This was my biggest day yet with seven shows, and the hardest so far to choose The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award winner. It was almost a very tough decision between four of the seven shows, The Banana Wars, Put a Needle in Me (the winner), The Wind Phone, and A Murder on the Great Grimpen Mire Express. So consider all of those to be must see shows.
The Banana Wars by Derek Lee Miller is a fascinating and entertaining history lesson about the things they don’t teach you in high school history classes. Why? Because the facts Miller shares are illustrations of the corruption and ideological betrayals that most of us prefer not to see. It’s important though to face these truths from time to time to remind ourselves how fragile the ideals of our democratic republic are, how easily twisted and sidestepped they can be. This is Miller’s second show in the 2024 Minnesota Fringe Festival along with The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award winning 5 X 5 from Transatlantic Love Affair. I highly recommend both shows, Miller is such an engaging performer and the script is filled with intelligent observations and humor. Plus for added value I recommend getting there when the house opens as Miller takes the stage and hold informal conversation with the audience before the show itself begins. The coolest part of these extra minutes is he’ll teach you the best way to peel a banana. What more could you ask for from a Fringe show?
https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2024/the-banana-wars
Seance Sisters adds a little spooky to the 2024 Fringe Festival, which I’m all in favor of. It’s based on a real life trio of sisters known as the Fox Sister Mediums, who are said to have been the beginning of the American Spiritualism movement. There is a lot to like in the show but it also seems to be just shy of really working. It has some great atmosphere and tricks up its sleeve as we witness a seance. The performers are all really good, Hannah May as the controlling older sister Leah and the control she has over and fear she induces in her sisters in palpable. Mallory Lewis and Sophia White as the two younger sisters Maggie and Kate who are seemingly being compelled by Leah to perform in sham seances. Lewis’s Kate who has just lost her husband is trying to get free from Leah’s control, and attempts to undermine the performance. As punishment Leah forces the younger sister to take Maggie’s place for a part of the seance called the box. I won’t reveal what happens, but it’s well done technically. What doesn’t quite work is the start and stop, treading water feel of the Fox sister’s fake performance. Rather than build tension we just remain waiting, wondering if the conversations we witness wouldn’t play better if they weren’t supposed to be happening in front of us as the Seance attendees. If you want something with a little bumpitty and spookable in it, this is your best bet, everything clicks but the script.
https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2024/seance-sisters
A Monster Scientist and a Tattooed Anarchist Walk into a Bar: Put a Needle To Me is The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award winner for Day 4 of the festival. A solo autobiographical show by local multi-talented artist Ariel Pinkerton that feels deeply confessional and incredibly brave. I think that is perhaps a common element of many solo Fringe shows. But, when it’s an artist you are familiar with, whom you’ve seen perform many times and even had conversations with, someone you feel like you know, at least a little, that, revealing of one’s self, feels more meaningful. To see Pinkerton stand and share her truths with her eloquent bluntness is to see her laid bare with only the ink of her tattoos to use as cover. Pinkerton’s vulnerability is felt all the more keenly as vulnerable is the last word I would ever have used to describe her. Which of course is wrong, of course she can be vulnerable. Vulnerability isn’t a weakness it’s a gift that the artist gives the audience, it’s a letting down of the walls we all use to protect ourselves in order to let the audience in, to make a connection. From what I knew about Pinkerton, or thought I knew before taking in this show, I would have said we are almost opposites. After seeing the show I was struck by how much of her story and her life I can relate to. I observe her willingness to open herself to the world and I admire, applaud, and envy it.
A Monster Scientist and a Tattooed Anarchist Walk into a Bar: Bizarrocosms – Imaginary Evolutions was the name of the Reverend Matt’s Monster Science performance I saw, but each performance is a different lecture of his personal best from the series. For those who don’t know what this is, they are hour long lectures by Matthew Kessen accompanied by power point productions on some form of monster. They are very humorous, I always love to attend these as I was a big monster fan growing up and still am to this day.
The Wind Phone is a lovely and moving theater piece that explores the phenomenon of the Wind Phone started by Japanese garden designer Itaru Sasaki. The concept is a unconnected phone is a quiet park or garden that people can use to speak to those who have passed away. It doesn’t connect to the spirit world and allow those who use it to converse with their departed loved ones. It is just a way for people to say aloud what they wish they could have said to their loved ones when they were around. We get to see four different individuals along with the caretaker of this particular Wind Phone talk to the person or animal they have things left that they need to say. But, before that happens we get a scene between two woman who recently divorced. After their run in, which doesn’t go well, one of the women goes to talk to her deceased mother and unburdons herself about the end of that relationship. The final person to use the phone is her ex-wife, and we come to understand that the therapeutic power of the wind phone is not just relevant to the grief and loss we feel when someone dies. Fittingly, performances for this show take place outside in a calm little oasis in the heart of the Cedar Riverside community called The Ribs of Humanity.
https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2024/the-wind-phone
Heart Ripped Out Twice and so Can You! is a performance art piece in which Linnea Bond appears to be making a timeshare pitch to us on the concept of existing. We are unsure at first why this would be happening but go with it. When the examples of some of the downsides of life become very very specific, we begin to clue into the fact that there is something else happening here. Bond describes a health scare and all the ups and downs that go with it. Mostly it’s all to comic effect, but there is a phone call that keeps trying to interrupt her and it ties into why she is making the presentation. It’s rather ingenious when it all comes together and very entertaining on its journey to that point. And in what seems to be the “Where’s Waldo?” of this years Fringe festival there is a reference to butt stuff, that’s one a day for me at this years festival.
https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2024/heart-ripped-out-twice-and-so-can-you-
A Murder on the Great Grimpen Mire Express is another Whodunnit and the best of the three I’ve seen so far! This one is a mashup of Murder on the Orient Express and The Hound of the Baskervilles. Like a sneak peek at Jeffrey Hatcher and Steve Hendrickson’s upcoming Holmes Poirot at Park Square this fall, here we get both great detectives on a single case. Writer Tim Wick gives us a much more humorous play than I suspect the Park Square show will be. What’s nice is while he does poke fun at Watson’s intelligence and the world of the play does seem very silly, he more or less treats the two sleuths with respect and doesn’t make them into parodies of themselves. Very entertaining, silly silly silly, and sporting the best costumes I’ve seen at Fringe so far. I love Poirot and Holmes and enjoy a good laugh, this was right up my alley and if that describes you as well, this will be a must see for you. Full disclosure I did make my Fringe debut in this show, as the audience member who throws a wolf at a character at the start of the play, but I still did my best to review the play impartially.
https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2024/a-murder-on-the-great-grimpen-mire-express
That’s the reviews from Day four of the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Be sure to check back daily for new reviews and if you are Fringing and you see me, be sure to stop and say hi! Also for reviews of shows I might not see or for another opinion on ones I have, follow M’ Colleague Jill Schafer at http://www.cherryandspoon.com/ and for other Fringe writings checkout our friend and fellow Twin Cities Theater Blogger Kendra Plant’s blog Artfully Engaging at https://www.kendraplant.com/blog-artfully-engaging.
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