Letter From the Fringe (3)

By Paul Birchall

 

 

 

 

What a lot of fun this year’s Fringe is turning out to be.  I did not intend to be a cheerleader for the festival, but it has just turned out that way.  However, I think that part of the enjoyment for me has just been to hang out between shows at the Fringe Central bar and café to watch and interact with the theater folk who come and go over the course of the day.

 

 

I found myself talking with Janet Miller, director of the acclaimed Fringe production of The Fantasticks, who explained how much work actually went into the gymnastic scheduling of shows at the various theaters.  Scheduling is the most important aspect of a production – what good will it do if the only performance times you get are when no one is going to be around?

 

 

“Oh, my God,” noted Miller.  “I spent four months exchanging e-mails with the manager of the Asylum to get the show times we wanted; it was so difficult!”

 

 

One of the great hidden gems of the Fringe has been one of the shows alternating with The Fantasticks in the same space.  The Orgasmico Theatre Company’s production of The Werewolves of Hollywood Blvd: A Damnable Rock Musical is a genuinely spooky thriller, with a wonderfully intense, hummable score and dark, quirky lyrics.  A year ago, the Orgasmico delighted audiences with their gleefully bizarre Exorcistic, a whackadoo musical satire of the movie The Exorcist.  Werewolves is a more conventional musical, comparatively but the piece is still peppered with hip irony.

 

 

 

Literary agent Lawson (Kyle Nudo) receives a mysterious screenplay that’s been sent from a lunatic asylum, but which turns out to possess a Satanically hypnotic power that makes it all but impossible to stop reading.

 

 

The script proposes a trilogy of horror movies, set in three different eras, about three different werewolves, including crazed Medieval shape-shifter Peter Stump (David Haverti), maniacal 14^th century cannibal Jacques Roulet (Michael Shaw Fisher), and sultry Portuguese Rennaisance she-wolf Joana of Tarcouca (Leigh Wulf).  Their stories begin to affect Lawson’s mind, particularly after he’s fired by new agency CEO Governs (Jesse Merlin), and he starts to haunt Tinseltown for blood.

 

 

Michael Shaw Fisher’s book and music are top notch, combining a gothic score that’s still rock and roll punchy.  And it’s quite amazing to watch the three werewolves, particularly Wulff’s deliciously inscrutable Joana and Haverti’s terrifyingly brutal Stump.  Director Aaron Lyons’s harrowing staging is fast-paced and colorful.  Admittedly, the piece is hampered by some jumbled plotting and sound issues – the music tends to drown out the lyrics.  Still, how can you not like lines like “There’s a Werewolf on Hollywood Boulevard!   The sheep are going to fall hard!”  or “Everyone needs a Succubus, not a Mother Teresa.”  The production’s a little rough at this workshop stage, but this is a show that has great promise.

 

 

 

Over at the Lounge, I saw Bronies:  The Musical  — the Fringe’s current “break out” effort. It’s to the Fringe what Blair Witch was to Sundance – partially because it has hit a note with the public, of course, and partly due to a Tweet from cartoonist tycoon Stan Lee. That said, the musical is unable to live up to the fecundity of its premise.  Bronies are, if you haven’t heard, young men in their teens (or older) who happen to be fans of the children’s TV show My Little Pony, a program that is more commonly targeted at little (and I mean little) girls.

 

 

 

 

There was a recent movie on the subject of Bronies (Bronies:  The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony) which clearly inspired the writer-composer team of Joe Greene (music) and Heidi Powers and Tom Moore (lyrics).  The idea of a musical about dudes who happen to like a TV show aimed at tiny little girls, and about rainbows and unicorns certainly is inventive, though the show itself is disappointingly prosaic.

 

 

The one episode I viewed of My Little Pony is really very sweet, with an underlying wit and a fast-paced excitement that underscores the dancing unicorns and flying blue ponies.

 

 

 

Bronies centers on three young adults — high school geek Tyler (Mark Gelsomini), popular basketball jock Austin (Matthew Hermann), and recent college graduate Jacob (Jeffrey Christopher Todd) – tussle with all the usual strains of youth:  Tyler is bullied, Austin is worried he isn’t taken seriously as a smart kid, and Jacob is trying to find a job as an artist but his stern school principal dad (Kurt Koehler) insists he work as the school’s janitor instead.  By chance, each of the three boys catches an episode of the TV show, and they’re hooked.  Before long, Tyler has learned to stand up to the bullies, Austin makes peace with his gentler side, and Jacob comes out of the closet and finds a boyfriend.  All with the help of a group of the Little Ponies (played by a chorus of backup singers).

 

 

Director Ryan Bergmann’s upbeat and ever-cheerful production boasts the genuinely imaginative idea of having the Little Ponies portrayed by a team of Dreamgirls-like backup singers, dressed in the iconic colors of their TV characters.  Otherwise, though, the musical’s straightforward “kids find self confidence” storyline is stale and only tepidly involving.  It would, frankly, be more exciting if the Ponies actually played more of a role in the story;  as it is, they’re just set dressing. The score’s halting melodies are tinny, while the lyrics are top heavy with limp clichés.  Still, as the three Bronies, Gelsomani, Hermann, and Todd assay their roles with utter conviction, while the Dreamgirls-Ponies are also delightful.