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Dear BSR Subscriber,
Popular Fringe shows closing this weekend!
Today is about the midpoint of the Philly Fringe, and the writers and I are out every night to bring you our recommendations. Thanks for checking in with this special Fringe Friday mailer. I've seen 15 shows so far, and I'll see seven more this weekend. Almost every night, I'm updating my editor's guide with my honest takes on some of this year's buzziest shows.
Let's get right to the rest of the reviews, prioritizing the stuff that closes on Sunday. By the way, almost every show I've been to has been packed, so don't sleep on getting your tickets!
Shows closing this weekend:
Noam Osband's Wikipedilove
Valerie David's Baggage from BaghDAD
Lindsey Walko's Bog Man
Carly Polistina's Jane Eyre Wasn't a Whore
Die-Cast's Americana Cosplay
Nichole Canuso's Lunar Retreat
Neil and Alaina crossed over at Tess L's 'Single Woman: Work in Progress' on September 17.
Shows running longer:
ICYMI: Our coverage of the situation at the Academy of Natural Sciences, as well as a non-Fringe review. Cameron Kelsall caught the new improv comedy show from 1812, This Should Never Be A Musical.
We have lots more Fringe reviews coming your way over the next 10 days. And don't forget you can see our entire slate of Fringe reviews at a glance here. We're sending a huge thank you to the summer donors who made this coverage possible. We'll be with you here again on Tuesday morning! We'd love to know what you're seeing.
Alaina Johns
BSR editor-in-chief
Check here for curated listings and mini-reviews throughout the festival
Alaina Johns
See where editor Alaina Johns is heading in this year’s Fringe and get her recommendations with mini-reviews that will be updated right here throughout the festival. Check back often!
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Patriotism at play
Cameron Kelsall
Die-Cast deconstructs American mythmaking in Americana Cosplay, an immersive Fringe entry. Cameron Kelsall reviews.
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Poe meets martial arts
David Block
New York-based performer and theater professor William Trevino brings his unique one-man adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Ligeia to this year’s Philly Fringe. David Block previews.
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Check their baggage, and your own
Evan Schares
The Bearded Ladies Cabaret joins this year’s curated Fringe with a major new installation in Old City, Priority Hoarding: A Retrospectacle, at the Martha Graham Cracker Memorial Hairport. Evan Schares reviews.
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Unexpected companions for the High Holidays
Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer
Two Cannonball Festival shows, Days of Awe and Baggage from BaghDAD, explore intriguing family histories rooted in different Jewish experiences. Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer reviews.
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An authentically funny love letter to ballet, and being human
Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey
Chris Davis’s The 40-Year-Old Ballerino is both a love letter to ballet and an authentically funny account of the writer/performer’s midlife obsession with dance. Jill Ivey reviews.
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Law & Order meets a (nice) alien invasion
Krista Mar
A new interactive Fringe show from Rachel O’Hanlon-Rodriguez imagines an amiable alien trying to save Earth after watching 600 episodes of Law & Order. Krista Mar reviews.
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Sex, love, and Wikipedia
Emily Esten
Noam Osband’s Wikipedilove is an original, participatory musical comedy on sex, love, and collective knowledge, based on everyone’s favorite online crowdsourced encyclopedia. Emily Esten reviews.
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The rest they make up
Cameron Kelsall
1812 Productions creates an outlandish new work every night in This Should Never Be a Musical. Cameron Kelsall reviews.
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A haunted actor
Kiran Pandey
The Lemonade Stand hub of the Fringe presents Lindsey Walko’s Bog Man, an intriguing one-woman show that struggles to fully explore its concept. Kiran Pandey reviews.
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The abject wonder of infancy
Josh Herren
The theater collective BETTY (MK Tuomanen, Shelby Richardson, and Paul Kruse) premieres Dickie Dickie Dicky Donnie, an ode to the human experience of infants, at this year’s Fringe. Josh Herren reviews.
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Theater and literature nerds unite!
Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey
Imagine a jukebox musical where the jukebox plays audiobooks and there’s only one actor onstage, and you might get Jane Eyre Wasn’t a Whore, onstage in this year’s Fringe. Jill Ivey reviews.
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Professors are people, too
Evan Schares
Savannah Reich’s hilarious The Groundhog, imagining one professor’s career-ending class on the Harold Ramis film Groundhog Day, gets its world premiere in this year’s Fringe. Evan Schares reviews.
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A cozy visual feast in a Germantown cultural oasis
An Nichols
The Colored Girls Museum, a real home in Germantown that also serves as a museum celebrating the Black community, joins this year’s Fringe with a special interactive tour. An Nichols reviews.
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Perceiving grief
Krista Mar
Ninth Planet is back with a new experimental dance/theater show at this year’s Fringe, exploring the ways we grieve and are perceived in our grief. Krista Mar reviews.
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The human remains in command?
Emily Esten
Don Allen’s Fringe entry, Human in the Loop, takes audiences on an AI-guided therapy session before the artist overrides it to make his own decisions. Emily Esten reviews.
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People fighting “truth decay” in the age of AI want to keep Philly’s natural sciences museum open
Anndee Hochman
On September 8, one week after the shocking news broke that the Academy of Natural Sciences will close at the end of September, the community rallied to save it. Anndee Hochman was there.
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Support provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.
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