6 Guitars
This one-man show about the power of music as a universal language has writer Chase Padgett portraying six different characters, all playing a different style of guitar and very different personalities.
First, we meet the 87 year-old blues guitarist who explains to us that blues is about real life and that there are really only four themes: I’ve got problems, look at my car, that girl’s hot, and let’s get messed up. He explains how hip-hop music is no different. He also has a great sense of humour, explaining that he originally named himself Syphilis Mango Taft, following his hero Blind Lemon Jefferson’s naming formula of affliction, fruit, president.
Another one of my favourite characters was the jazz player who was full of pretentious comments, like, “Jazz music. I could tell you so much, but would you ever really understand it?” The folkie, Peter, is sugary sweet and talks about his first performance with his uncle’s guitar, when he sang “You Are My Sunshine” at his funeral.
With a band named Satan’s Orthodontist, the next rock guitarist is a young metal head who talks about conflict within his band and his love of “music that chews your face off.” The country musician, with his wide legged stance and southern drawl, sings about pick-up trucks, women, and beer, reinforcing the bluesman’s theory about themes.
And of course next comes the classical guitarist with what is supposed to be a Spanish accent, which wasn’t as strong as it could have been. He spoke in metaphors and about “feeling the music,” but he felt like the weakest of all the characters.
What Padgett has accomplished with this show is truly remarkable; he expertly portrayed six very different characters, smoothly transitioning between them by changing something as simple as the way he sits or his facial expression. It also helps that Padgett is a talented guitarist, captivating the audience as he plays everything from soft jazz, to heartfelt blues, to head-banging rock.
By the end of the show, after making a case for each of their respective guitar styles, the musicians all talk about their respect for other styles and the way that music, no matter what genre, is a great equalizer that brings people together and helps them express their deepest emotions.
You Killed Hamlet
I don’t even know how to describe this show. I’ve seen a lot of theatre, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Full of blunt satire and content most people would rather avoid, You Killed Hamlet had very little connection to the Danish prince other than the theme of mortality.
The show involves two bouffon clowns with dangly nuts and other parts, wearing fat-suits, and looking pretty ugly talking about everything from colostomy bags to suicide. They sauntered into the venue as if they were audience members, weaving through the tables saying things like “we made it . . . oh gosh, so great to see you.”
There were a lot of references to the show itself as they voiced potential thoughts of audience members like, “What kind of show is this” and “This has nothing to do with Hamlet!”
Their catchy song “Who plays Hamlet in this show” was quite funny and I did enjoy some of the humour, but I found most of this show unpleasant and bordering on offensive — to the senses, that is, not politically offensive.
One scene that I found fairly clever involved the clowns taking turns acting out a series of negative effects of growing older or getting sick, adding a new one to the sequence each time. The other clown would stand in the audience and guess what the first was portraying, and once they guessed correctly the clown on stage yelled, “Don’t want to think about it!”
Another scene had them pretending to be Fringe-goers who just saw their show and they wandered around the audience saying “Oh my god we just saw the show. It was a . . . well it was . . . a decent show . . . decent. But you know what you could do?” Then they would answer “production value,” or “circus acts.”
The show suggested that we live in a society that represses negative things and is uncomfortable talking about realities like death and illness. While some of their material was humorous, and they were talented entertainers, this just wasn’t an enjoyable show.
Strapless Comedy
When a show begins with a “strapless Riverdance” where clothing keeps falling down during the performance, it’s not hard to grab an audience’s attention. The five girls of this sketch comedy troupe aren’t afraid to show off their assets, but they can also write some pretty hilarious sketches.
A few stand out, including “5 Card Stud,” a girls’ poker game where they bet ex-boyfriends instead of money: “I’ll see your jobless loser and raise you two commitment-phobes.” I really enjoyed “Carl and Jan Go to the Bank”, which had a Saturday Night Live feel to it as the aged Carl holds up the bank because they won’t take his pennies.
“Break Up Movers” was also hilarious, as they advertise their services to move you out in the middle of the night without your partner even knowing. If you want to avoid the awkward moving out conversation, just call the break up movers.
I think my favourite sketch was the final one, “Indie Rock Crush,” written by Jackie Blackmore. It was about a woman who has a crush on one of the boys in her son’s band. She breaks into song, dancing around the stage with her broom singing things like “I wish I was your guitar so you could strum me; I wish I was your bus ticket so you could validate me.”
One of the sketches that I could relate to was called “Sign It.” One girl was sitting at a table as two others, dressed in matching track suits, told her that if she wanted to get in shape she better sign up for their gym’s membership, and if she didn’t sign in the next ten seconds, the special offer would expire. If you’ve ever signed a gym contract, you’ll know that their sketch wasn’t too much of an exaggeration.
There were a few sketches that, unfortunately, fell flat: “Nemesis” had a boyfriend telling his girlfriend that the best way to deal with her nemesis is to fight her. A few of the sketches just didn’t seem to have strong enough endings, but there were definitely a lot of laughs. With lots of confidence, no fear, and plenty of comedy writing talent, Strapless Comedy has a lot of potential and I think their material has just enough of a risky edge that it will resonate with people.
Bad Connections?
Fringe festivals are full of one-man shows, but I doubt most are as impressive as Paul Cosentino portraying nine New Yorkers in this play written by Michael Levesque. With only a chair sharing the stage with him and no costume changes, Cosentino transitions through these characters, including an old Italian shopkeeper, a Jewish housewife, a pregnant black woman, and a gay yoga instructor, with ease.
As he unravels the puzzle of how these characters’ lives intersect, he draws the audience into a world that he has created, quite literally, out of thin air; there are no props, only one plain brown outfit, and pure storytelling.
Sri Sri, an Indian guru, began the show by explaining that we should all take a deep breath and take a moment to stop, look, and listen in our hectic lives. We all took a collective breath and settled in for a great piece of theatre.
This theme ran throughout the play, and Sri Sri returned a few times to provide his wisdom. The plot involves a cast of characters all with their own problems, some of them struggling to figure out if they have made the right choices in their lives.
Italian Joey Marino runs his grandpa’s store by himself while his grandpa, Joseph Marino, is in the hospital telling him he doesn’t want to live anymore. Mr. Marino is being treated by Dr. Alex Redding who has his own problems — he’s married to Jewish housewife Debra Steiner while having an affair with her yoga instructor, Tommy. Debra got married for the wrong reasons and complains about her mother, who thinks her husband should be Jewish (although she says that being a doctor almost negates that requirement).
Joey Marino’s pregnant girlfriend, Dwandra, worries that Joey doesn’t want to marry her, and Joey worries that his grandpa disapproves of their relationship. Their son J.J. also makes a couple of small appearances, but I thought he was the weakest character portrayed and it probably wasn’t necessary for him to be seen on stage.
While I thought the acting in this show was superb, I found some of the coincidences between the characters to be a bit forced. Sri Sri does say that there is no such thing as a coincidence, so I guess he would disagree.
