Victory at the Dirt Palace

Photo/Abigail Feldman

An excellently acted production that somehow managed to go right over my head. Inspired in parts by King Lear and today's oversaturated say-nothing do-everything media, Adriano Shaplin's Victory at the Dirt Palace focuses on the fractious relationship between bombastic James Mann (Paul Schnabel) and his ice-cold daughter, K (Stephanie Viola). What does it say that a terrorist attack triggers a war that lasts all of four minutes, and whose panic is underwhelmed by the twice-removed resolve of rivaling news anchors? How should we read into K's father issues when it turns out that despite being a successful woman, she requires being dominated by her sycophantic assisstant, Spence (Shaplin)? Truth be told, these are questions I'm too tired to try and answer: the play goes by so quickly, with such striking performances and reversals--James's jealous, bastard of an assistant, Andrew (Drew Friedman), takes control, that it's hard to put a button on it, but I'd certainly like to revisit the Riot Group.

The Amish Project

The real-life 2006 shootings in Pennsylvania's Amish country, which resulted when a local milk man held a schoolhouse hostage with the intention of molesting the girls, are the inspiration for this extraordinary solo show, both written and performed by Jessica Dickey and clearly a highlight of this year's Fringe Festival. The play, which gives voice to fictionalized characters each touched in one way or another by the tragedy, is an accomplished piece of work that avoids sensationalism: its aim is higher and speaks in part to the power of grace and of forgiveness. Dickey's performance is stunning - while always costumed in simple Amish attire she transforms in an instant from a young schoolgirl who witnessed the murders to the gunman's widow to a police liasion and so on - and although the play as written could conceivably be performed by an ensemble of actors, some of its main themes gain a deeper resonance as performed by only one. This play should have a long life beyond the Festival.

Big Beat/Back Flow

Photo/Makoto Takeuchi

In the late 1970s, Walter Thompson wanted to find a way to conduct what were essentially jam sessions, and invented a language that would allow him to spontaneously compose a piece, drawing on the energies of any artist around him, be they dancers, musicians, actors, and so on. This technique, known as soundpainting, is the spine of Big Beat/Back Flow, but the visceral effect is like watching Pollock do theater. Evan Mazunik, a James Lipton-like soundpainter, eventually manages to build a lyrical jazz structure out of the chaos (kudos to Eric John Eigner's steady percussion), and that's impressive--to a degree--but the evening is meant for those who get their kicks freebasing to jam bands and Brian Eno. On the whole, the sound of Josh Sinton laughing through his saxophone or Ryan Kotler squeaking two bass bows together is slightly more entertaining and musical than nails on a chalkboard. There's a method to the madness--behold the elegant beauty of chaos--but that doesn't make it any less mad. On a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being "More like backwash than back flow" and 5 being "A picture's worth a thousand notes," Big Beat/Back Flow gets a 1.5.

The Gargoyle Garden

Photo/R. Bratspies

It's hard to critique a children's musical--after all, I'm not the target audience--but I will say that Jeff LaGreca's latest work is the opposite of his a capella show, Minimum Wage. That works to his advantage, since kids are more likely to tune in for the killer plot than musicality, so my stovepipe hat comes off to The Gargoyle Garden. Crossing between Mary Poppins and Harry Potter, the show follows the eccentric Edgar Allen Densmore (Patrick Henney) as he tries to evade the evil Brother Keyes (John C. Taylor) long enough to befriend Annabel Lee (Emily Bordonaro); the easily digestible moral is that it's alright to be different. With the help of the chimney-sweeping narrator (talented Allan Gillespie) and a few friendly gargoyles (headlined by Brian DePetris), the show plays like a youthful Edward Scissorhands, and although at one point it practically steals the music to Sondheim's "You Are Not Alone," the show is sincere enough at heart that such similarities comes across more as homage than plagiarism. On a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being "Not abnormal but abysmal," and 5 being "Mysterious and spooky, and all together ooky," The Gargoyle Garden gets a 3.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

Interpretive movement, live musical underscoring, short collaged dramatic scenes: this hourlong Fringe Festival piece, inspired by the same-named poem by Randall Jarrell, gets points for theatricality and ambition. Unfortunately, the execution isn't up to the job of unifying all the theatrical business. The show's conceit is that the action moves freely between past and present and between real and imagined as the central character, a sensitive but idealistic WW II solider, comes emotionally undone on a mission. It would be a workable idea if we were made to feel that we were inside his head, but the piece isn't rigorous in its point of view.

Fela

Photo/Monique Carboni

I'm always skeptical of a show that has to cajole the audience into participating, rather than simply trusting them to follow the undeniable afrobeats that Antibalas has laid down to Fela's music. So while I'd love to simply shout "yah, yah"--especially now that I've seen Sahr Ngaujah's tremendous performance--I simply can't: the show panders to culturally inept audiences with the hint of something exotic, and then grotesques Bill T. Jones's well-choreographed dancing into a flailing, desperate Broadway-bound monster. "Expensive Shit" is too good of a song/anecdote to let me so neatly put down some of the better intentions of Fela!, but the show often pushes too much, stretching the chronological sequence for drama, adding mystical elements for grandeur, and relying too much on the same shit, song after song, particularly in the second act, when the climactic, must-hear songs like "Zombie" have long gone, taking any sense of political turmoil or musical revolution with them, leaving only the hint of freshness behind.