Minnesota Fringe – Day 7 Round Up

Today was going to be my first one-show day until someone asked if I was planning to see Good Ones at HUGE Improv Theater. They described the show as “queer as f**k” and how do you turn down a sales pitch like that? I went. I watched it. I loved it.

This was also the first day that I forgot to wear my button, which might sound like a bad thing, but it meant that I finally had the excuse to upgrade from the purple people pattern to the cat pin, so it worked out. The Fringe gets a few extra bucks and I get a cuter pin.

Mae West’s ‘The Drag’ (Theatre in the Round)

This 1920s-era play, written under Mae West’s pseudonym (Jane Mast) and adapted by Braden Joseph, centers around a closeted man, his faltering relationship with his wife, and a mistake that has nearly disastrous consequences. I’m not familiar enough with the source material to say definitively what was adapted and what was left the same, but the ending was modernized in a way that gives it a somewhat happier ending.

Perhaps my favorite part of this adaptation was the choice to have all the queer friends in drag and to incorporate three drag performances in the play. There is something immensely pleasing about a butler, a Sherlock Holmes-looking guy, and a man in a three-piece suit who are all wearing full faces of drag makeup.

I wrongly expected more drag (for some reason I thought characters would burst into drag at moments of heightened emotion), so to set your expectations: there will be three brief drag performances about three quarters of the way through the show. Have your dollar bills ready.

Personally, I found some of the writing a little heavy handed and, since the script was being adapted anyways, I think we could have skipped the multiple instances of the f-slur. The ending was also abrupt – I actually thought that Fringe had cut the play off for going over-time, but they still had a minute left on the clock. Overall, I thought this was an interesting reworking of what was considered a dangerously progressive play 100 years ago.

I recommend Mae West’s “The Drag” to anyone who is craving a period piece, likes adaptations, and wants a bite size drag show in an otherwise standard drama.

Remaining Shows

8/10 – 5:30 PM
8/11 – 1:00 PM 

Good Ones (HUGE Improv Theater)

Good Ones begins with a desperate, giggled request over the speakers to please film them, please post them before the trio makes its appearance at the back of the theater. They emerge from behind the audience, soaking in a cacophony of their own eerie laughter, practically oozing their way down the aisle. A trifecta of chaos and near-primary colors, they squeeze through a row of the audience, all reaching hands and leering faces, and slowly make their way up to the stage.

Their presence is intentionally jarring. All three are dressed in the harlequin pattern (sometimes subbed for the ska checkerboard pattern) and bright spandex stuffed with lumpy items. Some of these lumps appear in expected places (booty, chest, stomach, hips) and sometimes in unexpected places (a set of what looks like ball-pit balls make a misshapen spine down one person’s back).

Their makeup is similarly off-putting. Their teeth are blackened, giving off the impression of pointed teeth and partially emptied mouths. Everyone has some combination of pink and black face makeup over a subtle (for clown makeup) white base: eyebrows arch wrongly, a too-bright mouth is circled in black, cheeks are colored in wide triangles, and a bar of pink is smeared across the eyes.

They are the Teletubbies if the Teletubbies lost their televisions, started a ska band, and went through some serious shit.

For some reason, I thought that Good Ones was a traveling act (they aren’t – the show is put on by Shambles Theatre Co, which has a couple transplants as members, but was established right here in the Twin Cities in 2023) and I was impressed at their ability to make familiar, reasonably light-hearted jokes about Minnesotan passive aggression, agreeability, and our supposed inability to make friends outside of our childhood circles. I was similarly impressed by the fact that they knew a few serious Minnesotan sore spots and poked them. Repeatedly.

Good Ones is the kind of clowning you might recognize from all the Shakespeare you’ve seen this week. It’s the kind of bait and switch joke-telling that makes you affably admit a flaw or a blind spot and while you’re still laughing, violently twists your arm behind your back and begs you to look deeper. What else is there? The abrupt shifts from light-hearted comedy to uncomfortable truth-telling and back again is as unsettling as it is effective and if you don’t leave feeling like you have some serious work to do, you’re either a better person than me or are really, really good at pulling the wool over your own eyes.

I don’t want to delve too deeply into the actual content of Good Ones (I think it’s better experienced live and you still have one more opportunity to do that – literally tonight so pre-order your ticket now), but this production is weird, uncanny, and important.

I strongly recommend Good Ones, especially for people who like weird comedy, bitter pills, and could use a kick in the ass.

Remaining Shows

8/8 – 5:30 PM