You got zombies in my Shakespeare...say!

The big hit of the 2008 Minnesota Fringe Festival is Shakespeare's Land of the Dead. It starts with an alarmingly simple concept -- what if a George A. Romero-style zombie apocalypse happened in 1599, the night Shakespeare's Henry V opened -- and builds from there. The show deserves its hit status. The play is polished, well-conceived, written and acted. Beyond that, playwright John Heimbuch understands the conventions and rhythms of this kind of horror story, with echoes of Night of the Living Dead (either staying in the safety of the Globe theater or making a go of it outside) and I Am Legend (destroying London Bridge to stop the spread of the plague; though this is a motif that could have been pulled from any number of films). This isn't as easy as it looks -- witness the complete failure of another Fringe show, The Great American Horror Movie Musical, to show any understanding of the genre and, consequently, falling flat on its face.

There's also an interesting drama going on inside the Globe, with a number of personal and political currents running throughout, from the return of Will Kemp, an actor who has left the company; to Francis Bacon asking for Shakespeare to put his name to a play the knight has written; to an appearance by the Queen herself. 

The show needs a bit of polish -- what Fringe show doesn't -- to focus us more on the inside drama, especially early on in the show, before the zombies appear. As far as the zombies go, they're off stage for long stretches here and it's easy to forget their presence. That decision is understandable in this production, as they're on the Rarig Center's Thrust Stage, and it would look just silly to have the zombies hanging out, waiting for their cue. It's not that I want to see them constantly, but their presence needs to be felt throughout. Oddly enough, a smaller stage would fit the show well. It would give them a chance to sell the work's claustrophobia (another important part of a zombie film, even the mall in Dawn of the Dead confined the characters to a small world) and maybe do more tricks with the creatures.

The show is near the end of it's Fringe run, though I'm sure it'll be part of a last-night "hits" showcase. And considering the huge audiences (the line for tickets last night stretched outside of the Rarig Center) I imagine a future production(s) is in the cards here.

My Fringe reviews are up at City Pages now. Go, visit, plan your weekend.

"Fuck you - me! Fuck you - Me!"

The 15th annual Minnesota Fringe Festival opened yesterday with a flurry of activity. For those not in the know, the Fringe is an 11-day festival spread out through Minneapolis. During it, more than 150 shows are presented. The shows tend to be rough and ready -- things pieced together by artists who want to explore new frontiers, get the word out about their work or do a trial-run for a new company.

I'm reviewing the Fringe for City Pages, so I'll hold off on specific opinions about those shows (check back next week and I'll post a link for those reviews).  But as a holder of an all-access "gold" pass (even laminated this year!), I will share opinions about other shows I take in, along with general Fringe-y opinions.

Today's headline is from Mike Fotis' spoken word piece, "An Intimate Evening with Fotis: Part Two." It's basically Fotis, sitting in a chair, reading his stories. It's a bracing evening, full of humor and quite a bit of geek-tastic insight. Like any good storyteller, Fotis is willing to mine his own phobias and shortcomings for material. His first story -- a mix of video-game anger and a fight in junior high -- hit close to home. While I've never broken my hand after a frustrating attempt to, say, destroy a boss, I have broken more than a few controllers; not to mention tossing just about everything across the room -- game discs, boxes, the useless instruction manuels -- at one point or the other (I even recall tossing down my GBA/DS in the same way, though thankfully onto a soft cushion, preventing permanent damage to either one). And the fight thing? Well, I pretty much stayed out of that in junior high, but I did get into an altercation in middle school when a dude named Victor Hell (really) decided to wail on me because -- remember, we were 12 or something -- we kinda looked the same (we eventually became sorta friends; it helped that we both liked loud rock n roll).

Fotis went from strength to strength, from talking about a particularly awful pair of encounters with bats (the type that flaps around) to admitting his love of loud rock n roll (not to mention Wilco and the Pixies -- white guys in their 30s, unite!) And ended with a rant about the power of his... blog. Right on.

Tonight, I'm off to the U for another City Pages assignment (An Inconvenient Squirrel), but since there are four venues within Rarig, I may take in more while I'm there. More anon.