Oh, The Glamourous Life!

Dear Constant Reader,

This past weekend I was unexpectedly able to attend two shows at the second annual Boston Fringe Festival, held, of course, in Somerville.

The first was Our Lord and Savior, a play written, directed, and featuring the multitalented Alana Corrigan. I think it shows how much respect I have for Lani that I voluntarily, nay, eagerly, came to a production that started at 10pm.

Our story is set at a Bible study group in Minnesota with five teens overseen by an overwhelmed youth pastor. He’s trying to get through the lesson of Sampson and Delilah. He’s also coping with the fact that his wife who left him for another woman. Beginning with the hymn “Our God is a Pretty Good God”, the humor was foremost. There is teenaged angst, exacerbated with Christian guilt. There are a number of hymn-inspired original songs, accompanied by an acoustic guitar of course, through which the characters let out some of their innermost anxieties.

The play is clearly written by one who knows this world of youth church and Minnesota nice intimately and sees the foibles without making a mockery of them. I also want to give Lani kudos for taking a supporting role and letting the focal characters shine.

I was afraid the venue was going to negatively affect the performance. It was a barbershop (one of the other “alt” venues was a gaming space attached to a pizza parlor), so there was no stage and all of the audience was on the same level as the actors. When the 6 performers came out and sat in folding chairs, I could see them from about the chin up. But fortunately, it didn’t matter since everything was perfectly audible. Obviously, I would have preferred to be able to see all the actors, but the dialog was the important part. Vince Lauffer, who played Pastor Svenson, had a talent for making it clear when he was speaking directly to the audience/internal monologue and when he was interacting with the other characters (with an accurate touch of Minnesotan in his voice).

I was delighted to learn that Our Lord and Savior won “Best Alt Venue Drama/Musical”. I expect you’ll see much more from Alana Corrigan on local stages in the very near future!

The next afternoon we attended Carnival of Sorts, a one-man show by Erik Bartlett at the main stage at The Rockwell. We used to perform a lot there, back when it was the Davis Square Theatre. In fact, we were the second theatre group to perform there (after Actors’ Shakespeare Project), so it was a bit nostalgic to be back.

Confession: I cannot stand watching blockheads. Those are the people who stick nails up their nose. Once I was actually yelled at by a performer at a Ren Faire because I turned away when he brought out hammer and nail. Anyway, Erik does do a blockhead bit, but there’s a story around it, which he punctuates with a musical tapping of hammer on nail. I still closed my eyes when he actually did the deed, but it was a much more pleasant lead-up.

Like Our Lord and Savior, this was a short, 30-minute show. I hope for a longer version someday, because I’d love to hear more of Erik’s time with the circus. He ended with a heartfelt speech about supporting live performances and I could not agree more.

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