Theater/Geek 08/04/2012 5:23pm

One of the odd things about this year's Fringe is that there aren't a lot of out-and-out nerd-themed shows. Steampunk Apocalypse wears its intentions on its brass-and-leather sleeves, of course, and the Shatner show I co-wrote uses Captain Kirk prominently in the advertising. But the Sci-Fi/Horror/Mystery genre on the Fringe site is pretty evenly balanced. So where are the geek shows at? Everywhere. Almost every show I've been too so far has had some nerd element. Class of '98 has its time-travel story with, naturally, shout-outs to Back to the Future and more geekily, the third part of the trilogy.  But what the story is really about is a character who can't let go of one past mistake, and grows obsessed with the idea that it's ruined his life. Comedy of Edits got mocking boos from the audience with an admission of something that was missing from their geek repertoire. But even this was followed by one of the most obsessive shows about Engilsh lit and the process of writing you're likely to see.  Nightmare without Pants takes a Twilight Zone premise but never ventures too far into the realm of the fantastic (well, except for the pony... brrr...). The horrors here are terrifyingly mundane: taxes, being unloved and unhappy. It uses its comedic-horror trappings to explore the human condition. After last year's abundance of shows that brought pop culture on to the stage, it seems like this year the artists have taken a step back, and are thinking more about what their obsessions are. The stuff that keeps them up at night. But they're also wrapping it with spectacle. They're marrying the two definitions of geek: the obsessed, and the carnival.