into The Oregon Trail: Quest for the West!: The Musical! Too bad it somehow doesn’t quite deliver on its delirious promise.