Scout's Honor

This cute, exactly-campy-enough comedy at the Fringe Festival, comprised of a sketch about the Boy Scouts (Snipe Hunt) and a longer and even funnier one about the Girls Scouts (Becky's Beaver), should get a special merit badge for its warmth: it aims to tickle with a light hand and it succeeds. The talented adult cast plays, with just an exception or two, kids of scouting age - the same actors are in both stories with changed-up genders when needed - and happily everyone has been led down the same trail where no one goes too far with the kid-traits. Each story centers comically on a Scout who can't fit in: in the first, it's a wussy gayboy who asks at campfire sing-a-long if anyone knows anything from Pippin, and in the second, it's a nerdgirl who can't get with the big beaver-hunting program. It's all good, not-exactly-clean fun, in which each of the able and amiable actors gets to strut his or her funny stuff front and center in at least one role. Two stand-outs: Robin Reed, whose inner monologue as a girl scout likening her crush on her galpal to a S'more (soft in the center, squashed by the hard graham-cracker reality) is the show's big "awwww" moment, and handsome Chris Caron who looks hot even in a girl scout uniform.