The good, the bad, the Fringe

Photo by Steve Rice The audience at Bedlam Theatre during "Cherry Cherry Lemon" The Minnesota Fringe Festival has always been an exhilarating yet unpredictable grab-bag of highs and lows.

As it roars into its final four days, the 15th annual installment has been no exception, with wide-ranging performances and subject matter, from dancing frat boys, to space aliens, to dancing pirates.

There's a two-woman show on everyone's favorite body part ("Boobs"), a story of the last man ever executed in Minnesota ("The William Williams Effect"), a drama about the Manson murders ("Something Witchy"), a classic striptease revival ("Blue Ribbon Burlesque"), dance shows ("Thrower of Light," "Seeing," The Return of LICK!") and even works by famed playwrights ("A Dream Play," "The Dumb Waiter"). From hundreds of performances, our critics have mined some highlights and lowlights for the final weekend, but as always, the Fringe is often best explored on your own.

Ari Hoptman and his revelers knock off fractured tales both familiar and invented in the most literate and whimsical Fringe show I've seen so far. Hoptman mixes a facility for language with an ear that is perfectly tuned to all that is absurd. Friday, his cast did "Rumpelstiltskin," "The Little Engineer Who Couldn't" (what did medieval folk do before Viagra?) and "Das Boot," about sailors whose harbor ferry is threatened by the planned construction of a new bridge. Director Peter Moore lets the words and the actors (including Hoptman, Michelle Hutchison, Leslie Ball, Carolyn Pool and Josh Scrimshaw) do their work. It's ridiculous fun.

What happened here? Playwright Dominic Orlando serves up two short pieces -- one about an alien who hasn't aged in 60 years and has learned about our planet through television, the other about two sex offenders and the effects they have on a policewoman. The actors are first-rate -- Terry Hempleman, Sasha Andreev, Emily Gunyou Halaas and Amy McDonald. Somehow, the whole thing falls like a soufflé in the hands of director Brian Balcom. Nothing feels original or compelling, despite excellent work by Hempleman and Gunyou Halaas.

Scream Blue Murmur comes from Northern Ireland with clever verse, urgent performances and open hearts. Their mix of poetry, video clips, raggedy songs and good humor deal with the echoes of 1968 in categories of love, war and civil rights. It's sort of sly, ersatz hippie stuff ("How do you get to life's 41st station with only carry-on bags?") that works well. Relating to present-day troubles, one actor talks about seducing the twin demons of terror and fear ("I want to stick my tongue down the throat of terror"). The words do not settle for simple rhythm and the slap of syllables. They paint images. Very entertaining.

Choreographer Cathy Wright describes her show as "a collection of short stories" -- with new works and old sharing the bill. Standouts include "The Demon Familiar," specifically its enigmatic duet exploring attraction and repulsion, and "Feline Fever," a slinky piece set to attractively weird music. Other works like "Wombman" and "Phallousy" are weighed down by predictable gender-based commentary. The evening concludes energetically with a full-out pirate party. It's always entertaining to experience dance moves punctuated by enthusiastic "arrrrghs!"

No matter what your politics are, this majestic recital of songs reflecting the plight of soldiers, their families and American society in wartime is a powerhouse. Iowa City baritone Stephen Swanson soulfully renders tunes both famous and obscure from the Civil War, the two World Wars and Vietnam. Though his presence is commandingly classical, he delights with satirical playfulness in ditties about Cold War nihilism. In addition, the exquisite "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" reminds us that Australia was an ally during Vietnam. With vibrant piano accompaniment from David Gompper.

A Playboy magazine cartoon strip come to life might describe the naughty style of director/playwright Mic Weinblatt. These are three shorts riff on body image, sex toys, a gigolo's anguish and American class divisions. In "Needs," Renee Karen Werbowski exudes tactile sensuality as a woman considering plastic surgery. In "Wants," a bisexual husband (Andrew Sass) is fascinated by a mysterious love-enhancing device. "Desires," the least fluffy of the three, penetrates a shame-based intergenerational gay relationship truthfully portrayed by Sass and Jack C. Kloppenborg.

A successful businesswoman (Catherine Johnson Justice) wrestles her recalcitrant teen (Lindsey Alexandra Hartley) off to school one morning in 1986 and then receives a strange visit from a man (Chris Carlson) who knows the mother's suppressed Manson family history. Despite the gaping holes in James Vculek's script (motivation, character development, implausibilities), the recitation of the 1969 Manson crimes is morbidly intriguing. Carlson gives a particularly natural performance, retelling the murder scenario. Our fascination with the extreme human failing Manson represented makes the show worth seeing.

David Mann and Scott Jorgenson take aim at a fat, slow-moving target -- the self-improvement industry. Jorgenson does most of the comic lifting, showing off his chops as a natural huckster. His oily sincerity seems so sincere. Mann's phoniness is a bit too evident, but his writing is clever. Jorgenson shows us how to make 18 percent on our money, and the value of sloth. He points to the "growth" in his stomach: "I turned my six-pack into a keg!" Some of the satire gets obvious, but Jorgenson in particular knows how to sell, sell, sell!

The Southern Gothic genre is marvelously reincarnated in these beguiling stories penned and performed by Peter Neofotis. "The Botanist" navigates between savagery and delicacy. A brutalized student falsely charged with "forced sodomy" finds unlikely support from a black soldier and an eccentric older white woman inspired by the hidden powers of plants. In the stunning "The Vultures," George MacJenkins commits to being "a man with no guns" after his wife dies in a freak shooting accident. But his resolve is tested when vultures mysteriously congregate in his yard. Eerily magnificent.

August Strindberg jolted 19th-century theater with his brazen skepticism of conventional morality. The Tenth Muse troupe's wacky take on his "A Dream Play" fares best in scenes where Stephanie Kulbeik as protagonist Agnes profoundly questions notions of ideal love and the institution of marriage. However, director Amanda Sterling has overladen the production with too many distractingly quirky performances. The lighting, for which no credit is given, and a lone door upstage center add visual beauty. Jon Stentz brings a crisp presence to the role of The Officer.

Kari Kelly and Molly Dimba are well endowed with appreciation for their own ample breasts, but that wasn't always the case. They take a hilarious trip back to junior high, when the boys only had eyes for their tatas. They imagine what boobs would say if they talked to each other in their "lace jails," lament that while other girls wear spaghetti straps, they need lasagna, and channel two dudes in a bar wondering what it would be like to carry around their own chest boulders. Their accompaniment to a "boob rap" is, aptly, a pair of bongo drums. This is a heartfelt and funny show, with one annoyance: They call each other the b-word to the point of tedium.

The troupe known as LICK! has one stated goal: "To inject art into people's souls with our big syringe of sexiness." And indeed, despite challenges like being "banned" by the Fringe and losing their tumbling expert, these four randy jazz-pants-wearing fellows prove they are too sexy for any stage. This show has more pelvic thrusts than a "Rocky Horror Picture Show" revival. It's all so wrong and sometimes frat-boyish yet still so very funny you'll feel a bit ashamed of yourself.

Janette Siirila is a developing choreographer, and her limited experience shows in this performance. "Wide Eyed" is a pleasant work offering little emotional or kinetic variation, while "Observing Nature" is a literal glimpse into a frog's life -- yep, the dancers leap like amphibians. The program also includes "Observing Solitude," conceived and written by Michael Morris and performed by Audrey Lowry. This piece is about the tiresome repetition and isolation of modern life. Unfortunately, it too successfully carries out its stated concept.

Matthew Greseth soars in a breathtaking performance as Mike, a manically paranoid corporate exec grilling a finalist for a marketing director position. Mike demands to be addressed as Yahweh, has delusions of The Rapture, eats pickles dipped in pudding, and wrestles with homoerotic demons. Jason (an exquisite Nate Hessburg) hopes he can get through the interview alive! Aaron Christopher's volcanically charged comedy shatters the rhetorically driven facades of corporate capitalism run criminally amok. Directed with crackling velocity by Katie Willer.

Elisa Korenne is a pleasant and engaging storyteller who has taken note of the oddball characters along her life's path. Korenne's show of song and narrative -- guided by her relationship with a mythical muse -- has a Lifetime Channel appeal. It will not change your outlook on the world, but she is earnest in the best sense about her stories. She sings about a madam from Butte, Mont., a guy who eats lightbulbs, and a Root Beer Lady from the Boundary Waters. The tunes are simple, her voice clear and her self-accompaniment spare. You could do worse.

Shanan Wexler and Carolyn Pool calm their jitters with coffee in a series of scenes that slowly find their legs. Wexler relies on the nervous, put-upon character she does so well. Pool lets her comedic side stretch out, and together they make a decent show of it. A favorite scene has Pool as a lonely diner who begs Wexler's waitress to write down her order, rather than just remember it in her head ("My therapist writes things down") and then goes on to confess her shortcomings and needs. It could be sharper in spots, but in the Fringe, it's among the better class.

Husband-and-wife comedy duo Joseph Scrimshaw and Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw play house dusters in this cute, thin show about a haunted mansion. He is from France, she from Norway (and all sorts of ethnic jokes ensue). The ideas are overstretched in the production. But the show, whose cultural references range from "Spamalot" to "The Shining," is suffused with diverting silliness. "Mansion" also has impressive drum-playing by Joseph Scrimshaw, even if Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw's elementary ballet moves are just OK.

Let's be clear right off: No one gets naked and no one dies. But Paul de Cordova does take us on a funny/scary tour of crazytown, mined from incidents that have the ring of autobiographical truth. He recounts episodes of his own brush with mental instability, followed by harrowing encounters with a girl who stalked him menacingly, once wearing only a bath towel (thus the naked). Sometimes laugh-out-loud, sometimes uncomfortably intimate, it's a brave and uncompromising slice of one man's life.

Playwright Dennis LeFebvre's goofy comedy could be titled "That '70s Play." Set in the early 1970s, it centers on Julie Fast (Kelly Gilpatrick) and Lori MaCaffee (Lindsay Schleicher), two high-school misfits who run away to a women-only colony with a cosmology based on bees. There, the women wear beekeeper hats as they await the rapture of the queen mother. Only problem? The religion was created by Lori's controlling girlfriend Judy (Helen Chorolec), who dominates everyone's lives and has plans to run off to Central America with the money the women earn from selling honey. The script is better than the big, broad-acting cast directed by Jim Lichtscheidl. Still, what other loopy fringe effort can claim that it comes with its own buzz?

Performers Coco Dupree, Nadine Dubois and Sweetpea are the stars of this old-fashioned burlesque that's delivered with music, shimmies and lots of pasties. In this Minnesota-themed revue, the performers strip and tease without sleaze. Coco comes out as a State Fair beauty queen, although her little act causes her to lose her crown. Nadine shakes her ostrich tails, and Sweetpea, who has the most defined bod, isolates her pasties and whips them around like lassos. Yes, put a ribbon on this one.

An impeccable cast briskly directed by Brian Columbus portrays the sordid story behind William Williams, the last man executed in Minnesota a century ago. Columbus and Nancy Ruyle's lean and absorbing script sympathizes with teenager Johnnie Keller (Kevin Singer), torn between a father (Jerome R. Marzullo) threatening him with reformatory and Williams (Wade Vaughn), an older man obsessed with him. Williams murdered the teen and his mother (Jean Salo) in a drunken rage. Edwin Strout shines as Joseph Hennessy, the gutsy Pioneer Press journalist who tracked the events.