The Bearer of Bad News
Reviewed by Socks Whitmore
Hollywood Fringe
Thru June 25
The 2022 Hollywood Fringe Festival (the first all-in-person Fringe since 2019) opened this weekend to great success, filling numerous Hollywood theaters with plays of all shapes and sizes. Among this line-up of the weird and wonderful was The Bearer of Bad News, an absurdist dark comedy set in a post-climate-change world where animals have died out and human surrogates are responsible for saving them from extinction via IVF.
Written by nonbinary playwright Alex Kingsley, this play is one of the first productions by the newly founded Unladylike Theatre: a performance collective comprised of three queer femme actors on a mission to develop new works and deconstruct classic narratives through futuristic theatre.
The Bearer of Bad News is a twisted pun of a title that encapsulates a fascinating and unique premise, the kind of “weird but I liked it” that makes the show a perfect selection for Fringe. The barebones set and small cast, also in traditional Fringe style, allow for limited portrayals of the vaguely apocalyptic universe the play resides in, but the world building is well-executed by the narrative details sprinkled throughout. From harassment in the rations lines to regulations that virtually ban human pregnancies, this version of our not-so-distant future simultaneously seems impossible and perhaps a little too close to real. The narrative is also flavored by the queer identities of its writer and actors; the genderbent roles, the distinctly different relationships to womanhood and pregnancy each Bearer has, and the commentary on birthing people being viewed as objects are all evidence that no other voice would be able to tell this bizarre story in quite the same way.
One repeating element of the show is the surrogate support group, which doesn’t exactly read as such—the gathering of Bearers is unfacilitated and awkward, though perhaps that is the point. The numerous awkward silences and line deliveries throughout the show do add up, leading one to wonder if the writing relies too heavily on long beats or if there is more that could be done with the acting to avoid dragging. However, it’s not every day that three actors cumulatively cover nine characters, and performer Ashley Victoria Robinson deserves a shout out for making each of the four characters she plays distinct and interesting. Certain elements of the set are also poignant and clever, including a projection of a human baby ultrasound to provide backdrop during scenes at the hospital, and a box of blankets at various stages of completion to help indicate the passing of time. The piece as a whole is haunting, most especially at its climactic end.
The Bearer of Bad News is probably not like anything you’ve seen before, but if you’re in search of the weird and wonderful this Fringe season, it’s an excellent place to start.
https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/7507 Running time: 55 minutes
