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Picture it: A 2pm matinee is about to start, the cast in costume: a drag queen, a guy whose get-up is fabric made to look like absurdly bulging muscles, a gaggle of gals in very high heels and high-haired wigs and high-to-the-thigh tight skirts and leopard prints. All are ordered out onto the street for a tense and puzzling period, along with the crew and dozens and dozens of us just-been-seated audience members due to a worrisome rumbling in the building. It turns out to be an earthquake. The play is a crass-and-sass musical spoof of that TV show, "Jersey Shore." It’s their opening performance. Will the show go on? The intensity of the earthquake is misstated to us, dyslexia-like, as a catastrophic 8.5 instead of the actual 5.8.
Yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus here, but yes, there is a Virginia-centered earthquake felt in New York City, more dramatic news than any piece of theatre might have to offer. After some fretting and information-getting, the show did go on. Coincidentally, one of its lyrics even had a reference to earthquakes. But it was no groundbreaking kind of a musical. It did serve as a bit of extra welcome comic relief on an afternoon of unexpected scares.
When this year’s Fringe Festival fades into foggy memory some time after its ends on August 28, I will remember that scene more than some tedious scenes in 
some of the plays. Life goes on. But I wonder what shows will have an afterlife and which will die certain deaths due to lack of funding or producers, audiences and, dare I say it, reviewers thinking, “What were they thinking?” I’m thinking that there’s always a mix of the marvelous and the “meh!” and the messes. For every mess, misstep or mistake there’s something worthy and moving, and well worth moving to a run, such as The Ballad of Rusty and Roy, an involving bit of integrity about family and the baggage we bring along, consciously or not, when we leave home. Sweet home or not, we are all impacted and this play’s impact exploring that matter is notable in its lack of predictability and button-pushing. It involves two siblings, one of whom is a children’s entertainer. And speaking of kid stuff: The nuclear family known as The 3 Bears will always have a home in children’s theatre, even if their home is at the North Pole and the message is about global warming and the environment. Welcome Goldilocks and the Three Polar Bears. A children’s theatre production and another only child production is hijacked and stopped as part of the plot of One, Two, Whatever You Do. And whatever do you say about the family of friends and foes sharing their woes and “Whoa!!!!s” on the reality [sic] TV show, "Jersey Shore," now a musical?
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· The Ballad of Rusty and Roy is a winner. Warning: It could make you cry. I wondered at first if someone was getting me back for snidely referring to the song and dance “The Hokey Pokey” in my last Fringe review when I walked into the theatre and someone with a green guitar and a big smile was cheerily singing that song 10 minutes before show time, with a few other pre-show pre-school perker-uppers showing up. Why? Only one kid was in the audience and this was not billed as a kiddie show. Then, the play began. Mystery soon solved: one of the cast of two plays a pre-school sing-along leader. We’d had a taste of what his life was like without having to stop the play itself to get that. Half-brothers Rusty and Roy have been estranged for a while and we slowly learn the reasons why and get to know them and sympathize with their present and past. It’s a well-paced peeling of the onion.
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The acting is natural, convincing and involving. The audience seating plan surrounds them on three sides and we supportively sympathetic voyeurs see many more sides to their personalities. The tension between them can be cut with a knife as much as a knife can make cutting remarks. But the metaphorical knife is not used cavalierly or manipulatively, but to probe and jab a little, with some noticeably cutting remarks that reveal what’s below their skins and why they get under each other’s skin. There are old wounds. No pat answers are here. Tip-toeing around each other cautiously or having defiant or veiled accusation-filled confrontations, universal truths about family are felt and understood. Being so close to them, especially with the actors’ general lack of artifice, this is artful acting that is intimately connecting. We root for them, we laugh or feel sad with their oddball memories of trailer park childhoods, drunken fathers (they share a mother who’s been married seven times), and brother-bonding escapades. Forgive and forget and move on can be a tall order, especially when one is reluctant. Grudges are beared, and so are souls.
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· We get some original songs, mostly in snatches, the classic folk song “Red River Valley” as a possible balm, and bits of kiddie songs as the two rehearse for a joint gig at a three-year-old’s birthday party that gives them cause and structure to meet a few times --- and argue. As walls come down and are put back up, we follow them caringly step by cautious step. Stepping up to the plate with their believable acting, excellent spark-setting chemistry and winning musical talents as singer-guitarists are Dusty Brown and Troy Schremmer. Not a coincidence aimed at rhyme-seekers when the character names were created and this was cast, but Dusty plays Rusty and Troy plays Roy. It was written for these two who already knew each other. Troy Schremmer is also the co-playwright along his wife Jonny Schremmer, the producer (talk about family stories!!!) and he really is a children’s entertainer. And it’s Brown’s own original songs we hear for his character of singer-songwriter Rusty (more would be welcome). Shana Gold directs with compassion, a deep well of understanding, and no audience manipulation. This is touching as it touches on many aspects of family, memory, forgiveness and reality checks.
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· Goldilocks and the Three Polar Bears? Well, it’s what the title promises: your basic kiddie theatre from a famous old story. But they are not all warm
and snuggly in their cozy cottage with the only immediate problem being the porridge being too hot. Heat of some kind has been melting the homes of these recast-as-polar bear characters. If you guessed that it’s about global warming, you are correct. Environmental lessons for the kids are woven into the wee plot for the wee ones. It’s not quite the polar opposite, so to speak, of pure escapism as there’s plenty of just-for-laughs silliness and bouncy songs and grinning. Goldilocks is a Muppet-style puppet handled by an actress who travels around the stage with her, full face and body in view. Lindsay Naas has so much sass and energy and spunk that the play might be more fun if she played the role just as herself. That’s a compliment. The three bears are actors in costumes that don’t cover up their faces and bodies with full animal gear, allowing more expression and natural movement. Sky Seals is a singing storyteller, a minstrel with plays the guitar (and plays another character), serving the show as musical director and audience contact person, explaining and encouraging. He’s also the co-founder of this company, Wide Eyed Productions, composer of the jaunty tunes which have lyrics by bookwriter Jerrod Bogard, also the play’s director.
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· A few references may go over the kids’ heads, aimed at adults, and the show has fewer “spoonfuls of sugar to help the medicine go down” than some, but is basically your traditionally-structured/played and playful children’s theatre presentation. Most importantly, the children in the audience, of various ages, were attentive and responsive and seemed to “get it” – the message, I mean….and most of the little jokes. Someone’s been sitting in their chairs, and here they are now: still glued to their seats, interested, smiling, and convinced to give up their seats for the next audience, if only to have a chance to meet and greet with a blonde puppet and a few bears in the lobby.
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One, Two, Whatever You Do has comedy with a great beginning, a pretty good middle, and a surprisingly thoughtful ending. It’s set on the set of a children’s theatre show, its bright crayon colors and storybook characters and costumed actors as Little Boy Blue, Little Bo Peep…you get the idea. But they and the usual Fringe Festival pre-show announcer/welcome are all stopped in their tracks when a visibly nervous woman (Vanessa Shealy, also the playwright) runs onto the stage, saying she has taken over the theatre. The children’s show is cancelled. But in their odd way, the kiddie show cast befriends her and helps her act out her story of an actress, a long-ago child actress on a TV series, who has a convoluted story to tell about troubles with her own child and her stalled career. The contrast of folks dressed as life-size Mother Goose cut-outs acting in quite adult and sarcastic ways is good for a surprising number of laughs. The sense of entitlement the central actress/mother has is also entertainingly annoying/familiar. As she talks about her troubles, they are acted out, in recreations that stop frequently for arguments and corrections and debates. The device becomes a little old eventually, but is well done. A scene about filling out red tape-laden forms for government help is overextended. However, the show is well played and quirky, with some explorations of celebrity worship and human psychology below the surface. Other potential aspects of the children’s theatre environment remain untapped and we never get to see the little child – or the actual children’s play -- and wonder if the mother’s version of the story is reliable. Some jibes at show biz and agents and auditioning are sharp and get a strong response. Melissa Atteberry directs, getting good performances out of all, including Rick Younger appearing briefly as a doctor with his own agenda, the lead/playwright, and the trio (Ilana Becker, Ivan Perez, and Kelly Strandemo) taking on various roles in the flashbacks while remaining in the wildly inappropriate costumes that make everything, wisely, seem ludicrous when desired and a kind of trapped-in-Wonderland nonsensical reality.
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· The trap that Jersey Shore-sical: A Friggin’ Rock Opera intermittently sidesteps is how to be non-grating and ingratiating when musicalizing a reality TV show 
about obnoxious characters who almost resist parody because it comes across as such exaggeration and ---what’s the technical term? --- oh yes, stupidity --- on the actual show. How much winking can you do at something like this before you develop a serious ocular condition? The cast jumps in and gives it their all. There are moments when it works as more than just recreating the reality of the difficult-to-believe-it’s-reality reality show motley crew. When we see the comically muscle-bound gorilla guy/pinhead get frustrated and cry like a big baby, it is a hoot. Some savvy little moments of song-styling equivalents of spoken show-off behavior score. And the volatile, hostile-but-horny love duet with the all-purpose F word everywhere, “I F’in Love You, I F’in Hate You” is quite funny as performed with such face-to-face raging and ranting and raving. Talk of easy girls and easy sex, is everywhere, including casually comfortably sung mentions of certain sex acts, over and over. The score is often about another kind of scoring – and I don’t mean hockey points although some of it is rather rough and tumble, loose morals and tight skirts. Almost everything is sung. A trio of anonymous women called The Random Sluts with too much mascara and too few brain cells start things off struttingly, but some of the lyrics are drowned out by the band, which happens in some later appearances. Whining and bragging and snubbing are all set to song, with drunken or dazed looks and implied drooling . The cast includes the likeable Max Crumm, who won the lead role in the recent Grease revival through another TV reality show. Songs and the snippets of dialogue are by Daniel Franzene and Hanna LoPatin, both of whom are also in the cast as Ronnie and Sammi. Drew Droege directs the intentional dopiness with quick but not exhausting pacing, keeps things bristlingly busy and the energy high. It has its spots of guilty pleasure and madness, but it’s no “Shore thing” to make us want to suffer these fools gladly without finding an angle beyond mainly mocking what’s already ludicrous.
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SEE WWW.FRINGENYC.ORG FOR DETAILS FOR THE FESTIVAL ENDING AUGUST 28 AND BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ANNOUNCEMENTS OF AWARDS AND SHOWS THAT WILL BE BACK SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW, SOME TIME.
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