The 10th Great Salt Lake Fringe (GSLF) is in the books. Once again, the venue of the Alliance Theater, connected to the Utah Arts Alliance, at Trolley Square, was ideal for this event. Total attendance was 1,796, and a total of $18,848 was paid out to the artists for 21 shows. The average payout per show was $898. Awards were given for the following:
Best F – Wonderland Awaits
Best FF – Western Minerals
Best FFF – Funeral Potatehoes!!!
Outstanding Ensemble – Kitchen Sink
Outstanding Solo – Digital Pet
Outstanding Original Script- Spiralbound
Outstanding Adaptation – Lady M
Outstanding Staff Member- Jack Cobabe
Spirit of Fringe –To Be Frank
Surprise Hit of Fringe (all shows sold out before opening day) – Non
Fringe Staff Fav – The Post Office
Friend of Fringe – Bunny (Saw all 22 shows)
Friend of Fringe – Merry Magee and the cast of Save The Cow
Friend of Fringe – The cast of Chiasm Cabaret
Face of Fringe (This was for a show that made a big impact in the community – this show brought a Spanish-speaking audience to Fringe)- Pam Gallegos / México Mágico
The Utah Review offers capsule reviews of five shows from the second weekend. For background about this year’s festival, see here, and for reviews of five shows from the first weekend, see here.
One of the best cabaret shows in the Great Salt Lake Fringe’s 10 years, The Funeral Potatehoes!!! built on its creative premise Moments that Made Me Question Everything with biting resonance and sharp relevance. The duo of sisters — Loaded (Anna Chapman) and Baked (Laura Élise Chapman) — captured the more-familiar-than-we-even-know dynamics of growing up in a socially awkward, sexually repressed culture of Mormonism, while music, pop culture, movies, stories become the real soulful touchstones that allow our true expressions of sexuality and gender to emerge. Their comedic and musical energy reminded me of why comedy variety shows such as Mad-TV and In Living Color succeeded and remain cult classics. Their uninhibited riffs on songs and characters from Toy Story, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Twilight, and Annie, among others, slyly emphasize that one should never underestimate the subtle power of the media and culture which surround our lives. And, do not think that LDS church leaders are unaware of how they will always struggle to trump the power of culture that moves and inspires young people to affirm their true selves. This is why the LDS church disavowed pop singer David Archuleta, once a darling of the church’s public image efforts, once he came out of the closet and left the church. Unlike BYU-TV’s Studio C ‘clean comedy’ show, The Funeral Potatehoes!!! prove that our real epiphanies come not from bland casserole dishes, but a good dollop of spicy sauces that enrich and clarify the comfort foods of our souls.
Over the years, Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival has seen chamber theater plays set in Utah’s desert and southern landscapes. Western Minerals and Their Origins was the newest example of that, presented by Footpath Theatre Company and featuring Jessica Graham, Connor Johnson and Harrison Lind. It is about three amateur rock hunters who venture into the deserts of southern Utah in search of a legendary deposit of Leopard Beryl, the rarest gem in the West, but unexpectedly turns into a much larger exploration going well beyond geology. The story is anchored in flashbacks, and we see history splashed with psychedelic narrative elements. The short play has a lot of promise, but it needs to be workshopped into a tighter, more lucid frame to sharpen its poetic cadences. One of the more impressive elements (one which other small theater producers for events like Fringe should consider) is the use of live original music, scored by Lind, in this instance. It was a shame that Max Bastiani was not available for the second weekend performance, which would have been elucidating to round out the experience of how the whole music and sound design elements heightened the literary textures. (NOTE: Fringe participants should hew toward professional expectations for performances, including covering missing parts.) Nevertheless, working with minimalistic staging, the opportunity for music to flesh out the possibilities of imagining the setting and the action at various points in the narrative was embraced with excellent skill.
México Mágico featured returning performer Pam Galleg Oz, who won Fringe honors last year for best one-person show. This latest show was not as tight as her Casa Ivium offering last year, Roxie Hart Syndrome. Still, it was an effective showcase for a multi-talented artist who masterfully incorporates multimedia elements, most of which are in the public domain and thereby give her liberties without worrying about copyright infringements. The distinction to keep in mind for future years is that shows in other languages (where English translations also are available) will draw audiences to Fringe, as it should reflect the cosmopolitan diversity of cultures in the region. This show is a love letter to some of the most familiar things that make Mexico seem as magical and mesmerizing to us as they are paradoxical and enigmatic: the melodramatic, bittersweet stories of characters forever searching for true love (the stuff of telenovelas and classic Mexican cinema); the cultural centrality of Día de los Muertos and the archetypes of Mexican politics and the candidates who promise the sun, sky and the moon to citizens. The result is a show that is as elucidating about an unconditional love for Mexico as it is entertaining about acknowledging its quirks, bittersweet moments and imperfections — not unlike those of its neighbor to the north.
Two other shows were certified crowd pleasers. One was the D’Arcy improv comedy shows which especially had a crisp opening display of their skills to flesh out characters and seemingly normal circumstances into some fine moments of sharp humor. The other was Puppets in the City’s Puppet Karaoke, which gave audience members not only the opportunity to select the songs but also to become puppeteers. The mix of songs elated the house with recent and classic warhorses in the pop and rock catalogs: Wrecking Ball, Dancing in the Moonlight, Bohemian Rhapsody, Umbrella, Born This Way and Thunderstruck, among others.
