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Fringe Shows Hollywood Fringe Festival Reviews See it or Skip it

HFF17 – see it or skip it (day 1)

TITLE OF SHOWRobot Monster the Musical

VENUE:  Main stage of Sacred Fools Theatre

REVIEW:  This was a workshop performance of a new musical based on what is often considered one of the best “bad” movies from the 50’s.  This production, directed by Derek Long (who also provides the voice of Ro-Man XJ2, could use a little pruning, as it is too long for the story.  The show does have its moments, such as every scene involving little Johnny (Dana DeRuyck), but could use a little more structure, especially for those of us not familiar with the movie.

Although he doesn’t speak, hats off to Rich Silverman, the actor in the gorilla suit, who sweated up a great performance as Ro-Man.  It was his first time ever on stage.  Cheers also to Jamie Miller, who did a good job as big sister Alice and Stephanie Thomas as little sister Carla, as well as Don Margolin, who played the professor to perfection.  Andrew Villarreal and Val Peterson, Roy and Martha, respectively, were a little too much over the top, even for a campy B-movie.  Their overacting was a little distracting, taking away from an otherwise good performance.

RECOMMENDATION:  Unless you are a huge fan of campy, bad films and their musical adaptations, you should probably just Skip it.

We were going to see a couple more shows, but the journey caught up with us, and we decided to head down to Fringe Central to grab a drink and look for old friends.  We were joined by the lovely Laura Wiley, creator and producer of Buffy Killed Edward, and Esther Mira, who plays Lady Bashful in Loves Adventures.   Lucky for us, it was also Fringe Cabaret night, so we got to see portions of seven shows as we mingled with Laura and Elissa.  Among the shows previewed were The Joe and Joshua Show, Easy Targets, Psychosical, Incantesimo, 13th Grade, Lights Camera Lyla The Second Act and Missmatch.

TITLE OF SHOWHey Hollywood, my Hustle has ADHD

VENUE:  Lounge Theatre 2

REVIEW:  We closed out our first day of Fringe with this delightful solo comedic romp, and it was the perfect choice.  I must admit that we chose this show because it was directed and developed by Deana Barone, who we fell in love with at last year’s Fringe.  Rasika Mathur was simply amazing in her writing and her performance.  She took what could have been a boring personal drama, and made it into a delightful immersive experience that kept the audience in stitches.  As you can imagine from a show about ADHD, it was delightfully disjointed, changing topics rapidly while telling an interesting story about an artist discovering the cause of her “affliction.”  Barone and Mathur brought a myriad of colorful characters to life, and the hour just seemed to fly by.  This was a Fringe show delivered with perfection, and we are so happy that we were able to see it.

RECOMMENDATION:  By all means, See it.  There is only one remaining show, and we strongly recommend that you make plans to see it on June 24 at 10 p.m.