If you’re a looking for a good Fringe show to take a date to this weekend, I have a couple of recommendations.
The first is entitled Seeking… a hilarious play about the personal ads in the back of newspapers and magazines and the people who use them.
The three actors in this show play eight characters altogether and, as a result, have to swap characters and genders along the way. This proves to be an interesting and successful experiment — if somewhat mind-bending.
While the first scene of the show starts as typical rom-com fare, Seeking… soon shows its quirkier side, getting more and more over-the-top from one scene to the next.
The scenes with characters James (Céline Filion) and Claire (Chris Caswell) are especially outrageous, and even more so when they are joined in one of the final scenes by the appropriately named Brick (Zach Counsil).
Ankles Aweigh is another great Fringe show for a date. In fact, if Kate and Bridget Ryan added a chorus group to their re-write of this 1950s nautical musical, and went a little bigger with some of the song and dance numbers, there is no reason why they couldn’t be mounting this play at the Citadel or the Jubilee.
In addition to the charismatic Ryan sisters, Ankles Aweigh features other local theatre veterans such as Sheldon Elter, Linda Grass, Ryan Parker, and Donovan Workun.
Workun puts in overtime in this production, playing both the mafioso Joe Mancini as well as navy Cmdr. Zimmerman. More often than not, Workun steals the show with his comedic skill (audience members best warm up beforehand to ensure that they don’t pull an abdominal muscle.)
Ryan Sigurdson tickles the ivories and provides the musical direction for the show. In a goofy twist, Sigurdson also becomes an unwilling prop in a few of the musical numbers.
