Minnesota Fringe Day 6 : Songs Without Words (The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award winner), Our Zombie Town, Academonic, The Lasso Way: A Musical.

So it took 28 shows until I found one that I couldn’t wholeheartedly recommend. But you know what? Tonight was the kind of night that reminded me of what the Minnesota Fringe Festival is all about. It’s about trying new things and that doesn’t just mean the audience, that means the people on stage too. Look at my friend Kendra Plant, first time Fringe producer of The Kendra Plant Variety Hour. Her whole show is about trying something new and working through it even if you have some anxiousness. Fringe is a place for Artists to come and try new things. It’s also a place for artists to present their tried and true productions. You can be as polished as Melancholics Anonymous or as bare bones as one person standing on a blank stage reading from a script. As an audience member you rarely know really what you’ll be getting, sometimes the most excellent sounding premises fall flat and other times the show you see becuase you couldn’t get into the one you wanted to see blows you away. Tonight was really all over the place, but even the worst show of the evening had something good about it. And I want to champion everyone’s efforts. But, I’m also not honoring my promise to you if I don’t tell you what shows I’d skip. If I don’t try and help you decide where your time is better spent, than what use am I? I’m just a publicity machine, and that’s not why I started doing this. There are 99 shows to choose from and I owe it to you to help you make that choice if I can. So as promised these are my Minnesota Honest Reviews Truthful, but hopefully not hurtful.

Songs Without Words (or, The Mendelssohn Play) Is a show I did not have on my schedule originally, but word of mouth convinced me to make a change (sorry Ping Prov). I’m glad I did as I have given it my The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award. This is a show from an out of town Artist and I always feel like I should try and make sure I see more of those, but again 99 shows. You start making a list based on who’s work you’ve enjoyed in the past whether it’s a theater company or a performer, and then which shows the description sounds interesting, and then the all important factor, where you look at your schedule and say, you know if I see that show I can just stay at Open Eye all night and not have to drive back and forth. why am I spending so much time describing schedule making? Because I don’t have a lot to say about the content of this show. It’s very polished and elegant, it’s the story of sibling composers Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. Is filled with beautiful music, a reminder of the injustices woman have suffered in the past not being allowed to have the same options, or sometimes any options as men. It’s a theme that pops up in several of the Fringe shows I’ve seen so far this year, because apparently half of the country need to be reminded of how things were and have it pointed out that, that was bad. Songs Without Words is not just a message play it is a fascinating exploration of two people that I knew nothing about, other than having heard some of their music. Jennifer Vosters who created and performs the shows is mesmerizing in both roles. To purchase tickets go to the shows page at The Minnesota Fringe Site here https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2025/songs-without-words-or-the-mendelssohn-play-

Now it starts to get interesting Our Zombie Town is a modern mash up of the Thornton Wilder play Our Town and the zombie world of George A. Romero. It’s a great idea and I feel like the script by Richard Chin is actually fairly solid, maybe even really good. The problem is that it feels like we are watching a run through of the performance two weeks into the planned four week rehearsal. Everyone is “mostly” off book but maybe haven’t entirely made all of their choices yet on how they plan to play a scene. There are a few good performances but too many of the cast seem content with having remembered their lines and spoken them. It may be a Fringe show, but the best Fringe shows regardless of budget or silliness of the subject matter, have actors that still try and create a character. Maybe it’s the amount of rehearsal time the cast had, maybe it’s weak direction, or an over reliance on the high concept to win the day. I’m not sure. But the one thing I don’t think that is at fault is the script. And there’s one set piece that almost makes this worth checking out. But with 98 other shows to choose from, I can’t recommend Our Zombie Town to everyone. Die hard zombie fans or people who have acted in a production of Our Town are probably the most likely to enjoy this. But, and I can’t stress this enough, this is my opinion, Faithful readers will know where our tastes diverge. A glance at the Minnesota Fringe Kitty meter or whatever they call that Kitty rating system has this at 4 1/2 Kitties. Does anyone else find that disturbing? I’m not a cat lover but even I don’t like the image of half a kitten. To purchase tickets go to the shows page at The Minnesota Fringe Site here https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2025/our-zombie-town

So apparently when I was making my schedule I thought what I needed was a Twin Cities Horror Fest wannabe night. Academonic has sort of the opposite issue of Our Zombie Town. This one I thought the performances were all fairly solid but the script needed another draft or two. This may be the result of someone’s ping pong ball being pulled without them having any idea what they wanted to do. In which case getting a play written at all is fairly impressive let alone casting and rehearsing and performing it. It’s not that you can’t follow the script or glean from what is happening the motivations and relationships. But a solid script doesn’t make you have to glean things or make assumptions. Pretty much everyone in the cast is good but especially Tamira Rashid as the protagonist Ellen Karass, which we assume is a play on the priest in The Exorcist, and Kiran Arquin who plays a demonic carpet. The only time the performances falter is when they are given too little to say or do and you feel like even they are gleaning what their characters motivations are supposed to be. If you gotta see one of these two horror themed plays this Fringe I’d bet on this one, but be warned the script is murky and directionless at times. It feels like they had thirty minutes of material, a story possibly able to support a longer running time, but ran out of time to flesh it out. And so, they wrote time filling dialogue that would challenge any actor to deliver convincingly. To purchase tickets go to the shows page at The Minnesota Fringe Site here https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2025/academonic-

The Lasso Way: A Musical is fun without rising to the level of other musicals I’ve seen this Fringe. Full disclosure, I’m a big Ted Lasso fan. When this show opens with Ted’s son in court because he’s spray painted the word “Wanker” all over New York City because he hates his Dad, who’s dead, the show had an up hill battle on it’s hands. Sentenced to community service directing a musical about his father or faced with years in person Henry must learn to be a Director and deal with his daddy issues. This is a little rough around the edges but overall if you are a Lasso fan, you’ll want to see this. Co-creator Travis Carpenter is well cast as Coach Beard and Noah Johnson as the actor Brent who is playing Roy Kent in the musical, does an uncanny vocal impersonation during his first line readings as the character. His song about saying the F word, is easily the best musical number in the show. There are a lot of nice touches throughout including a hallucination conversation Henry has with his dead father. By the end it’s quite winning and remains faithful to the message of Ted Lasso. this is a recommend but if you don’t know the show Ted Lasso, that might hamper your enjoyment. To purchase tickets go to the shows page at The Minnesota Fringe Site here https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2025/the-lasso-way-a-musical

That’s it for day six of the Minnesota Fringe Festival you can click on the Fringe website here to get details on all of the shows https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2025. Don’t forget to tune into The Stages of MN YouTube channel for mini episodes all week long from The MN Fringe Festival https://www.youtube.com/@TheStagesofMN

Don’t depend on a Facebook or Instagram algorithm to ensure you hear about a great show. You can subscribe and have every post from The Stages of MN sent directly to your email box. It’s the best way to ensure you don’t miss out on any of the theater action. To subscribe on your computer: from the home page on the right, enter your email address and click subscribe. On your mobile device scroll to the bottom of the page and do the same. You can also follow me on Facebook, @thestagesofmn click follow and on Instagram thestagesofmn.