Orlando Fringe 2023 review: ‘Ha Ha Da Vinci: Music, Magic, Mayhem’

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A Renaissance-obsessed graduate student from Queens stumbles across a time machine designed by Leonardo DaVinci and his illusionist pal Luca Pacioli, and swiftly finds herself sucked into the 15th century in Ha Ha Da Vinci, an occasionally muddled but often magical melange of musicianship and physical theater from Washington-based artist Phina Pipia.

DaVinci’s voice (emanating from a difficult-to-understand retro radio) guides Pipia through various absurd tasks in her quirky quest to return home: She performs some simple but effective sleight-of-hand; strums a couple of charming original folk tunes; does some amusingly dorky interpretive dancing; and shows off her impressive operatic range while puppeteering a life-sized Vitruvian Man. The musical moments are heartwarming highlights — Pipia plays the floor piano a la Tom Hanks in Big, while wearing a tuba to boot! — but I struggled to see how a few of the more abstract bits connected to the plot; a long lunar shadow puppet sequence in particular slows the pace. 

Ha Ha DaVinci is an “only at Fringe” sort of show suffused with originality and interesting imagery. Some elements could stand a little sharpening, but its elegiac underlying theme of “yearning for normal times” should find a friendly audience among playful adults and thoughtful children alike.