Citizen Ruth

Photo: Dixie Sheridan

Based on the non-musical movie by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, the musical Citizen Ruth (book and lyrics, Mark Leydorf; music, Michael Brennan) is the tale of an unrepentant loser who becomes a pawn in an ongoing battle between a group of pro-lifers and a group of pro-choicers. The musical is quite true to the movie (which is smart since the movie is funny, biting, and excellent) and has some good and some not-so-good songs (Leydorf's lyrics are studded with painful half- and quarter- and not-even-close-rhymes). Garrett Long is first-rate as Ruth--although her voice is not perfect, her sneer is. The outstanding supporting cast includes Craig Bennett, Janet Dickinson, Sherri L. Edelen, Marya Grandy, Joel Hurt Jones, and the ever-wonderful Annie Golden. If this Fringe Festival show is to have a future, it will need to be trimmed and polished, and many of the so-called rhymes will need to be cleaned up, but it is a solidly entertaining two hours in the theatre.

His Greatness

Photo: Neilson Barnard

Playwright Daniel MacIvor describes his Fringe Festival play His Greatness as "Inspired by a potentially true story about playwright Tennessee Williams." The Tennessee Williams character--known here only as "the playwright"--is an over-the-hill alcoholic desperate for a final hurrah. His assistant both adores and disrespects him, while the uneducated hustler that the assistant procures for him, who has never heard of the playwright, is nevertheless dazzled by his fame. His Greatness has some interesting and moving moments, and the changing allegiances among the three men are intriguing, if not totally convincing. However, the play relies too much on not-so-sharp campy humor and truly dumb "dumb jokes." I feel that there is an excellent play hiding in His Greatness, but it would be about the assistant, rather than the playwright. The assistant is the one who has the most at stake, the assistant is the one who learns something, the assistant is the one who changes.

A Lifetime Burning

Photo: James Leynse

The concept is intriguing: Tess (Christina Kirk) opens the New York Times one morning and discovers that her sister Emma (Jennifer Westfeldt) has published a memoir in which she claims, untruthfully, to be part Incan and part Cherokee. When Tess confronts Emma, the conversation bounces from the memoir to their relationship and back again, but, unfortunately, never gets anywhere interesting. The direction (Pam MacKinnon) and writing (Cusi Cram) offer little that is thought-provoking or new and instead rely on "family dynamics 101" and the occasional funny line. Isabel Keating, in a very entertaining turn as Emma's editor, manages to bring more depth to her two-dimensional character than the others bring to their ostensibly complex ones. And if we are to believe this story at all, if we are to believe that Emma's clearly intelligent editor buys that Emma is of part-Incan-Cherokee heritage, it would be nice to cast someone not blond and not so light-skinned.

Dancing With Abandon

Of all the musicals I saw at this year's Fringe Festival, this is the one I'd most want to see again after some more development. The characters - a world famous opera diva and the rocker teenage son she abandoned years ago - are extreme and don't behave as people are supposed to in musicals. Example: when mom and son are reunited his neediness is almost psychotic and she, not the least bit maternal, responds by locking him in a closet. The material needs plenty of work - his songs (which contrast with her opera arias) need to rock much harder, the quality of the lyrics is wildly variable, the show should be his story more than hers but is currently the opposite. And yet despite the hot messiness the authors have written a story that demands to be musicalized, and the parts that work are fresh and wildly entertaining.

All Over.

photo: Samanthe Burrow/Rachelle Beckerman

In Elizabeth Audley's solo show, which vividly recounts her long solo car trip through parts of America, the actress begins in a place of some cynicism about the United States and ends soon after she decides to work on the Obama campaign. Although Audley does a fine job of making clear how the trip restored her political optimism - lots of those red state people have blue state social values, it turns out - the show's most affecting stretch is more personal: as Audley drives on through underpopulated terrain day after day, the isolation forces her attention inward and makes her confront personal demons. What is she doing with her life, and is anything she's ever done worth anything? That's the moment our intelligent, engaging, sometimes humorous tour guide becomes someone we care about and root for.

Population 8

photo: Larry Gumpel

Set in a North Dakota town with a population of 8, this play (by Nicholas Gray) is peopled with characters who live simultaneously in isolation from the world and in close association with each other. There is a main story that takes hold of our attention, but the often atmospheric, evocative play is driven more by character than by plot: we're watching the last gasps of a distinctive community of people. The details, such as how the act of changing the city limits sign has become ritualized, are thought-out and credible, and the characters are individuated and just oddball enough to ring true. The production doesn't rise to all of the play's challenges - there has to be a more fluid way to quickly delineate the space and move between the often very brief scenes - but it gets the general job done and doesn't ever blunt what is special about the play. Cast stand-out: Gideon Glick