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June set the stage for Downtown’s inaugural Fallout Fringe Festival, and live theater-lovers could not be happier. The festival has brought us more than 115 performances and 30 acts across five venues—and the show isn’t over yet. There’s still plenty of plays to catch through June 25, so grab tickets at falloutfringe.org. Here are some of our favorites so far.
Doing Time with Lavinia
The city's first-ever Fallout Fringe Festival wrapped opening day with something fierce at Vegas Theatre Company. In Doing Time With Lavinia, Susan Campanaro took the stage in a raw solo performance that pushed boundaries and earned a standing ovation.
Lavinia Draper, played with fearless charisma by Campanaro, holds court from a jail cell in Palm Beach County. The set (or “cell”) was barebones, but Lavinia doesn’t need much to take us on the singsong journey of her life—just a pot to piss in, a sturdy bench and the eyes and ears of her peers in the drunk tank (that’s us). And of course, the original background music, composed and masterfully performed on piano by Lynn Portas.
On top of the humor and hard truths of aspiring stardom, Campanaro’s magnetic grip on the room made this hour unforgettable. She belted, strutted, crumbled and commanded, never once flinching as she bared a soul that’s only ever wanted to be seen, to be applauded.
After witnessing the ups and the inevitable downs of the character’s life, many of which were the byproduct of naive trust, self-sabotage and a habitual use of booze and substances, we found ourselves rooting for her. Because no matter how many times the world kicked Lavinia around, she was able to dust herself off and sashay into the next phase of her life. –Gabriela Rodriguez
Puppet Slam: Pride Edition
Allow the Loose Thread Puppet Cult to initiate you with jokes, striptease and general raunchiness. The group’s June 7 show at Vegas Theatre Company featured a variety of acts including a duet by two rivalrous “bosom buddies” joined at the shoulder. Improv speed dating with the puppets of Fur and Thunder called for a volunteer from the audience. “Hi, my name is Peepers. I’m 50,000 years old from the planet Neptune. And every hair on my body is a clitoris. It is a wild existence!” The volunteer swiped left on Peepers and all six other candidates. Maybe if you swipe right, the puppet and the puppeteer go home with you.
To follow that, puppeteer Maura Grace performed a one-handed (because puppet) striptease to the Champs’ “Tequila.” Fur and Thunder returned for a performance of “Seasons of Love” from Rent. Kermit the Frog came out with a broken arm and danced with S&M Miss Piggy for the “Masochist Tango.” And of course, it wouldn’t be a Pride celebration without puppet Starlett O’Hair’s cover of “Born This Way.” You missed a lot, but don’t worry—there will be another chance to see these colorful cult rituals this week. June 18, 10:30 p.m., $28, Vegas Theater Company, falloutfringe.org. –Shannon Miller
Knives, Knives, Knives
It begins with the voice of Donald Trump, our fabulist-in-chief, spinning one of his preposition-challenged yarns about a London hospital: “They don't have guns. They have knives and instead there's blood all over the floors of this hospital. … Knives, knives, knives, knives.” Then, incongruously, what follows is a marital drama, with a cuckolded husband, Dave (Tommy Todd), bursting in on his wife Amy (Kimberly Scott Faubel) and her lover Kyle (Eric Angell), in flagrante delicto.
And that’s about as hinged as it gets, because the riotously funny and uncomfortably familiar Knives, Knives, Knives is composed entirely of phrases taken verbatim from Trump’s speeches. Not the relatively sane stuff the speechwriter put in the teleprompter, but the extemporaneous junk about magnets, “bird cemeteries” and the like. Sketch writer Rohit Kumar combed through Trump’s speeches for inadvertent double-entendre and, apparently, found little but that. Trump’s scattershot syntax allows Faubel’s character to lavish praise on her lover’s, er, character (“Woody! We love you, Woody!” she shouts at Angell’s crotch), and enables Todd’s betrayed spouse to lament his performance issues. (“Big, strong men,” he says, dejectedly. “Big, strong men.”)
The performers, all seasoned improv performers with the Bleach troupe, don’t modify Trump’s words, not even to clarify their meaning. (Getting off-book on this pile of garbage and rocks must have been a nightmare.) They all deserve massive props: Angell for indirectly evoking Trump’s smarminess, Faubel for bringing a Meryl Streepian seriousness to this wilted word salad, and Todd for personifying the weariness we all feel having to take this loony, meandering crap as gospel. And everyone involved with Knives, Knives, Knives deserves free therapy, or at the least, a year’s worth of free drinks. June 22, 6 p.m., $17, Vegas Theatre Company, falloutfringe.org. –Geoff Carter
Legoland
Playwright Jacob Richmond’s hilarious prequel to Ride the Cyclone depicts homeschooled hippies gone wild in the best way possible. The one-act production, directed by Majestic Repertory Theatre’s Troy Heard, follows Penny and Ezra Lamb, siblings who grew up in Uranium City, Saskatchewan (that’s Canada for the geographically challenged) but yearn to explore the outside world known as Legoland.
Outside of faking seizures at Walmart, the duo share little in common. Penny (played by Emma Newton) aspires to be a conservationist and has an encyclopedic knowledge of endangered species. Ezra (played by Jeremy Dubey) loves puppet shows about German nihilism and Ritalin. They soon band together after being sent to St. Cassian’s boarding school, where Penny gets bullied for using big words like “misogyny.” To cope, the girl develops an obsession with 7up, a boy band whose music she likens to “the melody of God.” It’s a rebellious ride from here as the siblings embark on a hilarious cross-country trip to meet Penny’s pop icon.
The characters’ chemistry feels undeniable in most scenes, especially when they’re riffing on the endangered species of “American-style democracy” or gangsta rapping about power tool copulation (you'll see). The script is sharply executed, both actors in sync and skilled at letting their lines breathe. Laughs feel earned rather than forced, and the payoff of the finale lies within Newton and Dubey’s madcap commitment to the bit. June 21 & 28, 6 p.m. & 8:30 p.m., $17, Majestic Repertory Theater, falloutfringe.org. –Amber Sampson
Take Your Shot With Motivational Speaker Luigi Mangione
The premise of Take Your Shot With Motivational Speaker Luigi Mangione is immediately evident in its title, but the avant-garde collaboration between INDECLINE and TSTMRKT at times uses that tongue-in-cheek juxtaposition as an avenue to legitimately criticize the fatcat capitalists and fascist swine who run the world.
The session, held at Cheapshot, begins as writer and director Ernest Hemmings—in character as a Ramco Laboratories representative who hired Luigi to give a motivational speech to employees—introduces Joshua Berg as the titular hunky murderer.
Berg’s Luigi opens in earnest: “I view myself, really, as a fixer. Like, if I see a problem, I'm gonna do everything I can to fix it, no matter what,” he said. “I want you to hit your targets—all of them!”
As Luigi spirals into incendiary rhetoric about buying a Tesla, burning it down and telling your insurance company “angry leftists did it,” he’s occasionally censored by Hemmings’ character.
But when he does get on track, it’s more of a compromise than sheer obedience.
“Your goal might be to earn $20k more per year, or maybe it's to simply make the government reexamine their allegiance to a fascist dictator. Either way, you gotta make a plan,” he said. “You can even use the power of the internet to help you raise the funds you'll need—whether it's to improve your operating infrastructure or to buy a high-capacity magazine rifle.”
The show ends with a literal boom as Luigi is “shot” onstage by his corporate overlord—but not before he offers his final tip.
“You know the outcome you desire,” he said. “You have a plan. Now, it’s time to execute.” –Tyler Schneider
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