2026 Audience Reviews

Company: milk rat orchestra
Show: Fly Tape
Venue: Rarig Kilburn Theatre

THE GELT ISSUE IS RESOLVED, THE DRAMA IS STILL A+

Hey hey, the reviews about audience participation with the auctioneer puppet from the first night are NO LONGER - says me, viewer of the Wed 10pm showing and friend of the writer. GET your GELT at the door and jump in to the HIGH STAKES bidding wars that happen for 4 brief cutaway scenes. As for the main meats and elements of the show, one of the featured characters is an Asian transracial adoptee of Jewish parents, and boy is he devout. Made me think about how skewed most adoptions are to Christian denominations, whatever that's worth. Each pair of siblings share unearthed and likely traumatic secrets, buried away by the deceased mother figure, about the relevant yet uninvolved siblings, deepening the unspokenness of the secrets themselves as well as the pressure to guard said secrets between each sibling pair. The dramaturgy around Jewish mythology as well as modern tensions of relating to faith practices that often fetter more than forges one's sense of self was deeply researched and expressed through the characters in personable, not overly textbook-ey ways. The emotional downward spiral, accelerated with each new guarded reveal of secrets to the audiences, pays off more as the show descends the characters into more and more of their parents' closeted and forgotten skeletons. At least the PUPPET AUCTION ISSUE HAS BEEN RESOLVED :)

Company: SUPERMOON
Show: the statue of liberty is nora in a doll's house by henrik ibsen
Venue: Rarig Stoll Thrust Theatre

Never miss SUPERMOON at Fringe. EVER.

I still reel at SUPERMOON's theatrical monument to our absurd moment of privatized warfare that was @All Your Shimmering Gold" last year. But we can't rest on laurels. "statue of liberty " 🗽 is another triumph for them, though one that isn't so explicit about whatever political comment it's making, if it's making any at all, and that's fine with me. Whether I demand that audiences for the show believe that the show is about how America's over lords and super-power brokers need symbols like the SoL as an avatar, in this a "doll", to assign roles like "wife", "mother", a "thing" to "desire, protect, instruct, especially instruct to demonstrate duty to the Head of Household", to perform their duties as part of a fundamental class of participants whose job is to reinforce and therefore propagandize the reproductive functions of the nation-state, and any deviant behavior to escape such a nation-state propaganda factory to actually actualize yourself based on the constitutional values of your nation-state will be met with gaslighting, hostility, bargaining, and so forth until you find yourself gobbled right back into the factory's machines.... all that is for me to let swirl in my head. The show is about a woman who cannot seem to obtain her independence, because her abrogating her role in the greater social fabric would be a fatal act of un-Love to her husband. Or something. Anyway, keep on watching SUPERMOON forever and ever.

Company: Michael Shaeffer
Show: Glengarry Glen Elvis
Venue: Theatre in the Round

What's Mamet? Oh.... I haven't seen it.

Sorry, y'all: my upbringing as a Millenial-Zoomer (Zillenial) Vietnamese guy in suburban Minnesota did not get me into the right social circles that would have clued me into this show being a reference to a star studded movie adaptation of a play. All I know is, that I thought this was going to be some kind of abstract fever dream where the real life Elvis was a salesman, criminal hijinks ensued as the meat of the show, and.... something. Only after I read the reviews, above, that I was disabused of my 90s U.S pop culture film ignorance. Even so, my core question lingered: why Elvis? Was Schaeffer's character coping as his daughter was undergoing treatment at the hospital? (No, I looked up the Wikipedia entry, I haven't watched the film since attending this show.) What specific hardships in "Elvis's" personal life would compel him to impersonate Elvis at his work place? Why would you not at least portray some kind of character motivation for the audience to feel some foothold in the world of your show's story, even the show is meant to be a blatant platform for the mere thrill of performing Elvis songs as an impersonator for an hour while propping up the world of a famous movie? Why not make such a blend of worlds, re: Elvis and Glengarry Glen Ross, your own as a production? Each performer had a strong and expressive sense of their characters, such that I would have loved to see any of them in this show had it had a driving internal conflict from its principal impersonator to build their lively personas around. I'm looking forward to the 60s french new wave version of this show though, the one I thought I was getting when I had no idea what the context for this show was.

Company: Sockpop
Show: 1 Hour Left to Live: A One Puppet Show by That Felt Good
Venue: The Southern Theater

Big Laffs right when you need em

Strong improvisers who warmed up and found their groove as the show went on, regularly building on gags from previous scenes to great effect.

Company: Local 574
Show: HELL ON WHEELS: The Winter Strike of 1934
Venue: Barbara Barker Center for Dance

More clear-eyed tales of worker organizing!

"Hell on Wheels" was solidly produced and directed, so I was glad to witness it also be as lucid about the challenges to worker organizing (both internal and external to unions, class dynamics between genders, union members/bosses, businesses/govts vs workers) that did not get cast aside for a more romantic "revolution washing" of such organizing. Love seeing such lucid, lefty shows like these pop up more and more at Fringe.

Company: True Men Productions
Show: Castrati: A Tale of Two
Venue: Barbara Barker Center for Dance

Jaw-dropping spectacle of talents on a budget

Briefly put: the full effect of this production may never be seen, though maybe heard as a studio recording?, due to the all-out Fringe-iness of its premise, which combined with its killer musical talents, clever writing, lively choreography, and vivacious musical numbers that is why I am urging people to see this show while you can. "Castrati" will likely never be seen outside of Fringe, which makes it more worthy of receiving twice the Five Fringe Cats I'm allowed to give it for committing to their juvenile schtick into what resulted in an all-out, Fringe budget powerhouse of a musical. Sorry to other folks for their struggles with the band - I sat on the side furthest from the band so I was able to enjoy the levels ok and heard enough of the dialogue to enjoy the meat of the show, which were the musical numbers and humor.