My Saturday experience was better than par for the course. Of seven shows sampled (out of 42 possibilities), only two were complete mistakes. I probably should’ve chosen the local clown show (”After-Party”) over the New York import in one slot, and I couldn’t have fared worse with any of the four alternatives to another show I suffered through. But I did get to check out a couple of local companies (Pangs, Supersonic) I hadn’t seen before. Two shows were pleasant enough, and the three others – a rock opera, an intense love drama and Bolinas’ always mesmerizing performance art hero, Sha Sha Higby – were winners.
The following is a chronological chronicle of a day at the Fringe that started at 1 p.m. and ended at 11:
– The Iron Muffin/Glass Jungle II, created and performed by Sha Sha Higby, at Exit Stage Left. It’s rare when a performer of Higby’s international stature appears at the Fringe, and this is a classic of her unique sculptured-costume performance art. Higby moves fluidly inside an intricate, lacy mesh of twigs, batiked fabrics, leaves, seedpods and large and tiny masks, overlaid with kaleidoscopic projections, until her nearly naked body emerges from its evocative cocoon.
– Number’s Up!, created and performed by John Leo, at Exit Theatre. Direct from New York, Leo’s solo clown show features a few amusing moments in a very tedious 55 minutes.
– Moon Fable, created by director David C. Rosenbaum and performers Brynn Baron, Rigel Byrum-Ridge, Stephanie Blair, R. David Wyllie and Kathryn Tkel. SideCar Theatre at Boxcar Playhouse. Oregon’s SideCar ensemble spins a thin, amusing, but unevenly executed tale about love and moon glow, laced with some funny workplace satire and a sharp performance by Tkel.
– Sonderkommando, written and directed by Wolfgang Thompson, with Ella Barros, Megan Lane Dickson, Kathryn Sheldon and Thompson. Pangs Theater at Boxcar. A Holocaust dybbuk fable in a collage of biblical, Lutheran and other texts is rendered incomprehensible in a punishing, repetitive hour of poor diction and nonstop shrieking.
– Knuckleball by William Whitehurst, directed by Jeremy Pape, starring Judy Merrick and Shawn Parsons. EndTimes Productions and Mortals Theater at Exit Stage Left. Merrick and Parsons deliver a sharply calibrated, strongly felt roller-coaster ride through lust attempting to evolve into love in very complicated, gender-fluid times. Whitehurst’s capably written New York import is one of the hits of the Fringe.
– Exit Sign: A Rock Opera, written, composed and directed by Carrie Baum, with Jamie Ben-Azay, Steffanos X et al. Supersonic Theater at Exit on Taylor. Baum’s tunefully hard- and sweet-rocking tribute to her late father, fueled by strong voices and a dynamic four-piece band, is a blithe concoction of father-daughter affection, whimsy, mourning, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a “happy and gay” heaven and “sex and ice cream.”
– Tale End, written and directed by Marcel Nunis, starring Jessica Rose Knotts (alternating with Melissa Geston) and David P. Otero. Theatre Ventoux at Phoenix Theatre. This Fresno company’s cat-and-mouse-game cliffhanger, about a nubile Las Vegas casino heiress and her possibly untrustworthy bodyguard, is unconvincing in some plot twists and only moderately well performed but generally entertaining.
This article appeared on page E – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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