Fringe: Jen and Liz in Love

In Jesse Weaver's slow-starting but ultimately funny and effective one-act, two fortyish small-town women with over-the-top Boston-area accents alternately tiptoe and stomp around a shared past they've never spoken of before. The key that opens up the subject is the absurd circumstance: Liz (Helene Galek), who has spent the day in the local fair's kissing booth, kissing every man in town through a small aperture, finds herself locked inside as the day draws to a close. Her old friend Jen (Cindy Keiter) hangs around to keep her company while they wait for Liz's husband to return with the key. Here, contrary to the old saying, out of sight means more in mind than ever. In a faint Beckettian echo, we see nothing of the emotional and loudmouthed Liz but lips and an eye, while dowdy Jen drifts uncertainly around the booth, one moment plaintively touching the belly of the cartoon vixen painted on the side, the next moment stomping off angrily. Out of the intentionally overcooked broth of jokes and accusations, a small, honestly touching story of love and regret emerges like aromatic steam.

Fringe: Bunked!: A New Musical

Beware the buzzed-about Fringe show. It's impossible to guess how shows will fare until they begin performances and it's often the ones that sound best on paper that end up disappointing. Bunked!, a musical about summer camp counselors, sounds like a campy (pun only partially intended) good time, but the lack of dramatic tension makes for a tedious evening.

Each counselor is a stereotype: Anabel (Amanda Jane Cooper) the goody two shoes, her flamboyant twin Oliver (Tim Ehrlich), Carmen (Lizzie Klemperer) the bitch with a heart of gold underneath, Max (Jake Loewenthal) the boy with a secret, and Stewart (Ben Moss) the over-achiever who is sick of doing what his parents want. There are themes of summer romance and jealousy, but there isn't much of a story arc. In the opening song, "Best Summer Ever," Seth Sikes's direction is over-the-top, setting the audience up for silliness, but the show ends up being too sincere for its own good. When serious topics such as suicide are introduced, they feel forced, and the characters are too one-dimensional for us to care, as much as the hard-working cast tries. The most successful bits of the evening are the loudspeaker announcements provided by Michael Urie.

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Fringe: Two Sizes Too Small

Jessica Kane has a great idea for a short story, but she can't write dialogue. So why oh why has she directed Two Sizes Too Small as a radio play? It's ironic that things start with Paul (John Wernke) trying to squeeze his feet into all of the shoes in his house--for Kane shoehorns in many unneeded effects, from Scott Paulson's barely-there Foley effects to Joe McGinty's character themes (for piano), which overscore an already overwritten script. The fumbling performances--unforgivable, considering they've got scripts in front of them--aren't the biggest problem, though, nor is the smallness of their characters. Instead, it's the pedantic dialogue, which relies on the pejorative "Jesus!" to save them from all of their problems.

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Fringe: Pigeons, Knishes, and Rockettes

Cynical theatergoers should probably avoid Diana Rissetto's Pigeons, Knishes, and Rockettes, but those who smile at the thought of Christmas cookies and cry every year during It's a Wonderful Life (full disclosure: I am in the latter category) may be unable to resist the charms of this romantic comedy.

Eve (Julia Arazi) is a bubbly romantic who knits scarves and is obsessed with Christmas. She is used to being overshadowed by her tall and attractive best friends/roommates, Georgia (Kristin Muri), a Rockette, and Cherokee (Matthew Waterson), an actor who, as you might expect, is gay. Then she meets Peter (Carl Howell), a jazz singer with a Christmas album who hates the holiday, but actually notices her.

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Fringe: Trick Boxing

Trick Boxing is exactly what you'd expect of a show that's been touring for the last eight years: a tight, original, charming two-hander. Brian Sostek and Megan McClellan's writing isn't quite up to the standard of Ben Hecht (The Front Page), but the rapid-fire patter is; if nothing else, Sostek should find steady work as a voice-actor. Only the dance sequences feel as if they're holding something back, though perhaps that's just because Sostek needs to breathe before pivoting back into his multiple levels of narration. There's a lot packed into the show--and the show consequently packs a punch; it's a winningly screwball, perfectly pugilistic performance.

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Fringe: My Name Is Ruth

The Book of Ruth is a dramatically inert part of the Old Testament, and though Stephen W. Baldwin's My Name Is Ruth drags it into the '50s, he hasn't found a way to expand or enrich the material. In fact, he's minimized it, paring the story down to two actors, Ruth (Magdalyn Donnelly) and the various men in her life (Jeffrey D. Querin), a convention filled with aimless monologues to invisible people. He's also wasted the talents of his design team--Barb Scott's only able to show off two of her cute costumes, and Pamela Querin has but one set with which to sell the department-store glamor (she does). Given the plodding pace, Baldwin's would-be quaint dialogue quickly sours. Ruth is a folksy woman, and Donnelly's a delight in that capacity, but there's a lack of depth to the play. There's either enough material in the show to fill forty minutes, or room to flesh out the story so it's not stuck on a one-note romance (that currently lacks chemistry).


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