2024 Audience Reviews

Company: Pretend Productions
Show: Daddy Issues
Venue: Phoenix Theater

must-see!

this was an absolutely beautiful piece, balancing a story of deep personal pain and loss with love and the unconquerable human desire for a big ol’ belly laugh even in the most difficult circumstances. It’s clearly a cathartic and healing experience to perform, which makes it equally effective to witness. It spoke a lot to my own relationships with my family and it was clear to spoke to many others in the audience too.

Company: Funk Haus Theater
Show: Interstella 5555: A Daft Punk Discovery
Venue: Barbara Barker Center for Dance

great energy! bangin music! what a blast!

Company: Jackdonkey Productions
Show: The Dumb Waiter
Venue: Open Eye Theatre

Excellent pacing & direction

There’s a wonderful tension that Pinter builds throughout the script, and the skillful direction brings it out very well. I could sense the growing unease in the room throughout the play as the threat of something unknown but inevitable looms over the characters. The actors both brought subtle but specific choices in their physicality, but the accent work was a little difficult to understand in a few places. I figure the choice to put the dumbwaiter in the floor rather than a wall was a response to the limitations of a Fringe show and the convenience of Open Eye’s trap door, but it became surprisingly more menacing that way than in any other staging I’ve seen, as if it tapped into some primal fear of things coming out from underground that’s more potent than a fear of things coming from within a wall. Considering it’s basically the title character of the play, I did want just a little more detail given to the sound of the dumbwaiter.

Company: Transatlantic Love Affair
Show: 5 x 5
Venue: Open Eye Theatre

funny! beautiful! unexpectedly moving!

Absolutely incredible work! Pacing is superb, the stories move quickly but with amazing specificity from the whole cast that keeps you dialed in all the way through. The density of action and storytelling that happens in the tiny little square is brilliant. There’s a fringe-y silliness to the entire conceit that goes just a bit further than the TLA shows I’ve seen in the past, which makes all the small beautiful details that much more impactful when they land. Perhaps the best show I’ve had the pleasure to see at Fringe!