Fringe: Julius Caesar: The Death of a Dictator

                      JULIUS CAESAR
Hi there.  I'm both a well-known dictator and a
pretty boring play.


                   ORSON WELLES
What if I were to cut you down.


                   JULIUS CAESAR
WITH KNIVES?!?  I HAVE A THING ABOUT KNIVES!


                   ORSON WELLES
No, in length.  Down to 75 minutes.


                   JULIUS CAESAR
I would still be boring, but for much less time!


                   FRINGENYC
Damn.

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Fringe: Hamlettes

Going into Hamlettes, I expected a light comedy about 12-year-old girls staging Hamlet (this is not the first time I've been misled by a Fringe blurb), but the show was unexpectedly dark, and was all the better for it.

Alex (Alexandra Bassett) is given a book of Shakespeare plays for her birthday and falls in love with the play Hamlet. When Chloe (Savannah Clement) performs a Claudius monologue in class, Alex asks her to form a drama club. They decide to stage Hamlet with Alex in the title role and Chloe as everyone else. When Chloe decides she can't play Ophelia because she doesn't relate to her, they cast the shy new girl, conveniently named Ophelia (Lauren Weinberg). Up until this point, the play is very funny due to Patrick Shaw's ability to write realistic dialogue for 12-year-old girls who think they know a lot more than they do. Once the girls decide to never drop character, themes of betrayal and sexual awakening are introduced. Because pre-pubescent girls already deal with these emotions, the fact that they would get so caught up in a play like Hamlet makes so much sense that it's a wonder no one has thought of it before Shaw, but luckily he also has a capable director, Lillian Meredith, to execute his ideas. The actors are all very believable as teenage girls and Weinberg is the standout with her heartbreaking performance.

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Fringe: The Maid of Orleans

The recent, widely praised London/Broadway production of Mary Stuart has fanned interest in Friedrich Schiller's plays, and never having seen any version of The Maid of Orleans before, I'm glad I went to this adaptation. But though there were bright spots, as an overall piece of theater it was a disappointment. It's an unusual mix of drama and opera, during which the cast sings several well-placed selections from I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Bellini's operatic retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Ethereal soprano Gudrun Buhler digs into the title role, speaking with appropriately unearthly cadences and singing beautifully. Dylan Bandy gives Lionel, the British lord, lovely voicing as well, and a slow-motion stylized fight scene near the end captivates with dreamy pathos. But the production is undercut by uneven acting, some bad miscasting, and direction that lacks vibrancy.

Read the full review on Blogcritics.

Fringe: Just in Time: The Judy Holliday Story

Judy Holliday was a beautiful woman, a gifted comedienne, and a genius with a knack for invention. In Bob Sloan's Just in Time: The Judy Holliday Story (also directed by Sloan), Marina Squerciati's excellent performance as Holliday almost makes up for the show's weaknesses. Just in Time relies heavily on self-satisfied shtick, including having Holliday's mother omnipresent; awkwardly combining What's My Line and Holliday's Senate testimony about whether she was a communist; and having Holliday fall back on her dumb-blonde persona in personal interactions. The show's presentation of Holliday's life is sloppy; for example, Holliday's son is used as a device with little attention paid to how he came to exist. While this is definitely a crowd-pleaser (the crowd I saw it with was certainly pleased), the brilliant Holliday deserves better.

Fringe: Platinum

In 1978, Platinum, starring Alexis Smith, ran for a total of 45 performances. Reworked, the new version at the Fringe has five characters (down from 13) and some catchy songs, but the book is less than compelling. It's the 1970s and 40's movie star Lila is trying to make a comeback as a singer. Her recording engineer, who wants to be a songwriter, considers her hopelessly out of date. She needs many takes, for no particular reason. She gets angry and then does a good take. She meets a sexy almost-has-been rocker, and his girlfriend (or good friend?) steals her song (and makes a huge hit out of it). Lila gets involved with the rocker, who loves her old movies. It may be true love, or they may be using each other. Or both. The owner of the recording studio is a bad guy. Lila sells out the rocker but then changes her mind for no dramatized or sung reason. This description actually sounds more interesting than the show on stage, which manages to feel both wispy and heavy-handed. The 90 or so minutes pass pleasantly enough, mostly due to Donna Bullock's likeability as Lila, but Platinum is not a lost wonder waiting to be rediscovered.

Fringe: Alternative Methods

Can we call for a moratorium on black-and-white characters like "the rule-breaking private contractor" (Charlie Kevin) and the "yes-man doctor" (John Greenleaf) as they demonstrate what not to do? We need characters with some real intelligence and depth--not the accused Dr. Al-Badrani, who is so flatly and stereotypically portrayed by Alok Tewari that waterboarding seems like a viable option. There's a spark of a back-story given to rookie psychologist Susan Fulton (Julie Kline), enough to explain why she bonds with Al-Badrani and tries to subvert military conduct to free him, but that sort of illogical idealism belongs in Hollywood, which is fake enough to handle such things. The biggest disappointment in Alternative Methods is that it only provides more of the same.

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