The Fringe Festival

I never did review what I liked and disliked about the Fringe Festival. I saw eight shows and will give a really short review, mostly in point form of each.

Crude Love- Story about an environmental activist deemed too extreme for Greenpeace who falls in love with an oil worker. Funny at points, but far too preachy. It was sponsored by Adbusters, which kind of bothers me as I'd have the same problem with any other sponsor of a play at the Fringe Festival. At the end they had a hat to raise money for Greenpeace in hope of banning oil mining in the Alberta tar sands. I mean, I realize there's a problem with the environment, but could Greenpeace not have come up with a more realistic goal? If it's as gloomy as some pessimists say they'll run out of oil soon anyway and it won't matter. I'd rather see a play that made me think rather than see a play that told me what to say.

Mating Rituals of an Urban Cougar- Andrea Thompson performs her performance poetry, which is great, but an hour of it is too much. Her banter in between pieces just wasn't enough to stretch it into an hour long show. Also, she objects to being called a cougar which kind of defeats the point of the title.

Einstein's Wife- Life stories of three women, Rosalind Franklin, Jackie Mitchell and Wally Funk who all have great accomplishments suppressed by men, from striking out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in succession to hoping to be the first women in outer space to discovering DNA. Story is told in 35 minutes, but told brilliantly. Only problem was a factual error. Babe Ruth never had a candy bar named after him. He was nicknamed after the candy bar.

Ladylike- Interesting look into the life of a transgendered woman. However, there really seemed to be not as much of a story as there could have been. Not as great as Eye's four star rating.

About an Hour- One hour improvised comedy play, from the people who brought That Show Stopping Number last year. Absolutely hilarious. Six out of five.

Moments on a Wrist- Your typical interpretive dance show. I took a chance on seeing something different and I'm not about to pretend to be an expert on interpretive dance.

Sitting in a Tree- All over the place. No focus at all on the struggles in the relationship of the main characters. I still don't know why that one guy was dressed up as a duck and that Italian guy had a foam heart tied to him. Come to think of it, a lot of the characters were silly. I went away wondering what the message was supposed to be.

The Movies (Abridged)- Story of a guy trying to get a managerial position at "Bigbuster." Without going to far into the whole background, different genres of film are explored in a comical way. Funny, but not that funny.