Thank You So Much For Coming at Elgin Fringe Festival

Note: the views expressed in this review do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editor or publisher of The Elgin Review.

Bonanza! This show has everything you love about perceived reality: song, dance, surveys, talk shows and headline news! It's called performance art because it defies standard classifications.What do you call a piece that begins with an audience assessment and ends with a campfire?  It's called "There Will Be a Test."

By way of a series of vignettes without clear boundaries, you'll travel from slow motion talking heads to a talking body to singing cowboys, and discover that reality is absurd at both extremes of space and knowledge. But fact, fallacy and fiction have one thing in common: it's all great material.

If it were possible to create a didactic piece of art whose agenda was the anti-agenda, it might look like this. And if the thing you remember most about a performance is the ending, then when Dad says it's bedtime, you trust him.

"This just in: Objectivism has been downgraded from Threatened to Endangered."

Maddy and Scott of Thank You So Much For Coming are just what this Fringe Festival needs. If only they had one more segment on Sunday ... but it's so hard to capture the 18-54 demographic in that time slot when the NFL is on another channel.

Melanie Moseley at Elgin Fringe Festival

In this autobiographical trip through modern relationship structures, "the gospel of sex positivity" is just one of the unexpectedly real expressions that may confront the more Puritanical of you. And yes, it's explained in "the Bible of ethical non-monogamy."

In "Sexology: The Musical," Mel Moseley combines storytelling, songs and humor to explore her evolution from traditional — but dysfunctional — monogamy to solo polyamory. It's part teaching and part confession, but those are really two sides of the same coin: truth telling.

She portrays three parts of herself with distinct props, posture and accents which serves to illustrate the delicate balance of integrity and compartmentalization that is necessary to thrive in a social milieu of fluid sexuality and fragile partnerships.

Her voice is bold and folksy like a preacher because she is a true believer: a believer in love, consent, good sex, equality, and enjoying our bodies while we can. Prepare to be "comperted." 

Check out Mel at the Fringe!

Marga Gomez at Elgin Fringe Festival

The moment Marga Gomez walks on stage, you recognize the natural talent for subtle comedic movement, character voices, great timing and a practiced, self-conscious command of space on a stage consisting of only a chair and a mic stand.

She is tweaking a "work in progress" at the syllabic level; but look beyond the professional dazzle to see a brilliantly paced, complex story that draws on gay Catholic Cuban-American identity (why isn't Gay capitalized?) to explore complex relationships that flash backward and forward across genders, latitudes, and generations.

Titled "The Spanking Machine," the bit uses a childhood friend as a humorous adult foil, but there's a point, accompanied by the sound of "so many locks in those New York apartments." This show is just like a perfect grownup spanking: all joy, with just a little bit of sting.

See it Friday at 6pm and Saturday at 7:30pm at the Theater at Side Street Studio Arts.

Cyrano-a-Go-Go at Elgin Fringe Festival

Forget about the nose ... Cyrano de Bergerac is the classic embodiment of a surrogate voice and unrequited love. By this definition he is essentially the archetype for all actors.

In this one-man show, Brad McEntire uses the landmark play as a device for sharing personal stories, history and commentary — combinations of purported fact, impressions and opinions that combine, as art always does, to deliver truth.

Moving in and out of different discourse worlds like distinct scenes in a play, McEntire alternately recites from the original 1897 Edmond Rostand play, relates anecdotes and even comments on the piece he is presenting. One message is "We're all just story tellers." Another is that poetry and warfare are just two separate mediums for declaring love, loyalty and freedom.

Complete with a printed study guide, it's a 70-minute think piece that deserves your attention. See McEntire as Cyrano Friday at 9pm, Saturday at 10:30pm and Sunday 4:30pm at the Theater at Side Street Studio Arts.

The Bipeds at 2018 Elgin Fringe Festival

"Psychedelic song and dance" are just four of the words that appear in a description of "54 Strange Words," the groundbreaking work of The Bipeds, a North Carolina-based group of multidisciplinary artists. All four words are necessary and sufficient.

"Dance" is what you see first, as a couple in mysterious costume move fluidly through the space from the floor up, using every part of it as if they are inhabiting their bodies for the first and last time. "Song" follows close behind, as folksy, bluesy voices belt out cryptic lyrics and harmonies accompanied by bare finger banjo and bass fiddle.

"Psychedelic" is how the hippies referred to an experience of extreme consciousness. It's what the first humans experienced when they walked upright and became self-aware; and physical sensation, including pain, is the last thing we'll know as we leave our bodies.

"And" is what makes this piece pure art: a completely original fusion of roots music, modern dance and poetry that offers an impression of the ephemeral nature of a life, or even a species. "Strange words, strange heart" are the observations of a soul trapped in flesh for a short time on the physical plane.

You may never forget this strange piece for as long as you live, until "gravity, memory, everything has been erased."