Below are my reviews of “Depths of Wikipedia,” “Glob,” “Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight,” “Twitch,” and “Linus Karp Was Hit With An Umbrella,” all seen in a single day, from noon to 9:30 at various theaters at Underbelly, greatly varying in subject, treatment, and tone.. They are organized chronologically by the time I saw them – a busy day, typical for many Fringegoers, but it wiped me out.
Depths of Wikipedia
Of the 66,159,914 pages that have accumulated in English Wikipedia (according to Wikipedia) since the free online encyclopedia was launched in 2001, Annie Rauwerda has chosen a photograph of a cow lying down on the grass as the central image of her entertaining lecture and slide show, which includes the caption “A healthy cow lying on her side is not immobilized; she can rise whenever she chooses.” She also has put this on postcards and tote bags that she sells, part of her ever-growing enterprise, sparked by an obsession that began in middle school, as Wikipedia itself explains in its entry on Rauwerda, whom it identifies as a 26-year-old “American internet personality, journalist, and comedian known for Depths of Wikipedia, a group of social media accounts” – and now Fringe show – “that highlight facts from Wikipedia.”
It seemed odd that Rauwerda would focus on the photograph of the cow, and even turn its caption into some kind of Koan (“she can rise – and so can you,” she tells us), until I realized that she likely picked the cow because that’s the theme of Underbelly – her Fringe venue is Cowbarn – and that she was joking. She has such a grasp on the vast resource that is Wikipedia that she was able to fill the hour with just the most apt, hilarious and fascinating examples – not just of entries (like “list of sexually active popes”), but of the behind-the-scenes controversies among the similarly obsessed volunteer Wikipedia contributors. These include the endless and heated debates over whether the cat featured in the entry “Longcat” was actually long, and over whether it was appropriate for the entry on the economist named ”Guy Standing” to be accompanied by a photograph of him sitting. Mr. Standing himself expressed exasperation that so much time was taken up with this silliness while they didn’t even bother to update the entry with his latest book on child poverty.
Rauwerda is particularly compelling in her riff on the persistent vandals who are the bane of Wikipedia editors’ existence – such as “Willy on Wheels,” who keeps on adding “on wheels” to many article titles (“list of sexually active popes on wheels.”)
Rauwerda is a cheerleader for Wikipedia, not an analyst; her effort to put this massive non-profit volunteer Internet enterprise in context is limited and superficial; she hardly even mentions Artificial Intelligence. But “Depths of Wikipedia” benefits from her enthusiasm, which goes way beyond normal: This is a woman who doesn’t just sit at home in Brooklyn reading through the encyclopedia and contributing to its pages; she traveled to Thailand to try to track down the male and female who are featured in its entry for “Humans.”
***Depths of Wikipedia is at Cowbarn through August 30
Glob
“Glob” offers a gentle, sweetly-scored, wordless, and whimsical showcase for the elegant Jean-Félix Bélanger and impish Rémi Jacques of the Montreal-based Les Foutoukours acrobatic clowning company, both in red noses and fluffy, furry white onesies. Belanger and Jacques are the Vladimir and Estragon of the clown world, waiting around passing the time in a barren landscape with scraggly trees; they even have a bit involving their shoes. But from the moment they emerge dramatically from a cloud of stage smoke, the two exhibit a range of graceful acrobatics, juggling, tap-dancing, and basic clowning. Jacques is the talkative one, although mostly bursts of noise that may be “aw” or “wow.” Belanger makes sound too, but only on the piano, accompanying Jacques’ dancing. “Glob” is probably best-appreciated by six year-olds; after the show, I spotted one trying out some of the simpler moves he had seen on stage.
****Glob is at McEwan Hall through August 30.
Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight
This is an absurdist, interactive play that swerves into trickster theater in a way that I’m required to keep mum about, a code of silence that critics have apparently respected through years of previous productions in Los Angeles, Paris and Massachusetts. But there are plenty of other odd and edgy pleasures in “Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight,” not least a terrific, persuasive performance by Broadway veteran Jim Orlieb. Written and directed by John Kolvenbach, the title reflects the play’s humor, which largely depends on audience confusion and discomfort. These were mild for me, and worth it, but the actor did say at one point “Raise your hand if your anxiety is surging,” and half the hands went up.
Ortlieb portrays an unnamed gentleman with a professorial demeanor who makes clear from the start – or, as he puts it, before he starts – that he shares our disappointment with the way life has turned out, despite all sorts of efforts on our (and his) behalf: yoga, acupuncture, yoga, sensory deprivation tanks, weird diets. He tells us he appreciates our showing up at all at a time when people usually just stay at home: “Your television called you. You turned your back on it.” He commands us, yes, to “stand up if you’re here tonight,” and then…culls us. Do we have a favorite color? If so, sit down. “If you have a thing for office supplies, sit down. I get it, but I won’t be need you.” This leads nowhere – or, more precisely, to other commands, involving clapping hands, and free association word games, pick-a-card, all to no apparent end. He also engages in wordplay, telling us of a chemical formula, but then says it’s “a made-up word.” Then adds “Like all other words.” That will stay with me.
Sometime in the middle of the play, the man takes out a flask and takes a swig, and this may be where it “starts” – where he talks about a lost love, where he lets us more directly glimpse his sadness, and where we realize we’re not just participating in some puzzling and amusing series of random activities, but feeling part of an exploration of loneliness and an effort at connection.
*****Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight is at Dairy Room through August 31.
Twitch
Joslyn DeFreece impressively portrays Pam and thirteen other characters in this play that, on the surface, is about a mother searching for her missing son, but is really an unsettling portrait of a disturbed woman, beset with nightmares, hallucinations and delusions; she complains of a twitch in her eye that nobody else notices, not even an ophthalmologist using a “big telescope,” as Pam puts it. The play takes the form of a detective story, with Pam, unsatisfied with the efforts of a police detective, doing her own legwork, hiring a tech guy to break into her son’s computer, interrogating a sex worker whom her son hired, visiting a dog pound in hopes of finding his pet. But we wind up becoming the detectives, absorbing clues that suggest that Pam was an abusive mother. DuFreece is adept at varying her voice to nail each character, but is burdened with a script by Liliana Padilla that is too crowded and diffuse. Padilla previously had some success Off-Broadway with “How to Defend Yourself,” a play that more productively used an ensemble of eight women to explore the trauma and rage of sorority sisters taking a self-defense workshop after one of them was assaulted. But using an ensemble would not fix the vagueness in “Twitch.” Even dark themes need sufficient light.
***Twitch is at Clover through August 30.
Linus Karp Was Hit With An Umbrella
In his true account of his violent attack by a stranger in a street in London, Linus Karp applies much the same campy and comedic approach that he has used in his parodies (staged in New York as well as at the Fringe) “Gwyneth Goes Skiing,” “Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story” and “The Fit Prince.” – such as enlisting members of the audience to portray various roles. But rather than a parody, “Linus Karp Was Hit With An Umbrella” is both a factual story and a personal story. Karp gives a moment-by-moment description of the assault, the assailant’s capture by Karp’s now-husband Joseph Martin, and the legal aftermath of what was officially declared a hate crime, but never went to trial (for a good reason, which I won’t reveal here, because Karp makes it a climactic part of his storytelling.) He places his experience, which he admits is of relatively little consequence, in the context of a rise in homophobia, pointing to such statistics as a 121 percent increase in hate crimes based on sexual orientation in the UK over the past five years, and 168 percent among trans.
Karp also talks about his childhood in Sweden, his coming out, and his meeting his Joseph Martin 12 years ago when – he hesitates to reveal — they both worked at a Harry Potter store. He reveals a new spin on the public events in his life over the two years since the attack – the trauma of the attack made it difficult to enjoy the acclaim his shows were getting, and the decision to marry Joseph in a public ceremony that doubled as a Fringe show seems an act of defiance against the hatred. One wonders whether there is something of the same motivation behind Karp’s choice to use his newest show to stage the trial that never happened, asking specifically for a straight member of the audience to portray the assailant, and then confronting – although gently, afterward giving him a gift of a poster that says: I’m Nice to Gay People.
****Linus Karp Was Hit With An Umbrella is at Friesian through August 30.
