Pope! An Epic Musical

This year’s Fringe Festival is finally over! Which means, of course, that’s its time for the FringeNYC Encore Series. This postfestival festival starts on Thursday, September 9; tickets are $18, and can be ordered by phone at 866-468-7619 or online here. Of the 21 shows in this year’s extension program, we have already covered a lucky 13; see the list below for a list of Encore offerings as well links to our written reviews and video insta-reviews (and in some cases, both). And we are happy to announce that our popular video reviewers, AndrewAndrew, have volunteered for another tour of duty, so check this blog in weeks to come for new dispatches from the dynamic downtown duo.

Meanwhile, here are the selections in this year’s Encore Series:

Amsterdam Abortion Survivor (AndrewAndrew video review)
Bunked! A New Musical (Adam Feldman’s three-star review) (AndrewAndrew video review)
Faye Lane’s Beauty Shop Stories (AndrewAndrew video review)
Getting Even with Shakespeare
Hearts Full of Blood (Emily Hoffman’s four-star review)
How My Mother Died of Cancer, and Other Bedtime Stories
The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Festival (Jonathan Mandell’s four-star review) (AndrewAndrew video review)
Jurassic Parq: The Broadway Musical (AndrewAndrew video review)
Just In Time: The Judy Holliday Story (Aaron Grunfeld’s three-star review)
Lost and Found
Made in Taiwan
Over and Over
PigPen Presents The Nightmare Story
Pope! An Epic Musical (AndrewAndrew video review)
Running (Robin Rothstein’s four-star review)
Saving Throw Versus Love
The Secretaries (Helen Shaw’s three-star review)
South Pathetic (Jonathan Mandell’s three-star review) (AndrewAndrew video review)
The Twentieth-Century Way (Jonathan Mandell’s five-star review)
Viva Los Bastarditos!
When Last We Flew (Adam Feldman’s four-star review)

Dream of the Marionettes / La Rêve des Marionettes
***
It’s appropriate that this mild musical from Louisiana is playing at La Mama: Its retro feminist sensibilities recall the political shows that might have played this venerable venue four decades ago or so. A puppet master/emcee (the leering Bruce Coen) controls a bevy of beauties, each representing a female archetype: the wife, the virgin, the whore, etc. The slaves sing, sashay and tease—until one revolts and kills their keeper and, left to their own devices, these “puppets” must break out of their predetermined roles. Johanna Divine and Christine Leichty’s libretto is as scanty as the cast’s costumes, and is really just an excuse for a lovely and impressive parade of original old-school songs (with music by Divine and Daniel Coolik), notably the sassy “A Little Class.” Sadly, save for Jessica Jouclard and Apiyo Obala, the performers aren’t very titillating (or often on key). For this show to work, it might best be reconceived as a burlesque revue, with stars who know how to really make the most of their…parts.—Raven Snook

Hearts Full of Blood
****
Presented by Chicago’s the New Colony, James Asmus’s 90-minute tragicomedy revolves around the dark secret at the root of a couple’s infertility, and Sarah Gitenstein (acting opposite Gary Tiedeman) makes the climactic moment of truth genuinely breathtaking. A strong supporting cast—Evan Linder and Mary Hollis Inboden do wonders as friends of the unhappy couple—anchors the work in the specific realities of young, upper-middle-class America, and turns Hearts into a meditation on happiness and normalcy. This is something of a letdown; the play is stronger when it focuses on taboos and perversity. But the play’s snappy dialogue, shocking subject matter and remarkable leading performance give the Fringe a welcome infusion of quality. —Emily Hoffman

Garage
****
At the opening of Garage, David (Nathan Riley) returns to his Arkansas home after sixteen years, bragging in a high-pitched rant about his plans to bulldoze the auto-repair business that he’s just inherited from his abusive father. While the rest of Dive Theater’s collectively written show is equally aggressive, it is tempered with nuanced acting and poignant remembrances that might do Sam Shepard proud, as David faces the demons represented by his redneck foster brother, Brandon (a tremendous Bryce Kemph), and tries to reclaim his manhood before his wife, Susan (Jenna Kirk), leaves him. Although beer cans flood the stage, the writing remains clear-eyed in the driver’s seat. The characters’ motives aren’t as simple as they seem, and Michael Hogwood’s direction heightens the drama with equal attention to striking physical action (such Brandon “hugging” David by the throat) and hidden motivations (like the tension between Susan and Brandon). There’s a lot going on under the hood in Garage, and its surprises have real horsepower.—Aaron Riccio

When Last We Flew
****
If hope is the thing with feathers, as Dickinson wrote, then When Last We Flew is undeniably fledgling. Harrison David Rivers’s ambitious drama vibrates with potential; the spirit of the piece, which owes an overarching debt to Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (a revival of which approaches at the Signature), is imaginative and humane. Directed by Colette Robert, the young cast does generally excellent work: Jon-Michael Reese as a black Kansan teenager obsessed with Kushner’s epic, Christopher Larkin as his hyperverbal gay friend, Rory Lipede as a high-school girl discovering the satisfactions of racial activism. The play still seems to be finding its balance: Among other problems, it is book-ended with purple portent—a miscast Allison Mackie struggles to deliver her self-consciously poetical speeches—and would benefit from fewer overt hyperlinks to Angels. But while not all of the writing quite flies, Rivers’s thoughtful and sensitive play is well worth catching at the Fringe before it—hopefully—gets a rewrite and a chance to spread its wings in wider skies.—Adam Feldman

23 Feet in 12 Minutes: The Death and Rebirth of New Orleans
***
It has now been five years since Hurricane Katrina, and audiences seem ready to revisit what happened. In Mari Brown’s drama, based on on interviews with survivors of the disaster, Deanna Pacelli plays eight people with stories to tell—many of them horror stories. (The title refers to the speed at which water rose in the poor New Orleans neighborhood known as the Lower 9th Ward.) One woman tells of being raped, and of seeing an alligator attack a bleeding stranger; a man describes watching his mother drown in front of him, and returning to claim her body four months later. Pacelli is an able mimic, and her latest collaboration with Brown—they previously created There Goes The Neighborhood, which took a stylistically similar approach to the subject of Brooklyn gentrification—is intelligent and sometimes moving. But this hour-long play suffers by comparison with more comprehensive and better-crafted recent works on the same subject, such as Spike Lee’s If God is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, the HBO television series Treme and the Fringe’s other flood-themed piece, The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Festival.—Jonathan Mandell