Fringe: Together This Time

Together This Time is like a City of Angels for literature instead of film. Scenes are split between a novelist's life and the characters in his novel, sometimes overlapping. There is a fundamental problem, though, that makes it impossible for the show to work. The story our protagonist is writing sounds so dumb that I cannot imagine why anyone would want to read it.

Jay Allen Jones (Jonathan Whitton) was a successful writer in New York City, but he moved to Colorado to get away from it all. He has spent the last four years working on a novel about two 18-year-olds in love, Jamie Gower (Andrew Redlawsk) and Gillian Wilder (Emily Olson). His girlfriend and editor Emily (Tro Shaw) wants to move back to the city, so she leaves him, and he follows her, winning her back through his novel. Emily is apparently an in-demand editor (as we learn through the song "Can You Help Me With My Book?") and Jay is a critical darling, so why would they be spending all their time on a book where nothing much happens except that Jamie and Emily leave home to start a life together and then come back home but this time it will be different because they will be in their own apartment.

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Fringe: Have A Nice Life

For a show called Have A Nice Life presented by Nice People Theatre Company (the most adorable name for a theatre company ever), the characters are not very nice. I wouldn't want to spend 90 minutes hanging out with any of them, but spending 90 minutes watching them is not so bad.

The show takes place during a group therapy session led by Patrick (Benjamin Michael). Jackie (Amy Acchione) brings her new best friend Amy (Miriam White), who she met only three hours earlier, to join the session. Each character gets a song or two, but we never get to know much about them beyond their basic problems, which are pretty familiar (mommy and daddy issues, etc.). Book writer Matthew Hurt often brings up topics but doesn't explore them, such as when it is mentioned that the macho Frank (Gregg Pica) might be gay. I suppose this is realistic in that not everything can be addressed and dealt with in one group session, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating.

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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.

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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.