2025 Audience Reviews

Company: SAATH
Show: Manasu - Echoes of the Mind
Venue: Rarig Nolte Xperimental Theatre

Well-acted, heartfelt, and beautiful

For a first-time playwright, Manasu’s central conflict is handled with deft patience and emotional intelligence. It was funny when it needed to be and sad when it needed to be. There’s a Herculean amount of costume changes and it truly captured a “passing of time” really well.

Company: Small Waves
Show: Cabin Fever
Venue: Barbara Barker Center for Dance

The funniest Improv show I’ve ever seen at Fringe

All Fringe productions are at the mercy of the schedule gods but no show was better suited for a Friday 10pm slot than Cabin Fever. I’ve seen Improvised Dating Competitions before but the degree to which these recent college grads were slinging around amazing one-liners bordered on the surreal. The improv at my college was nowhere near this good.

Company: Third Space Theater
Show: Breach
Venue: Theatre in the Round

A Perfect Storm of Everything Great About Fringe

The constant rush of Fringe can sometimes be difficult on genres that require pacing like mystery or horror but I’ll be damned if my stomach wasn’t in a knot everytime the lights went out. Stellar job.

Company: Wheeler In The Sky
Show: In The Garden Of American Heroes
Venue: The Southern Theatre

Tremendous Shattering of Myth

Wheeler’s “Whoosh!” is my favorite Fringe show of all time so I’ll always be up for one of his brilliantly acted historical ghost stories. Here we find General Custer not in a Garden of Heroes but the haunted purgatory he deserves. Very brave performance (in more ways than one); Wheeler completely locks in to one of the most despicable Americans (to date) and keeps the audience entranced throughout.

Company: Wet Splat
Show: MicroMedics
Venue: Strike Theater

The doctors are sooooo small 🥹😭

I hope you bring your funny bone to Strike Theater because the esteemed physicians of Micromedics will be able to locate it. Fierce battles, silly songs, and true love await inside a submarine that’s traveling through a bloodstream.

Company: Richie Whitehead
Show: The Wickie
Venue: Barbara Barker Center for Dance

“Wickie” is Wicked Good

If you’re a fan of the film “Hundreds of Beavers” you’ll love “The Wickie” and it’s ridiculously inventive slapstick in an old-timey setting. Whitehead so thoroughly embodies the grizzled lighthouse keeper I was shocked his beard wasn’t real. Great use of the Barbara Barker Center’s endless darkness and a needle drop you wouldnt guess if I gave you 1000 guesses.

Company: Destiny Davison
Show: DOLLY WHO?'S HOLIDAY HORROR SHOW
Venue: Open Eye Theatre

Planes Trains & Automobiles (& Pumpkins & Snails)

Dolly Who?’s Holiday Horror Show was a jubilant, kid-friendly variety hour filled with a production crew of ghosts, treats for the audience, and a murderer’s row of stick puppet characters. It’s a celebration of spooky season and all the holidays on the surrounding calendar pages (VCR Day is my sister’s birthday)

Company: Little Lamp Theatre Company
Show: One Who is Home
Venue: Open Eye Theatre

Fantastically Authentic!

“One Who Is Home” was able to make the Open Eye feel like home, turning the brick theater into a cozy space with plants, records, and books (I couldn’t make out every book but one of them was “On a Sunbeam,” very fitting). The performers have wonderful chemistry, the first half felt like a charming 90’s indie before delving deeper in who these characters are. Really loved this one, definitely going a little out of your way to see.

Company: JexArzayus Productions
Show: La Tunda: A Reimagining of a Colombian Folklore
Venue: Mixed Blood

5 Shrimps!

I’ve been a fan of Jex’s shows since “The Lock-In,” which I still think about all the time; with La Tunda the fun and flirty moments combine nicely with the sinister presence lurking throughout. Great lighting and sound design, as well as an impressive, aggressive choreographed fight.

Company: Theatre on the Rocks
Show: A Good Cancer to Have
Venue: Mixed Blood

A Good Show to Watch

Sam Sweere was one of Fringe 2024’s biggest hits as a horse trapped in a “Duck Amuck” scenario but this year comes a somber, thoughtful show about the unfairness of real life. Although I miss Sam yelling at the audience he is a fantastic speaker and is able to traverse through difficult moments with wit and humor. His wife Leah plays a silent stagehand and offers many great assists throughout the show.

Company: Melancholics Anonymous
Show: Joan of Arc for Miss Teen Queen USA
Venue: Rarig Stoll Thrust Theatre

Miss(ion) Congeniality

Melancholics Anonymous are on a mission from God to create a delightful send-up of “Drop Dead Gorgeous.” Saint Joan of Arc is spared the stake but ends up in a more dire predicament of having to win a beauty pageant. Joan is great & enough time is given to the other contestants to be fully developed characters as well.

Company: LandmanLand
Show: A Sad Carousel 2: The Timely Death of Herschel Douscheburg
Venue: Rarig Stoll Thrust Theatre

Welcome Back Rarig, Welcome Back Douscheberg

Obviously there’s some comedy that’s dated for a reason and best left in the past, but there is a certain appeal to the sweaty, collar-tugging lounge acts of the 80s that’s hard to pin down. Your Rodney Dangerfields and Don Rickleses. “A Sad Carousel 2” pits revived insult comic Herschel Douscheberg against a precocious Gen Z improv troupe for the fate of comedy. Several envelopes are pushed. Lot of fun banter done in a classic Simpsons-like cadence, Minnesota theater references, and plentiful swearing make this a very enjoyable watch. This was my first show of the Festival, making “Douscheberg” the tip of the iceberg.