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Theater Beat: Six Fringe Festival favorites earn ReAct summer revivals
Friday, July 30, 1999
By JOE ADCOCK
Seventy-two productions crammed into 11 days is a tight squeeze. So it went at Seattle's late-winter 1999 Fringe Festival.
Six of those productions, however, get expansive midsummer revivals during "Fringe Revisited," the current ReAct production at the Theatre Off Jackson. It's a case of opportunity knocking twice. I managed to see a lot of shows during the festival proper. But the ReAct reruns gave me a chance to catch some performances I missed in March.
Kevin Kling's "21 A," a one-actor, eight-character comedy drama, has become a contemporary classic since it premiered 15 years ago. The one actor gets to show his stuff (assuming he has it) in such contrasting roles as a daffy housewife and a compulsively bothersome wino.
Actor John Binachi carries off the contrasts. Kling's title refers to a Minneapolis/St. Paul bus route. Binachi gets the Minnesota accents down: he sounds like Ballard unbound. But his immigrant Dallas preacher diction could use some work.
David Ives' "All in the Timing" is a diabolically clever examination of language, especially as a make-or-break element in courtship and mating. Some of the comedy comes from contrasts between what people say and what they mean. One skit gives would-be lovers a chance to correct turn-off statements about such diverse subjects as William Faulkner and mother.
Director David Hsieh's cast is not always, or even often, subtle. But they do highlight Ive's bright moments. The brightness is sometimes dazzling in a skit about a "universal language" in which Kathy Hsieh and Joseph S. Yang convert total misunderstanding into blissful accord.
"Noon," a sex farce by Terrence McNally, is an exercise in discord, frustration and desperate misinterpretations. A prankster lures five horny Manhattanites to a deserted apartment. Though they are all eager for debauchery, they are amazingly ill-suited for one another.
Angela DiMarco is especially funny as a talkative young woman who fails to realize that the fellow toward whom she thinks she is making improper advances has actually passed out after overdosing on a "sex-enhancing" controlled substance.
ReAct's revival of 1999 Fringe favorites runs through Aug. 8. Tickets are $8. A three-show pass is $18. Students and seniors pay $5 a show; 206-364-3283 or: www.reacttheatre.org.
As for next year's Fringe Festival (the 10th annual) it will run from March 9-19. First-come, first-served applications for performance slots will be available starting Aug. 10 at www.seattlefringe.org or by sending a self-addressed envelope, stamped with 55 cents postage, to:
Fringe 2000
Applications will be accepted starting Sept. 25.
Y2K at Taproot Theatre will involve mystery, comedy and music.
The company's 2000 season starts Feb. 4 with "Moreau," a company-generated stage adaptation by Taproot regular Sean R. Gaffney of H.G. Wells' medical ethics thriller "The Island of Dr. Moreau."
Next comes Mary Chase's 1944 comedy "Harvey," which opens March 31. "Inventing Montana," a literary fantasy involving Charles Dickens and two American Dickens scholars, opens May 19.
It's followed on July 14 by "Mass Appeal," Bill C. Davis' comedy drama about a confrontation between an old priest and a young seminarian. The final 2000 show is a nostalgic musical comedy, "Radio Gals," that pits an all-girl band against one of President Herbert Hoover's pioneering radio regulators. It opens Sept. 8.
P-I theater critic Joe Adcock can be reached at 206-448-8369 or joeadcock@seattle-pi.com
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