MN Fringe Festival Day 1! Castrati: A Tale of Two, Stage Presents, Watership Down (The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award Winner!), and Socks & Shoes & Coats.

The Minnesota Fringe Festival is the most wonderful time of the year. This is the time of year where theater lovers get to live, eat, sleep, and pray theater. 104 shows, each performed 5 times over the 10 days. It is possible to see 55 shows if you see something in every slot. This year I’ll max out at 47 due to two Minnesota United home games, come on you Loons, make it worth missing 8 shows and win! To check out all the shows, go to the Minnesota Fringe website here: https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2026. As I do every year, I’ll be posting short reviews of every show I see as fast as I can, including my daily naming of The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award winner. But I can’t see everything, and that isn’t a knock on my manhood, no one can, it’s impossible. So I encourage you to also follow my colleagues at http://www.cherryandspoon.com/ and https://letteredintheatre.wordpress.com/. You can also access all of the shows on the fabulous new theater website of the Twin Cities, 79 Seconds on Stage, at https://79seconds.org/.

This was a bit of a surprise. The title is very Fringy, as is the concept, which is a musical following a man who is castrated, shaming his father, but ultimately becoming a celebrated singer. One goes in expecting something very silly and probably lowbrow, and to some extent those things are true, but the surprise is how elevated the songwriting by Cali Garzon, Julia Maskin, and Eli Maskin is, how gifted the large cast is vocally and performance-wise, and how tight the seven-piece band sounds. It’s a Melancholics Anonymous show crossed with Skylark Opera Company. The cast is terrific, the tone is odd, but in a good way. It will be fun to see if anyone can top this one musically. It’s funny but sometimes in a way you’re not quite sure why you are laughing, is it the work=d they sang or the way they sung it? This is sure to be among the best of the festival. https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2026/castrati-a-tale-of-two

If you’ve seen one of Wells Farnham’s previous two Fringe shows, you know the tone and delivery you are in for. I’m not sure he’ll still have a voice left come the end of the run. That said, like his previous shows, I found this one very funny. While it definitely feels a little more pieced together than the earlier shows, each story arc is satisfying. The end features a moment meant to scare Wells himself, and watching him go at it full speed, and without a doubt succeeding, is as satisfying for us as it must be for him. https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2026/stage-presents

We’ve come to expect a certain dark, camp tone from Melancholics Anonymous. They seem to be the poster theater company for what Fringe can be. So what do they do? Reinvent themselves with this faithful adaptation of the classic novel Watership Down by Richard Adams. True to the source, at least as far as I can remember from a traumatizing screening in the theater of the animated film adaptation on its original release in 1978, when I was six years old. It’s also a musical, with exceptional original songs by company member Bee Davis that have a folk inspiration, feel very polished, and integrate beautifully into the narrative. This is so unlike anything else M.A. has done, and yet it is filled with the kind of creative inventiveness, that have earned them their reputation as one of the most creative theater companies in the Twin Cities. It’s a brilliant move on their part and a reminder to us that they are not a vibe, a tone, or a genre, they are theater makers and artists. And they have won the dubious honor of being awarded this year’s first The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award! Congratulations, that and $1.50 will get you a McChicken sandwich (for a limited time only). https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2026/watership-down

The final show of the night, stuck in the dreaded 10:00 PM Thursday night slot, was Socks & Shoes & Coats. It’s a musical telling the story of a couple from the moment they find out they are pregnant through the diagnosis and episodes of their son’s “condition.” It is told unchronologically, and I’m not entirely certain if the son dies or is just in the hospital at one point. The cast is fine, the songs are fine, the story is a downer, but not in as moving a way as you might hope. The show isn’t actively bad, it’s just OK, and with so many shows to choose from, just OK probably should equate to a skip on your list. I’m not sad I saw it, but I wish I’d fit in something else on my “must” list that I couldn’t fit into my schedule. https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2026/socks-shoes-coats

That’s it for day one. I’ll be at the Loons game Friday, so check back Sunday morning for my reviews of the shows I see Saturday. And hey, if you see me at the Fringe, stop and say hi—tell me what your favorite show is so far.

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