BrokeAss Fringe 08/07/2011 12:52pm

Editorial
Saturday was a Raring double-header for BrokeAss. I started in the X seeing Rawredmeat’s production of Hero. This show brings together four brothers stationed together on a fighter plane in WWII. And they sing barbershop style. So, fair’s fair, and I know these kids. I went to go see this show because I love this family of four, and I thought them doing a WWII musical sounded intriguing. And I loved it and had a blast. It was thoroughly enjoyable watching their brotherly banter and goofy sense of humor channeled through a script. But I have a huge bias because I know these guys. While I find their squabbles and misadventures charming, I don’t believe this will be the case for everyone. Hero didn’t really have a plot, more of a premise; a series of brief vignettes that don’t quite add up, mixed with some songs that were cute but nothing to write home about. I would really have loved to see these brothers doing a straight-up musical homage to their grandfather, a WWII vet, rather than about brothers being brother who happen to be on a plane. If you are the kind of person who will identify with brotherly love and teasing, this is adorable and worth rushing. Next, I trotted up the busy Rarig Staircase to the Arena for Callaghan and Lingo present…The Last Ditch. The show began with some witty repartee, conjecturing what would happen if they wrote a show together only with T-minus three weeks to the Fringe. It’s a cliché we’ve heard before (how are we gonna put up a show, Judy?!), but the beginning banter between these two veteran storytellers is FUN. The rest of the show is done as tag-team short-story telling, and while it’s not visually stimulating, it is pleasant listening. This is the challenging balancing act of storytelling shows. Allegra’s last piece, an insomniac’s bed time story, combines music and poetry and rhythm that is stunning and worth the price of admission alone. If you want to hear some good stories, bust out the bucks for this one.
Headshot of Rebekah Rentzel
Rebekah Rentzel
BrokeAss Fringe: Fringers! I'm Rebekah Rentzel. I love theater. Last year, I moved to Minneapolis the day the Fringe Festival opened. Bleary eyed and broke like a joke, I managed to see 12 shows on $10. One year later, I’m still broke and I’m still in love with theater. In my sparse amount of free-time I like to find free or cheap things to do in the city, and I co-write a blog about it called BrokeAssMPLS. This year, I'm also in the Fringe performing a solo-show called Tales of the Perilously Grounded. Huzzah!