Observance

Wow, I guess I had to pay for the awesome Fringe night I had last night sometime.

I just left a show so deeply bad that I couldn't bring myself to go see something in the 10:00 slot. I felt so...abused. I couldn't bring myself to engage with the Fringe for one more minute tonight. I had to come home, gargle whiskey and watch a few key scenes from Road House just to keep myself from fashioning a noose. Oh Patrick Swayze, heal me with your shirts-off tai chi. I'm not going to say the name of the show--I'll just say that it was a one-man out-of-towner show--but I will say that I truly did not know theater could be so bad.

And my God. At 5:30 I went to see SlapDash and I had to leave halfway through, not because the show was bad (though I confess it wasn't up my alley), but because of this woman and her horrid son, who talked at the top of his lungs throughout the show, requested to move all over the theater, ending up in the FRONT ROW, mid-show, his hapless mother in tow, where he proceeded to talk over her pathetic shushing. Ma'am, please learn to control your offspring, or if you cannot, do not bring him to a live theater event. No one in that audience was watching the show onstage. They were watching the tyrannical brat, and that truly is unfair to everyone, from the people who bought tickets to the artists trying to present their hard work. I told the staff about it on my way out and I don't know if or how it was resolved, but I sincerely hope at least some of the audience got to focus on at least some of the show onstage.

Oofda LORD! Had to get that off my chest. Luckily, wedged between these two bummer experiences was Brian Beatty's The Big Four Oh, a wonderfully dry, funny, and smart show that had me howling. I want an anthology of his poetry. You do too, you just don't know it yet. He has one more show tomorrow at 1:00--check it out.

OK. Someone needs to doff her cranky pants now, and get to that whisky garglin'. Refringerator Perry, signing off.