The final FestN4 winter theater festival at Orlando Fringe’s ArtSpace before the organization exits Church Street is running now through Sunday, Jan. 12. Here are reviews of the top shows I’ve seen so far during the first two nights of the event.
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FestN4 brings a slate of adventurous theater to downtown’s Fringe ArtSpace this week
(Culture Opus Inc. — Toronto, Ontario)
Jan. 11 @ 10:10 pm, Jan. 12 @ 2:30 pm
White imperialists may have spread themselves across the globe like mayonnaise, but Brown folks finally get the last laugh in Colonial Circus, a brilliantly bizarre blitz through history that blends skillful absurdist slapstick with savage sociological satire.
Storytellers Shreya Parashar and Sachin Sharma hail from India by way of Toronto, and their ridiculous recapitulation of how Britain raped their homeland by displacing indigenous deities with Jesus is equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.
From their endearingly off-key opening ritual to a musical finale filleting performative allyship, these cunning clowns employ minimalist wordplay and masterful whiteface mugging to slaughter sacred cows with glee, extracting riotous laughter (and natural resources) from their audiences with patronizing apologies. According to Facebook’s new fact-checkers, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says the scene starring a condom-wrapped crucifix in the missionary position is his favorite comedy bit of all time, so catch this surreally spicy slice of protest art while you still can. (tickets)
(Lauren Bone Noble — Oxford, MS)
Jan. 12 @ 4 pm
Solo performer Lauren Bone Noble, whose Medea-inspired Fury was an underseen highlight of the 2022 Orlando Fringe Festival, describes her latest work as a “silly play about silly women dreaming silly dreams.” But don’t discount her ditzy protagonist Lucy Bennet or her hellcat companion Alma Bricker, because there’s some seriously righteous anger lying just beneath the comical crust of this bold, bloody fantasy about 19th-century proto-feminism.
Dressed in a gender-blurring Victorian top hat and frock, Noble looks like she could step in for EPCOT’s animatronic Susan B. Anthony as she both narrates and fluidly embodies each of her characters with distinct physicality. Her highly fictionalized depiction of the drama surrounding the historic 1848 Seneca Falls suffragist convention unexpectedly metamorphosizes from a historical satire into a supernatural splatterfest.
Noble’s witty script doesn’t have quite the same raw intensity throughout that her previous play did, and the plot takes its time arriving at its crucial turn. But her gonzo mashup of modern cultural references (from Sweeney Todd to J.D. Vance) with precise period details produces a delightfully demented metatextual trip. And her emotional climactic appeal for freedom at the ballot box feels both timely and timeless. (tickets)
(The World of Billie Jane — Orlando, FL)
Jan. 12 @ 1 pm
Four years after winning the Orlando Fringe Critics Choice award for scripting Judas, performer/playwright Billie Jane is back with another unconventional seriocomic monologue from the perspective of a vilified Biblical figure. Turning this time to the Old Testament, Jane jumps into the flowing white dress of the titular First Woman, recounting her early days in the Garden of Eden laboriously naming 800,000 different species of beetles. In this version, there’s no snake tempting her towards the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, but rather an empathetic caterpillar that inspires her quest for personal metamorphosis.
Jane’s fourth wall-shattering script is sharp and sensitive, with a deeply personal “twist” that’s never been more timely. She performs the laugh-out-loud-funny early scenes with the fluid timing of a seasoned sketch comedian, but isn’t afraid to deliver a gasp-inducing gut-punch, often within the same breath; I never imagined I’d be emotionally immolated by the idea of being deadnamed by a three-toed sloth. Please bear with this show through its frantic first few moments (which are unnecessary, IMHO) because Then, Eve swiftly proves itself among the most entertaining and affecting original scripts Orlando Fringe has seen … since Judas. (tickets)
(Play the Moment — Orlando, FL)
Jan. 11 @ 6:15 pm
As a self-confessed cynical critic, I typically consider staged recitals of so-called “inspiring” poems to be insufferably insipid. But VersUs reversed that longstanding trend, instead leaving me with tear-tracked cheeks and a renewed faith in the emotional power of verses and voices. The selection of stanzas carefully curated by Nathan Ulrey covers most of the Western canon’s name-brand poets, from Frost and Dickinson to Wordsworth (save for Shakespeare) along with a few deep cuts; and director Aradhana Tiwari prevents the show from becoming a static poetry park-and-bark through vignettes of Viewpoints-inspired pedestrian movement and a Pink Floydian soundscape of orchestral, electronica and live folk music.
Ultimately, it is the exceptional ensemble of actors that makes this production so impactful, with each extracting fresh meaning even from overly familiar lines. It’s hard to single out stars among this well-balanced cast, but some of my personal favorites include Stephen Lima, lending W. H. Auden’s “Unknown Citizen” a droll Seuss-meets-Orwell edge; Sarah Lockard, who spins Browning’s “Sonnet 43” with ironic exasperation; and — most movingly — Sam Hazel and Mary Stonerock, both delivering devastating odes on aging which made me wish these local legends would grace our stages more often. Put aside any preconceptions that poetry is boring or pretentious, and immerse yourself in this vibrant journey across the ’verse. (tickets) [location-1]
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This article appears in Jan 8-14, 2025.