Capital Fringe Festival is back for its twelfth year. Photo courtesy of Capital Fringe.
The Capital Fringe Festival wouldn’t be the Capital Fringe Festival without a few moments of spontaneous joy and a few moments of puzzling spectacle. Last night’s preview event offered more than a few of both.
Now in its twelfth year, the annual festival showcases independently produced performance pieces in music, theater, and dance. As of 2015, the festival’s home base is the Logan Fringe Arts Space in Trinidad, a former auto body shop outfitted with three black box theaters, gallery space, and an open-air bar. A $5 Fringe button (or $7 after the festival opens) is required for access to any of the festival’s events, and admission for each performance costs a flat fee of $17.
Thursday’s event featured four-minute morsels from 15 of this year’s 88 shows, as well as a few seemingly random interstitial videos including a Bad Lip Reading of The Empire Strikes Back and an ominous dystopian vision of modern society with brief clips of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in their earlier years. Why, you ask? Well, why not?
(Obligatory politics check-in: Yes, there were a few references to the president of the United States, and a few more to the instantly iconic phrases that have defined his administration so far. As with most Trump jokes, they were low-hanging fruit, but probably unavoidable.)
The previews ran the gamut from silly to serious, modest to outsized, polished to slapdash. Taken together, they represented the totality of what makes the Fringe experience special. The audience cheered every performer with vigor, even as one person behind me could be heard muttering at one point, “I don’t even understand what this is.” It’s fine if you don’t understand. Embrace the ambiguity.
Here at DCist, we’ll be guiding you through this year’s festival, which runs from July 6 to 30, with reviews, features, and roundups. Standard caveat: This festival is huge and we won’t get to everything. But we’ll do our best to give you a representative flavor.
For now, here’s what went down last night.
SING-SONG
Help Me, Wanda! pays tribute to rock legend Wanda Jackson. (Photo courtesy of Capital Fringe)
The night’s first big jolt of energy came from Toni Rae Salmi, whose one-woman cabaret Help Me Wanda pays loving tribute to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend Wanda Jackson. Backed by a guitar and a piano, Salmi blazed the stage with her rendition of Elvis Presley’s “Hard Headed Woman.” And lest anyone scoff at the trio’s ragtag appearance, Salmi assured the crowd, “We may look like your dad’s garage band, but we know what we’re doing.”
Release: A Rock Opera looks similarly audacious. Its lead has a voice in the Freddie Mercury tradition, with aggressive high notes that soar to the heavens. The show follows three men as they navigate some of life’s greatest challenges: PTSD, autism, and — “since it’s a rock opera,” the lead actor said — drug abuse. If a searing guitar solo is any indication, this show will indeed rock.
For something in a more traditional vein of musical theatre, Life: A Comic Opera in Three Short Acts looks to satisfy. During the preview, four actors playing Mom, Dad, petulant son, and preening daughter dazzled with intricate, precise choreography that indulged all of musical theater’s most primal pleasures, up to and including the climactic chorus line. The show explores “our common humanity through a family’s milestones” — set to the catchiest of numbers.
The four-minute preview format didn’t do any favors to Nasty Women of the Ecstatic Mystical Rainbow Retreat, which has the highest of high concepts. It’s the story of The Bacchae, an ancient Greek tragedy from Euripedes of Oedipus Rex fame, conveyed through…rap? If it can work for Alexander Hamilton, why not anything else? This one appears to be an intriguing work in progress.
JUICY DRAMA
Clara Bow: Becoming ‘It’ follows the 1920 Hollywood star. (Photo courtesy of Capital Fringe)
There are enough contemporary woes in real life right now. How about a throwback to the 1920s? Glitz, glamour, institutionalized sexism made manifest in the early years of the exploitative Hollywood system…fun and games! Clara Bow: Becoming It promises to have fun with the more pleasant aspects of the era it’s depicting, without turning a blind eye to the social ills of the time. The costumes look fabulous, the accents are pronounced, and look, there’s even a reference to fake news. You can’t escape the present.
Nothing piqued this critic’s curiosity more than the gripping blend of laugh lines and melancholy tangents in Abortion Road Trip, in which two friends go on a road trip…so one of them can get an abortion. (It’s really all there in the title.) The concept of exploring the dynamics of a friendship rocked by an unexpected pregnancy seem ripe for the intimacy of the “road trip” format, and the lead actresses pulled off a difficult tonal mix with grace.
A group of insane asylum residents are led outside while blindfolded and told to remain in place until their warden comes to collect them. But time ticks by and she doesn’t. Is it a social experiment? A crime of torture? A cruel joke? The Blind might answer those questions, but the true test of its merit will be how it interrogates their deeper meanings.
If the claustrophobia that comes with a sudden loss of vision is too dark to behold, Exit, Pursued by a Bear might offer a lighter remedy — unless the title becomes literal, of course. Nan Carter (Katrina Clark) opens with a litany of grievances directed at her abusive husband, and two of her closest friends join her as the wrongheaded beau looks on from the pathetic position of being tied to a chair. Okay, it doesn’t sound any lighter than Exit above, but I promise, there are funny jokes to be had.
WHAT…WAS…THAT…?
Howl in the Time of Trump brings the Allen Ginsberg poem into the 21st century. (Photo courtesy of Capital Fringe)
Thursday’s preview night got off to a mystifying start with HOWL: In the Time of Trump. Ostensibly a modern update of the Allen Ginsberg poem, the 21st century elements of this update didn’t show themselves. This show will likely become more clear when viewed in full. To confirm that assumption, take a gander at the show description on its Fringe page.
For those who caught last year’s riotous romp Amelia Earhart…in Space, the absurdist tone and several of the performers featured in I’m Margaret Thatcher, I’m Is! will come as a welcome, familiar source of unhinged hilarity and bewilderment. This latest show from AnyStage Theater tells the story of the Iron Lady through the lens of three different portrayers, each of whom brings her (or his) own, highly unusual spin. Meryl Streep this ain’t. Funny it is.
The Thatcher show appears downright coherent next to Numesthesia. On Thursday night, three men walked onstage: two carrying bowls and pans which served as musical instruments, and a third wearing a disarming pair of sunglasses. Those jaunty specs don’t quite add up when the man starts talking about a rare condition that causes him to see numbers as people. In character, the man continues to talk, growing more and more excited, even breaking the fourth wall to invite the audience to attend his Fringe show. He becomes so passionate in fact (still in character — I think) that a crew member lifts him off the ground and ushers him offstage. If this show turns out to be a more self-aware version of the Jim Carrey flop The Number 23, count me in.
MISCELLANEOUS DELIGHTS
The sweet vibe of The Kind of Thing That Would Happen was intriguing. (Photo courtesy of Capital Fringe)
In the brief portion of The Kind of Thing That Would Happen shown during the Fringe preview, a young male dancer and a young female dancer showcased their impressive gifts with a sweet, limber routine. The event page description reveals that the show also includes monologue in an effort to determine what makes a good story in the post-truth era. That’s a meaty theme to chew on, but the pure pleasure of the preview bit suggests the show will be enjoyable even on a surface level.
Before Trey Parker and Matt Stone conquered TV animation with South Park, and even longer before they conquered Broadway with The Book of Mormon, the pair wrote a sweet, silly, profane, gory musical with 40 puppets called Cannibal!. HalfMad Theatre was brave enough to put it on, and with considerable style: The puppets look impressive and the vocals are on-point.
The Regulars offers a little local flavor along with social commentary on dating apps that’s reminiscent of Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang’s Netflix series Master of None. The show follows a young black woman as she navigates the D.C. dating scene. Spoiler alert: It’s not always smooth sailing. The preview scene featured the night’s best punchline, which comes as such a surprise that I wouldn’t dare spoil it. See it for yourself.
Preview night ended as this recap will, with 8-Bit Circus S*it (their censorship, not mine), which is exactly what it sounds like. What does it sound like? Fair question. Expect gnarly costumes and, oh yeah, PYRO FIGHTERS. Dudes fighting each other with actual fire. This is either going to be your thing or it very much won’t.
Capital Fringe Festival launches July 6. Tickets and a full list of shows are available here.
