FRINGE 2019: 3 plays chosen by the RANDOMIZER!
Let’s call these the random reviews – three plays brought to you by the 2019 Fringe website randomizer!
So much entertainment choice. So little time. Fringe have given adventuresome (or indecisive, or lazy) theatergoers a way to simplify the selection process – requiring us only to forgive them for offering no refunds if the chosen work stinks. Hardly a fair deal, but given shortage of time, the wheel of Fringe-ing fortune was given a fateful spin to assist in picking plays to review. The Magic Eight Ball (it’s a real thing) offered up the following three plays, and met with overall success – which was defined here as satisfying Meatloaf’s declaration about two out of three not being bad:
The Royal Zissou Academy
Stage 4 (Academy at King Edward)
The Royal Zissou Academy is actually name of an improv troupe that cooks up a Wes Anderson film on the spot based on a film title supplied spontaneously by audience members.
Anderson is known for films that often star Bill Murray like The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (ergo the name). They all share elements of his highly individualized manner of storytelling: quirky oddball characters, usually together in a family unit, whose peculiar behavior that’s usually the result of a strange reaction to some traumatic event has driven them to melodramatic and neurotic zaniness. All with the added bonus of a kindly, vaguely paternal narrator focusing the storyline as if he’s somehow the one running the show. Anderson has a filmaking style uniquely structured for improv.
The show I reviewed (they’re all different, being improv) wasn’t as heavy on the laughs as one might have desired, and they did have one moment where they struggled to transition through a sudden plot development crucial to the story line, but it wasn’t a train wreck (like the parking around the Fringe – don’t me started), and it’s impressive that these guys managed to cook up an amusing storyline, with memorable characters who were more developed by the halfway point than they would have been in most mainstream Hollywood movies, and then weaved them into a coherent, entertaining whole – exactly what good improv strives to accomplish. A strong performance by this young troupe.
4 out of 5
