2023 Audience Reviews

Company: Viet Nguyen
Show: Reincarnation Soup
Venue: Southern Theater

Hey, look, another Viet performer at Fringe, nice

I found out about this show after my second show at Fringe. This is my first year not only performing in a Fringe show but also plunging myself into the Fringe gauntlet of shows outside of my otherwise busy week. But this is not Viet's first Fringe rodeo, and it really, really, REALLY showed. The man is a work horse for snapping his stable of characters and vignettes out of the ghostly ether into our rapt view. Yes, at times the pacing of his monologues, in tandem with his speaking style and the quick clip at which the vignettes flow into one another in an otherwise down-dressed stage, made it a mild challenge to stay abreast of the details of each character's backdrop preceding their purgatory state. And yet, Viet's agile and dynamic performance style will keep your eyes glued to him as he flies across the stage and through vignette after vignette. Very cool to see such an accomplished Viet performer, at Fringe or anywhere. It warms my immigrant 2nd gen heart. Written by Tri Vo, performer in Coyfish.

Company: Destiny Davison
Show: DOLLY WHO?
Venue: Rarig Center Xperimental

Dell is on a diet

That was the name of our children's show episode, featuring my mesh bucket hat as a signature accessory and origin story for Dell. Get all cozy and ready your guffaws for Dolly's endearing, witty, and whimsical tour of her artsy world and her fartsy friends (fartsy as in hilariously grumpy). Leave your destinies at the door, we're co-making our own very cute and funny world with Dolly.

Company: Jackdonkey Productions
Show: Dock Work
Venue: Rarig Center Thrust

DO Even Fucking Think/Talk/DO something about it

A few things out of the way: I didn't realize this was an AD showing, so there was a person speaking in the upper floor seats the whole of the show whom was, in fact, describing the show verbally for another audience member and not just talking ad nauseum about ... who knows what. That was my bad for thinking they were some very bad viewer until towards the end of the show when I could make out some of the words they were saying, which were describing the movements of the devisers on stage. And oh, were the movements captivating, as were the spoken poetry that each of three devisers shared the labor of weaving into their movement work. Shame that I kept getting distracted by the low whisper of a competing voice; the poetry itself was already so efflorescent and delicate in its imagery, ideas, and emotions but was very hard to keep apace with in light of the other voice. Perhaps this is a crude way to say it, that I am thankful for my senses to experience the sight and sound of spoken word, movement art, and music as they emulsify with themes of class struggle, of fighting for the redistribution of bread / housing / power while celebrating the capacity for humankind to create beautiful things with our vast array of intellects. Each devised segment had choreography that emulated the movement of manual laborers in ways that elevated such movement to that of inventive homage to the spirit and struggle of manual labor work. The music, performed by a three-piece, were a series of song covers with what sounded like adapted lyrics that I couldn't make out, but felt through the crushing flurry of noisy garage rock. However you're able to experience a show like this, with whatever sensory abilities, you ought to experience it. Written by Tri Vo, performer in Coyfish.

Company: Alex Church
Show: Primary
Venue: Augsburg Studio

Ticking Time Bomb Family

Alex Church really packed this court of characters, whose "culture war" identities are a liability for the towering stateswomen that these characters are forced to orbit and orient all their waking choices, both public and private, around. I will admit: I didn't realize the playwright, Alex Church, was not the intended actor for the matriarch role when I came into the show. I was ready to accept that this show was going take this nuclear political family's absurd pressure cooker of LGTBQ experiences and struggles to almost comical heights by having the esteemed, old guard Democrat mother be a transwomen, in light of all the other characters. Even though I eventually realized the binder Church was holding was, in fact, a script because of BTS complications that were not disclosed (to me), the characters of "Primary" were already such boiling barrels of queer secrets and seething disgust that I was ready for the show's universe to keep plunging me further into its vat of absurd, chemical rage. Written by Tri Vo, performer in Coyfish.

Company: Pat O'Brien
Show: "Starved": The Astonishing True Story of the University of Minnesota Starvation Experiment
Venue: Augsburg Mainstage

how to measure the worth of sacrifice

When a country goes to war and you're a conscientious objector, or "Conscie", what kind of sacrifice can you commit to be in league with your fellow countrymen as they are conscripted off to put their life on the line? What kinds and degrees of shame and erosion of conviction, esteem, and more are experienced when undergoing an experiment like this? Wars are forced on the people of a nation-state against peoples of another nation-state, and so are the choices "available" to the people who are coerced into consent into the conditions of warfare. This show unfurled the story of the UMN experiment with a strong array of performances from characters at different sides of this experiment. Maybe not so much the individual public perception of such an experiment, though the focus was better left on those in the lab, the volunteers of their own war against war.

Company: Juggling Act Productions
Show: Dearest Mother
Venue: Augsburg Studio

Sympathies for the wife

As a newcomer to any of John Berryman's legacy, and watching this show on Thurs at 10pm, I came away feeling saddened for Berryman's wife as a person who became wrapped up in the at-first mundane yet quickly spiraling conditions of his husband and mother-in-law. It was a bit of a challenge to keep up with the ongoing ups-and-downs between John and his mother as stories were read off of letters without much time for the imagination to map out each letter's story. The interactions between characters during this letter-reading phase was done well enough for me to feel like each character had some ability to move the dates and events forward. The plot becomes easier for me to keep up with once all three characters are sharing the same room, addressing each other face-to-face. Each character was performed with convincing enough quirks and steadiness to keep me engaged with the rhythm of the dialogue, even if I wasn't always retaining every detail. Overall, it's a worthwhile dramatization of an esteemed scholar corresponding with a maternal figure whose life is removed from the daily academic pressures that built a dark cloud over John Berryman that could not be felt by the women closest to him, yet impacted them nonetheless. View time: Thurs 10pm, 8/10 Reviewed by Tri, performer in Coyfish