When You Hear the Chime features Nichole Carey and Andrew Lester as two kids in an attic going through one of their Grandmothers old belongings. A combination of them acting out stories like Rumpelstiltskin and The Little Mermaid, playing dress up with the Grandmother’s old clothes, and their tentative and uncertain conversations about the adult world around them. Lester, obviously a trained dancer, gets multiple opportunities to display those skills as he portrays the young boy with ADHD, he uses his body control to elegantly represent the boys physicality, his constant need to be moving. Carey gets an unexpected moment towards the end of the show to reveal a wonderful singing voice. The show has a lot of imaginative whimsy punctuated with moments of tenderness.
https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2023/when-you-hear-the-chime-
Romeo & Juliet Are Dead is a look at what might have happened to the star crossed lovers after they died at the end of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. In an empty void, Romeo sits making counts on the floor with Chalk, when Juliet suddenly appears. The lovers at first sight begin to profess their love for one another and their joy at being reunited in the afterlife. But infinity gives them time to reflect on their romance, how well they know each other and if marrying someone you’ve know for less than a week is really a good idea. What plays out in this abstract nether world where rooms are decorated and furnished by drawing items with a piece of chalk is a glimpse at what a life together, forever, is really like. They get a crash course in what marriage is like once the romance has worn off. The script effectively and elegantly mirrors the language of Shakespeare most of the time but occasionally gives a nod to the characters ages by having them speak in the same vernacular as my teenage children did.
https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2023/romeo-juliet-are-dead
Big Dad Energy is Stand up comic Jamie Campbell’s one man show about not being a Dad. He’s funny and has a positive message. The best bit is the one he did at the Fringe preview about pineapple on pizza. When you are needing a laugh and a blast of positivity this will be the show to take in.
https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2023/big-dad-energy
THE STAGES OF MN FRINGE OF THE DAY AWARD winner!!!!
Stabby Stab Stab is a collaboration between two local favorite theater companies that attendees of MN Fringe Festival and Twin Cities Horror Festival (TCHF) know well, Special When Lit and the Winding Sheet Outfit. This is a remount of a production that if memory serves, sold out every performance last fall at the TCHF. It is a dramatization of the 2014 true crime popularly known as “the Slender Man Stabbing” that focuses solely on the two 12 year old girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weir who committed the heinous crime. The show is a reminder that people are more than the one worst thing they’ve done in their lives. It doesn’t try to excuse their actions but it does help put things in perspective and bring to the forefront that these were 12 year old children. We gain some understanding of the loneliness and the intense need to connect that the two girls whose inner world seems as real to them as the one outside their heads. It reminded me of the wonderful true crime based film by Peter Jackson Heavenly Creatures.
The girls are brought to vivid life by the shows Playwright Nissa Nordland Morgan as Morgan and Kayla Dvorak Feld as Anissa. Nordland Morgan brings her uncanny ability to play childlike without crossing over into cloying childishness. Her character is the one who stabs and her performance makes clear that the girl is young, naive and suffering from mental illness that has caused a relaxation of her grip on reality. Her script, the result of exhaustive research includes texts between the girls and even a short story written by Morgan. All of this is giving us a picture of the girls tween world view and it brings some modicum of understanding to such an unfathomable act. Dvorak Feld has wowed me over and over agaib the last twelve months, every time I see her name in a program I have to double check it’s the same actress such is her range, I’m never sure that’s the same actress I saw last time as such and such character. Stabby Stab Stab is backed with eerily appropriate live musical accompaniment by Derek Lee Miller and Sam Landman. The effective Lighting by Andre Johnson Jr. combined with the projections and Production Design by Director Amber Bjork made this the show to beat at season XI of the TCHF.
* This review for Stabby Stab Stab contains material from last falls production that featured the same cast. Mostly because it’s still how I feel but also because I need to sleep.
https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2023/stabby-stab-stab
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