What hath quenched them
“Shotspeare” | Spiegeltent | Sept. 20, 21 | From $42 | Ages 21+
Matt Morgan was curmudgeonly on Thursday night. Or, was he? Clad in a kilt to perform the role of Banquo (and others) in The Scottish Play, Morgan was several shots deep and crushing canned Busch along with the rest of the cast when a sound cue didn’t go as planned during his character's big murder scene. After pausing, heckling the sound crew and resetting the scene, he turned to the crowd.
"You motherf*ckers act like you haven't seen this before," he said.
Was it booze-infused, or all an act? Only Morgan can say. That’s the schtick of “Shotspeare,” which returns with a bacchanalian adaptation of "Macbeth" in the Spiegeltent for the second weekend of Fringe. Morgan and wife Heidi Brucker Morgan’s Las Vegas-based take on “Drunk Shakespeare" has been frequenting the Fringe since almost the first year. There is always an audience member pulled to perform with the cast (a very amiable young man named Danny was chosen on Thursday night), and, of course, the wheel of soliloquy (socks remain the crowd favorite).
At the risk of too many spoilers, it’s about as raucous a late night out (damn spot, out) as one can have on the Fringe, and the Morgans and company seem to have nearly as much fun as the audience. Arguably one of the Rochester Fringe Festival’s most popular recurring shows, “Shotspeare” had a nearly sold out house on Thursday night, with 21-and-over audience members lined up at the bar to grab a pregame drink for the 90-minute show (which does include an intermission for re-upping libations). In comparison to 2023’s “Othello,” “Macbeth” gives the company perhaps a bit more to treat irreverently and the audience is more familiar with the story. That said, go see it ‘to-morrow, and to-morrow,' they kilt it. —LEAH STACY
A penguin on fire
"Ants to Gods: Trading Faces" | The Focus Theater | Sept. 20 | $15 | Ages 18+
Anyone who’s dabbled in the arts knows that writing a play is hard. Acting is hard. Comedy is hard. Doing all three, on the spot, for a live audience? That’s the work of gods, not ants.
The improv trio Ants to Gods returns after last year’s Fringe debut with a fun, fast hour of theater games and long form improvised storytelling. Comedians Elijah Crocker, Eno Okung, and Austin Scott, each a clever and entertaining performer in their own right, share a comedic hivemind for creating compelling, funny scenarios on the spot.
The sold-out performance opened with three short games. The first, an advice column answering audience questions about taxes, was a lukewarm start. The energy picked up with the two headed monster game, where they brought an audience member onstage to share a “get along shirt” for a scene at a children’s birthday party. The final short game was a triptych of rotating scenes based on suggestions shouted out by the audience, from a shoe addict buying shoes to co-captains observing a penguin on fire.
The rest of the hour settled into Ants to Gods’ strengths with a long form improvised sequence taken from the audience prompt “the end of a marriage.” The actors seamlessly alternated between three scenarios: a bride selecting a wedding cake flavor, a couple looking for a way to pay their bills, and a pastor disapproving of a non-religious fiancé. As the improvisation progressed, the actors would swap roles. Their ability to create characters distinctive enough that they could “trade faces” and have a new actor convincingly embody the same character was impressive. So was the way they retained and brought back details from the scenes, creating a sense of continuity across the night, which was dense with entertainment but over too quickly. —KATHERINE VARGA
Spooky songs
Charming Disaster’s "Musical Underworld Tour" | The Spirit Room’s Conjure Box | Sept. 20 | $18 | Ages 18+
Brooklyn musicians Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris of the goth-folk singer-songwriter duo Charming Disaster are familiar faces at the Rochester Fringe Festival at this point. Their use of original music to embrace the macabre and the dark unknown has been effective and, well, charming. This was evident in their opening exchange.
“There are monsters in the dark, and they do want to eat you,” Morris said.
“Well what should we do?” Bisker asked.
“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” Morris quickly replied.
Charming Disaster’s performance was woven together with an underlying storyline about getting lost in the woods and inadvertently traveling to the underworld on the way to the festival. With Bisker on ukulele and Morris on guitar, the pair created a surprisingly full sound, and their harmonies were on point.
They performed several songs from their 2019 album “SPELLS + RITUALS,” including “Blacksnake,” Wishing Well” and “Baba Yaga.” The majority of the set was filled with minor-key ballads in which death lurked around every corner. But a clear sense of fun could always be seen through the haze. "It’s never too late to find out you’re doomed,” Morris playfully bantered between songs.
The two eccentric crooners used ancient myths like the stories of Persephone and Orpheus and Eurydice as inspiration for story-songs that were both specific and universal. A signature feature of their songs was the use of call-and-response between one another during the chorus. Bisker and Morris excel at presenting a kind of cabaret of shadows while also providing a safe place to explore the spooky. Charming Disaster at Fringe is highly enjoyable and offers the perfect opportunity to gear up for Halloween. —DANIEL J. KUSHNER
(Paper) airplane mode
“Show Me a Day When the World Wasn't New” | CenterStage Theatre at the JCC: JCC Ballroom Stage | Sept. 21 | From $8 | All ages
The title of choreographer Kaley Pruitt’s interdisciplinary dance piece “Show Me a Day When the World Wasn't New” is not a command but an invitation. The joy and wonder of possibility occupy a central space in the performance, which blends contemporary dance with interactive audience elements.
Have you ever folded up and tossed a paper airplane during a dance show or viewed a performance through a rolled-up paper telescope? “Show Me a Day” will empower you to experience this show (and thus everyday life) from new vantage points.
It largely finds Pruitt and her two creative collaborators, Patrick Ingram and Megan Wubbenhorst, twirling around in storytelling mode. They punctuate big narrative beats about impending loss and self-actualization with games like Red Light, Green Light — they dance and freeze at the audience’s command — and unspool a loose narrative about growing up that feels universal.
What the performers say is less important than how they say it, often with individual movements that glide into one another’s. Each phrase is captivating, particularly when Pruitt syncs up her own motion with one or both of her fellow dancers.
One of the most affecting devices comes at the beginning. Pruitt tells a story from the perspective of a child who thinks she can fly; she eventually loses that talent and is forced to face the resulting sadness. After she speaks — and after the paper airplanes float around the room — her words appear broken and fragmented on the same sheets, read aloud in a jumbled order.
Once again, the words are less important than their emotional truth. “Show Me a Day” bears all of it but feels impossibly light, like airborne origami for your sense of awe.
—PATRICK HOSKEN
“Shotspeare” | Spiegeltent | Sept. 20, 21 | From $42 | Ages 21+
Matt Morgan was curmudgeonly on Thursday night. Or, was he? Clad in a kilt to perform the role of Banquo (and others) in The Scottish Play, Morgan was several shots deep and crushing canned Busch along with the rest of the cast when a sound cue didn’t go as planned during his character's big murder scene. After pausing, heckling the sound crew and resetting the scene, he turned to the crowd.
"You motherf*ckers act like you haven't seen this before," he said.
Was it booze-infused, or all an act? Only Morgan can say. That’s the schtick of “Shotspeare,” which returns with a bacchanalian adaptation of "Macbeth" in the Spiegeltent for the second weekend of Fringe. Morgan and wife Heidi Brucker Morgan’s Las Vegas-based take on “Drunk Shakespeare" has been frequenting the Fringe since almost the first year. There is always an audience member pulled to perform with the cast (a very amiable young man named Danny was chosen on Thursday night), and, of course, the wheel of soliloquy (socks remain the crowd favorite).
At the risk of too many spoilers, it’s about as raucous a late night out (damn spot, out) as one can have on the Fringe, and the Morgans and company seem to have nearly as much fun as the audience. Arguably one of the Rochester Fringe Festival’s most popular recurring shows, “Shotspeare” had a nearly sold out house on Thursday night, with 21-and-over audience members lined up at the bar to grab a pregame drink for the 90-minute show (which does include an intermission for re-upping libations). In comparison to 2023’s “Othello,” “Macbeth” gives the company perhaps a bit more to treat irreverently and the audience is more familiar with the story. That said, go see it ‘to-morrow, and to-morrow,' they kilt it. —LEAH STACY
- KATHERINE VARGA.
A penguin on fire
"Ants to Gods: Trading Faces" | The Focus Theater | Sept. 20 | $15 | Ages 18+
Anyone who’s dabbled in the arts knows that writing a play is hard. Acting is hard. Comedy is hard. Doing all three, on the spot, for a live audience? That’s the work of gods, not ants.
The improv trio Ants to Gods returns after last year’s Fringe debut with a fun, fast hour of theater games and long form improvised storytelling. Comedians Elijah Crocker, Eno Okung, and Austin Scott, each a clever and entertaining performer in their own right, share a comedic hivemind for creating compelling, funny scenarios on the spot.
The sold-out performance opened with three short games. The first, an advice column answering audience questions about taxes, was a lukewarm start. The energy picked up with the two headed monster game, where they brought an audience member onstage to share a “get along shirt” for a scene at a children’s birthday party. The final short game was a triptych of rotating scenes based on suggestions shouted out by the audience, from a shoe addict buying shoes to co-captains observing a penguin on fire.
The rest of the hour settled into Ants to Gods’ strengths with a long form improvised sequence taken from the audience prompt “the end of a marriage.” The actors seamlessly alternated between three scenarios: a bride selecting a wedding cake flavor, a couple looking for a way to pay their bills, and a pastor disapproving of a non-religious fiancé. As the improvisation progressed, the actors would swap roles. Their ability to create characters distinctive enough that they could “trade faces” and have a new actor convincingly embody the same character was impressive. So was the way they retained and brought back details from the scenes, creating a sense of continuity across the night, which was dense with entertainment but over too quickly. —KATHERINE VARGA
- DANIEL J. KUSHNER.
Charming Disaster’s "Musical Underworld Tour" | The Spirit Room’s Conjure Box | Sept. 20 | $18 | Ages 18+
Brooklyn musicians Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris of the goth-folk singer-songwriter duo Charming Disaster are familiar faces at the Rochester Fringe Festival at this point. Their use of original music to embrace the macabre and the dark unknown has been effective and, well, charming. This was evident in their opening exchange.
“There are monsters in the dark, and they do want to eat you,” Morris said.
“Well what should we do?” Bisker asked.
“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” Morris quickly replied.
Charming Disaster’s performance was woven together with an underlying storyline about getting lost in the woods and inadvertently traveling to the underworld on the way to the festival. With Bisker on ukulele and Morris on guitar, the pair created a surprisingly full sound, and their harmonies were on point.
They performed several songs from their 2019 album “SPELLS + RITUALS,” including “Blacksnake,” Wishing Well” and “Baba Yaga.” The majority of the set was filled with minor-key ballads in which death lurked around every corner. But a clear sense of fun could always be seen through the haze. "It’s never too late to find out you’re doomed,” Morris playfully bantered between songs.
The two eccentric crooners used ancient myths like the stories of Persephone and Orpheus and Eurydice as inspiration for story-songs that were both specific and universal. A signature feature of their songs was the use of call-and-response between one another during the chorus. Bisker and Morris excel at presenting a kind of cabaret of shadows while also providing a safe place to explore the spooky. Charming Disaster at Fringe is highly enjoyable and offers the perfect opportunity to gear up for Halloween. —DANIEL J. KUSHNER
- PATRICK HOSKEN.
“Show Me a Day When the World Wasn't New” | CenterStage Theatre at the JCC: JCC Ballroom Stage | Sept. 21 | From $8 | All ages
The title of choreographer Kaley Pruitt’s interdisciplinary dance piece “Show Me a Day When the World Wasn't New” is not a command but an invitation. The joy and wonder of possibility occupy a central space in the performance, which blends contemporary dance with interactive audience elements.
Have you ever folded up and tossed a paper airplane during a dance show or viewed a performance through a rolled-up paper telescope? “Show Me a Day” will empower you to experience this show (and thus everyday life) from new vantage points.
It largely finds Pruitt and her two creative collaborators, Patrick Ingram and Megan Wubbenhorst, twirling around in storytelling mode. They punctuate big narrative beats about impending loss and self-actualization with games like Red Light, Green Light — they dance and freeze at the audience’s command — and unspool a loose narrative about growing up that feels universal.
What the performers say is less important than how they say it, often with individual movements that glide into one another’s. Each phrase is captivating, particularly when Pruitt syncs up her own motion with one or both of her fellow dancers.
One of the most affecting devices comes at the beginning. Pruitt tells a story from the perspective of a child who thinks she can fly; she eventually loses that talent and is forced to face the resulting sadness. After she speaks — and after the paper airplanes float around the room — her words appear broken and fragmented on the same sheets, read aloud in a jumbled order.
Once again, the words are less important than their emotional truth. “Show Me a Day” bears all of it but feels impossibly light, like airborne origami for your sense of awe.
—PATRICK HOSKEN
