{"id":4258,"date":"2014-06-19T19:16:30","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T19:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/?p=4258"},"modified":"2014-06-20T23:48:02","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T23:48:02","slug":"letter-from-fringe-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/letter-from-fringe-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter From the Fringe, June 19"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLICK HERE, HERE<\/a>, HERE<\/a> HERE<\/a>, HERE<\/a> AND HERE<\/a> FOR MORE HOLLYWOOD FRINGE REVIEWS.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Letter From the Fringe: June 19
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By Paul Birchall<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\""Stage<\/a>
Our distinguished correspondent, Paul Birchall, hard at work at Fringe Central<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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As you run into folks in passing at the Hollywood Fringe this year, you start to discover something a little odd.\u00a0 No one is seeing the same plays!\u00a0 Is this an unusual year in that respect?\u00a0 You find yourself having the same exchange again and again \u2013 \u201cOh, so what have you seen that\u2019s good?\u201d \u201cWell, I saw so-and-so, did you see that?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWell, no, but did you see such-and-such?\u201d \u201cNooo, but did you see this-and-that?\u201d\u00a0 This conversation is repeated over and over again at Fringe Central, but with different play titles:\u00a0 It\u2019s like one of those games of concentration in which you try to \u201cmatch\u201d titles and are never able to.<\/p>\n

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Everyone is also chasing around, looking for the Golden Ticket — the play that\u2019s just so perfect it alone will justify wading through the dozens of other lesser plays.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the truth, though:\u00a0 I am not absolutely sure that Golden Play actually exists.\u00a0 It\u2019s like the Unicorn or the Yeti.\u00a0 There\u2019s no secret Next Big Thing hiding in the sub-basement of the Underground Basement Theater (formerly a soap box, I\u2019m sure).\u00a0 However, I do think that there are any number of really good, fun plays that are more than worth your time and money.\u00a0 And they can almost just be stumbled upon, let alone searched out for.<\/p>\n

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This is, I think, one of the benefits of the non-curated festival: Unless you are coming to a certain play for a certain reason \u2013 if you know the playwright, the star, or the director \u2013 there\u2019s a pleasing random aspect to the festival, whose structure suggests that we need to see at least several plays and then judge the experience as an accumulated aggregate.<\/p>\n

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\"Mariah<\/a>
Mariah Freda<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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For instance, I found myself at the Asylum Theater (again) for a rather randomly selected play that happened to be going on just when I had an hour free.\u00a0\u00a0 Playwright performer Mariah Freda\u2019s Jesus H<\/em><\/a>. is, in many ways, quite a typical solo show:\u00a0 It\u2019s Freda\u2019s autobiography, told in a series of interwoven monologues, with the emphasis on religion.\u00a0 On a cross-country plane flight, Freda finds herself sitting next to an African-American passenger who turns out to be a Jehovah\u2019s Witness.\u00a0 At first, Freda wants to ridicule the woman \u2013 but her comments send her into a series of meditations on the role of religion in her life.<\/p>\n

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Freda, a young, appealing performer, is charismatic and tells her story with energy and a sense of humor \u2013 but the rather routine tales of prancing about at Catholic school and of certain stern teachers are a little lightweight, as is Samantha Jones\u2019s workman-like direction.\u00a0 So, this is not the Golden Ticket.\u00a0 On the other hand, it was perfectly enjoyable \u2013 and the audience appeared to get a lot out of it.
\n\"letterPB\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s almost hard to get one\u2019s head around the huge number of shows in the Festival.\u00a0 An example:\u00a0 As I left Theatre Asylum, I was startled to see a rather absurd spectacle:\u00a0 A long line of groups of productions, stretching down Lillian Way, all carrying different props and set pieces, waiting patiently for the shows before them to finish up so they could get into one of the six little theaters and set up.\u00a0 It\u2019s just so funny:\u00a0 There\u2019s a group of people in a bunch dressed in Renn Fair outfits \u2013 and over there, here are some folks dressed in office wear, except carrying gigantic stuffed sharks and telephones.\u00a0 It\u2019s like a series of costume parties, one right after the other.<\/p>\n

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\"Survivor's<\/a><\/p>\n

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Across the boulevard, at the Hudson Guild studio theater, I found myself attending Survivor\u2019s Guilt<\/em><\/a>, playwright-director David Love\u2019s funny, but flawed comedy about cynicism and media.\u00a0 Franklin (Bryan Coffee, channeling nebbish Woody Allen perhaps a little too overtly) is having trouble publishing his novel, so he rewrites it as a memoir, pretending the author is an 89 year old Holocaust survivor.\u00a0 The complications are predictable \u2013 and they ensue when the publisher (an excellent, intimidating Paul Zegler) demands to meet the real author.\u00a0 Franklin and his wife Rachel (Becca Murray) hire effete, elegant actor Nigel (William Knight) to portray the old Survivor, but before long, the old man has edged Franklin out of his writing and out of his marriage.<\/p>\n

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Yes, the notion of poking fun using the Holocaust as a context is indeed a bit of a deal breaker, I suppose, but if one gets past this single (admittedly glaring) notional misstep, this is a really funny farce about deceit and ego.\u00a0 And the performances are really delightful, with the work cast with a brilliant ensemble of the most compelling character actors you ever saw.\u00a0 Knight, whose captivating ham actor Nigel shifts effortlessly from pompous RSC-type thespian to sweetly vulnerable alter-kocher, is amazing \u2013 and so is Goldberg, as the crusty, heartless publisher.\u00a0 You just wish that Love had chosen a different backstory from the Holocaust, which is predictably hard to make \u201cfunny.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The thing to do after you see a show, even if it\u2019s nominally a feelgood comedy that uses cheating and lying about the Holocaust as a central conceit, is to hang out at the delightful Fringe Central Station, which, this year, is in that former Post Office parking lot across the street from the Complex.\u00a0 I have ranted and raved for years that one of the things that LA needs is a caf\u00e9 that\u2019s dedicated to the theater community — Chicago has one, New York has several \u2013 and now, for a couple of weeks, at least, so does Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s really nothing much nicer than \u201cholding court\u201d at the Fringe Central after the show!\u00a0 It\u2019s where the cast of almost every show goes after their curtain goes down \u2013 for a critic, it can be a little daunting, particularly if you\u2019re about to pan a show, and there they all are having a drink at the next table.\u00a0 For instance, I attended Short Plays For All Your Problems<\/em><\/a>, Aaron Kozak\u2019s collection of clever, but uneven skits, which generally demonstrate a good sense of dialogue humor but a weaker feeling for plot and structure.<\/p>\n

 
\n\"shortplays\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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A couple of the nine or 10 sketches are really rather ingenious:\u00a0 There\u2019s a crime drama satire in which a homicide detective interviews the characters from the Wizard of Oz<\/em> for killing the Wicked Witch, for instance.\u00a0 And there\u2019s another really charming vignette, with some homages to Beckett, in which a talking pumpkin (Trevor David) and a penguin (Lenny Hernandez) discuss the inevitability of death.\u00a0 But for the most part, these are slight pieces.<\/p>\n

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The problem, of course, was that, after the show, I trooped across the street to the Fringe Center for a drink \u2013 and so did they, trailing across the boulevard after the next show \u201cloaded into\u201d the Complex space they vacated.\u00a0 It\u2019s fortunate, though, one can easily bury oneself in any number of theater conversations at neighboring tables quite simply:\u00a0 All you have to do is ask anyone at the caf\u00e9 \u201cwhat are you in?\u201d or, if you are not able to do that, you can ask \u201cso what have you seen that\u2019s good?\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"SR_logo1\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his second “Letter From the Fringe,” PAUL BIRCHALL ruminates on what the Hollywood festival signifies, and reviews “Jesus H,” “Survivor’s Guilt,” and “Short Plays for All Your Problems.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_custom_body_class":"","_custom_post_class":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-column","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4258"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4304,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4258\/revisions\/4304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}