Sondheim Surprise
There’s a big free theater thing going on in NYC this month. A bunch of theater groups have signed up, so you can go to one website, look at all of the shows that offer free tickets, read a (very brief) description and sign up to go for free. Xena and I decided to take advantage, and one of the shows, which we just saw last night, was a “cabaret” of Sondheim love songs. She loves Sondheim, and I like him well enough, so this seemed like a great show for us, right?
What they didn’t reveal until after the door was closed and the lights were down was that this was Sondheim love songs sung by high school students. Sondheim is a rather mature composer, in content but more importantly (for this purpose) in musicality, and with a few exceptions (OK, West Side Story) should not be sung by high school students. They weren’t bad, for the most part, but they weren’t good either, and we walked out glad that we hadn’t paid for these tickets.
You’d think they’d have a disclaimer or something, wouldn’t you? The other theater groups on this website were, as far as I know, professional groups.
Oh well, it wasn’t a bad evening, and we still had some fun.
Theater | Comment (0)La Vie
Christmas and I saw this show “La Vie” on Sunday night. Very good stuff–a lot of impressive acrobatics, in a space so intimate that you could reach out and touch the performers (or they could reach out and touch you, as happened to a few unlucky audience members). I got free tickets as a bonus reward for all of the shifts I volunteered at the Fringe Festival. Wasn’t expecting any kind of extra bonus beyond getting to see all of those Fringe shows, but I was certainly glad to get it!
(As a meta note, I just added a long-overdue “Theater” tag. Some time when I have too much time on my hands, I’ll have to go back and retroactively tag old posts as being “Theater”.)
Theater | Comment (0)Fringe Roundup
The Fringe Festival ended last Sunday. My tallies for this year:
- # of shows seen: 16 (a new personal record for the NYC fringe)
- # of those that were one-performer shows: 2
- # of those that were autobiographical: 1
- # of those that were self-indulgent enough that I was tempted to walk out: 0 (also a new personal record, I think)
- # of musicals: 8 (counting the “rap opera”)
- # of those that were musical versions of Shakespeare plays that I’ve never seen in their original form: 2
- # of those that included songs making fun of material that Shakespeare clearly intended to be completely serious: 2
- # of times I got advice from a fellow Fringe participant on how to pick up women in gay bars: 1
- # of times a Fringe organizer told me I was saving their life when I showed up to volunteer: I lost count
(If you’re dying to see my tallies from last year, for some reason, they’re here. I sadly didn’t keep tallies from the first two years I did it.)
NYC, Theater | Comment (0)Perennial Fringe Shows
The Fringe is half over. So far, I’ve seen 8 shows in 7 days–not bad, huh?
I love the Fringe dearly, and what I love most about it is the sheer diversity of material you see during the festival–stuff that you’d never see anywhere else–but like anything else, it falls into its little patterns. This is my fourth year volunteering at the Fringe, and I’ve started to notice that some show types pop up over and over again. So here it is, my list of Shows you’ll see at every New York Fringe Festival:
The one-person autobiographical show “exploring my identity as a handful of adjectives”. There are always a few of these, with only the adjectives changing–”exploring my identity as a gay Norwegian-American” or “as a Vietnamese Catholic” or whatever. I’m not a big fan of these things. On an artistic level, they’re horribly self-indulgent. On a philosophical level, the underlying assumption behind all of these things is that your identity consists of a small handful of adjectives, most of them things that you’re born with, and once you “understand what it means to be” the various adjectives, that’s your identity in a neat little bow, and I fundamentally reject that premise. It’s old-fashioned tribalism, and I’m an individualist. (Okay, my views on tribalism are a bit more nuanced than that makes them sound, but that’s a topic for another post.)
The one-person autobiographical show about “my struggle with” alcohol, depression, cancer, overeating or whatever. These things are just as self-indulgent as the first sort, but I don’t have any particular philosophical objections to them, and hey, maybe they’ll actually help somebody.
The musical set behind the scenes at a theater putting on a musical. Last year’s was also a murder mystery, and actually a lot of fun. This year’s seems to be doing very well–I was volunteering there, and it sold out–but I haven’t seen it yet myself, so I can’t comment.
The updated version of a Shakespeare play. This year there are two (seriously) Hamlet variants and a Winter’s Tale musical (which was actually quite good).
Related to that, The retelling of a classic piece of literature, or a Greek myth, focusing on one of the female characters. Seems like kind of an obscure thing, but they keep popping up.
The show inspired by a hot trend, but thanks to Festival lead times, it’s rather out of date by the time you actually see it. Last year there were a couple of reality show parodies, this year it’s MySpace.
Oh, and let’s not forget The preachy show banging on this year’s hot-button left-wing cause du jour. There are always a couple of those. Last year it was the Iraq war, this year it’s Global Warming.
I don’t want to make it sound like the Fringe is incredibly repetitive. There are about 200 shows a year, so naturally there’s a certain amount of overlap. And there’s lots of crazy original stuff every year too. But man, I’ve sat through enough of the above shows by now, I really have.
NYC, Theater | Comment (0)Fringe Report: Warrior Clowns
This is the second Fringe Festival in a row where I’ve seen a one-person clown show in which the clown plays a person with a mundane life who escapes from that life with dreams of being a much-mythologized historical warrior. You wouldn’t think that would be a particularly common type of show, would you? Last year, it was Musashi, this year, Joan of Arc.
And no, it wasn’t the same clown, and I doubt very much the two shows were connected in any way, considering that the two performers were from different continents.
NYC, Theater | Comment (0)Fringe Festival
The Fringe Festival’s coming up! Yay! This’ll be my fourth year (wow) volunteering there. Last year I saw more than 20 shows. So much fun. If any of my devoted readers (aside from Christmas) are in the New York area, I highly recommend seeing a few shows, and volunteering if you have the time–it’s easy work, and you get to see free shows! Their website is fringenyc.org.
Update: I looked back at my blog posts about the festival from last year, and it looks like I only saw 15 shows. I’ve been telling everyone I saw more than 20…I wonder where that number came from? I had it very clearly in my head.
NYC, Theater | Comment (0)Fringe is Over
The Fringe Festival is, sadly, over. My final tallies:
- # of shifts I’ve volunteered: 14
- # of shows I’ve seen: 15
- # of those that were one-performer shows: 5
- # of those that were autobiographical: 3 or 4 (depending how you count them)
- # of those that were self-indulgent enough that I was tempted to walk out: 2
- # of shows involving characters who were associated with theater (actors, directors, writers, etc): 5
- # of those that had a character who was writing a play about a character who was writing a book about a character who was writing a book, and after that I got a bit lost: 1
- # of more years I want to be involved with the Fringe: As many as I can