2025 Audience Reviews

Company: Alisa Rosenthal
Show: Big Honor Student Energy
Venue: Open Eye Theatre

Big Positive Energy to infect all y'all

Snappy, bold, and kinetic performer wrangling us through her misadventures as a black sheep with big artsy dreams. A riot from start to end.

Company: Rajan Khatiwada
Show: Curly Hair Boy
Venue: Rarig Kilburn Theatre

Can't believe! you're missing this show, tsk tsk

The night before, I had seen "Manasu", a complex modern South Asian American story that deserved the full house in attendance for a 10pm show. I think Curly Hair Boy, whose folktale origins of Nepal are from the northmost parts of South Asia, deserves just as much attention as its other subcontinental colleagues. From start to finish, this folktale retelling by its cast of four is a garden for the senses: the rich colors across costuming and set design, the evocative movement art of the graceful and rhythmic cast, the chest-clutching and wonder-filling river of emotions that I felt with each new challenge that the titular curly haired boy encountered and overcame. By the end, you'll find yourself lightly tangled in colored strings among other holders of string, connecting us all in a fleeting yet magical tapestry that will leave you feeling more whole and more hopeful about your quiet yet inherently colorful connectedness to other human beings than you did walking in. Fun fact: Jenish, who plays the sibling to CHB, talked to my group after the show and shared how their group based in Boston had only started producing this show during this past Spring, carried by their will and passion to bring this folktale retelling to greater audiences. So, Please Please Please go and be part of their greater audiences and see them either the Fri 7pm or Sun 4pm show. Experience for yourself the enchanted old-world for new-eyes journey of “Curly Hair Boy”.

Company: Sophia R.B. White
Show: White Noises
Venue: Open Eye Theatre

What Mackenzie Kelsheimer said

See his review up top, seriously. As for my thoughts, all viewers will likely agree the climax scene is a demo of Sophia White's, the sole performer and production credit to this blackbox of a show, simple yet whole-hog muscle for squeezing out all the juice a scene can give. In this case, it's the audible, visual horrors of a private act of... well, can I say? If you know that you're squeamish to even the stark suggestion of a blood-related Act, then head to the Open Eye bathroom by the time a package arrives on stage. The final minutes of the show aside, White's character was naive and weepy in a way that almost deceives if not for the IV drip of unsettling sound and lighting, sinking us further into a desperation that was primed to plunge. But before such plunging, we get a character who fucking COOKS on some dream sequence ballet choreo, self-wallowing paired with White's passing blip of potent singing ability, very personable and relatable 2025 commentary about watching foreign catastrophes from your palm-screens being at odds with the romantic and routine creature comforts sold to us from birth; the bedrock of "White Noises" undeniable force being White's acting, their physicality and gifted facial language both highly tuned to the emotions of each scene. I am saying so many good, gushing things in this review because there is nearly NOTHING about this show page that would prepare an inroad for viewers into the corroding inner-world of this show and its character. So, let all the reviews decide for you to CATCH THIS SHOW BEFORE FRINGE ENDS.

Company: burnt ghost collective
Show: simone weil and the (insufferable) existentialist breakfast club
Venue: Theatre in the Round

Puppets made by Mackenzie Lageson

I only lead with this title because I watched my very multi-talented friend and roommate spend hours upon days in our dining room creating the life-size puppets you'll see in the show. His labor was very palpable and admirable, as is the labor of the underclasses of workers with whom the show's portrayal of Simone Weil would lead you to inspire to rally alongside. The show featured a raucous college-style party scene among the philosopher puppets that segued into and contrasted with the more somber and inspiring words about Sisyphus and back to Simone Weil. Idk, maybe as some Vietnamese Minnesotan lefty schmuck, I think I'm not the audience for a show featuring the long dead fixtures of White European celebrity thinker-writers even if it features, though mainly in the exposition and only after she know longer serves as a living character in the show, a working class freedom fighter. Possibly because I'm from a continental region where the philosophy had to be useful towards breaking country-sized chains of colonial-capitalism from the metropoles that each character in this show originates from. I guess now this show is prompting me think about whomever unsung thinker-fighters from Vietnam and such who are worth celebrating yet whose legacy are less transcribable to the classes of English-speaking literati. Anyhow, I enjoyed the enough of the show via the sleazy, low brow portrayals of the philosophers and the puppeteers performing each of the puppets along with the different character monologues and sound/lighting direction. A fun romp of a punky, smart amateur show. You can find and connect with Mackenzie Lageson via his Patreon.

Company: Dogdog-Beardog
Show: Ranger Jim
Venue: Rarig Kilburn Theatre

If we're goon tomorrow, then be with family today

Jim eases us into his 3-part hour with an old closing act about his update to an old nursery rhyme, introducing us to his larger-than-life campfire emcee storytelling style. What next but to persuade the deceased about how mortality is better spent as a last gasp with a loved one rather than in buildings meant to protract humiliation at the end of your life. But we close with a story about a family who, with determination and rehearsed persistence, overcome the unthinkable in order to enjoy a view of a lake together. These three acts were told with vigor, detail, animation from Ranger Jim. In these parks, there are precious moments shared by families and strangers far away from commerce and suburbs that we'd be better off learning to cherish well.

Company: Octoberdandy Productions
Show: Clown Funeral
Venue: Theatre in the Round

And we rely on each other, uh-huh

Levi Weinhagen is the crotchety, digitally degreed lawyer clown that sprinkled comedic salt between gags to great effect. Each clown played their roles in slapstick harmony. I wondered if the song for Bongo was a Bright Eyes song or inspired by Bright Eyes. All the youths should Uber/Lyft scooter their way to see Clown Funeral. You'll want to be in it rather than just get through it. - Tri (pron. "TREE"), performer in "Apsara, the Musical"

Company: Brad Lawrence
Show: The Big Secret
Venue: Rarig Kilburn Theatre

For friends whose stories we owe them to tell

I just learned via the bios that Brad is a story producer for the podcast "RISK!". This show is as "RISK!" as they come, especially in a traverse stage where Brad is surrounded and speaking upward to the split audience sides, forfeiting one outcast Christian teen affliction after the other as the base for the grisly, solemn, and real stories of tragedies from those later teen years of his life to proceed. What Brad says is right: the life stories of others, friend or otherwise, are not ours to make useful for our personal actualization. Yet we owe it to our friends to tell the stories about them that are true and untwisted by the self-serving doctrine and malice of others. Brad carries us to these themes with gripping and brisk earnestness. Send Brad some love this week, he's a touring artist whose raconteur skills are worth witnessing every second of. Tri (pron "TREE"), performer in "Apsara, the Musical"

Company: Griffy LaPlante
Show: Salt
Venue: Barbara Barker Center for Dance

An empathetic mirror for lefties, QT or not

The radio DJ spotlight, girl scout indoctrination, and fire breather allegory via monologue slideshow sequences added worthwhile flavor to the 5 person discourse that laid bare many conceits, both routine and sometimes more unique, of leftist organizing/mobilizing/direct action groups in a way that felt compassionate and tender while sustaining the highly self-aware and self-critical bite needed for a hybrid satire-drama show like this to balance biting commentary with the literate sympathy extended to people used up for rhetorical fodder for such commentary. A stand out show for its themes played out through specific characters and their archetypal queer leftist (south Minneapolis?) traits. -Tri (pron. "TREE), performer in "Apsara, the Musical"

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

Guaranteed laughs or you'll lose your left shoe

First night show, Sat 5:30pm. Full house, highly intelligent physical and interactive humor, laughs at a mile a minute. This is as safe a bet as any for a good time. Read other reviews for further details, I'd only repeat all the good things. -Tri, Apsara the Musical performer

Company: an alleged Theatre Company
Show: The Temporary Tattoo Trio
Venue: Rarig Kilburn Theatre

A beautifully controlled loss of control

Saw the Friday 10pm after my performance in Apsara, also at the Kilburn. I haven't seen a Tim Robinson thing yet, but this sure seems like the theatrical version of it. I'd watch it again and again just to savor that idiosyncratic feeling of riding to the first crest of a rollercoaster, anticipating the drop and, once you've started to plummet from the crest, you find yourself plummeting three crusts deep into the Earth and grinding to a halt in a place where you can't extirpate yourself from. Fucking magical.

Company: angela olson
Show: Someone Always Pays
Venue: Barbara Barker Center for Dance

Resigned, frank, sweet?

First Fringe 2025 show I saw with my pals Mack and Alice based on Mack's itinerary after final rehearsal for my show, Apsara the Musical. At first, the awkward quietness of a barista and customer had me wondering how and when they'd push the kinda-monologue to the levels of in-your-face truthiness that the show's description seemed to strongly suggest. I think they do build up, then take bold leaps, with distressing anecdotes and verbalized imagery the themes of seeking any morsel of worthwhile intimacy only to have the ceaseless let-downs stay in you. I think there's enough tenderness in the sincerity of the main performer, between the main and spotlight monologues, that pushes the show outside of dry-ish commentary in enough personable or briefly outlandish ways to leave you in a thoughtful daze even with its shorter runtime, imo.