I really wish I could say I liked The Man Show. In fact, I expected to like it, and even spent some energy, before ever having seen the thing, imaging what flattering things I might say about it. I expected it to be one of those things that jolted me out of my south Minneapolis comfort bubble. Because, first of all, the show plays in an outlying suburb for heaven’s sake! (And I grew up in an outlying suburb…) And second, the audience is completely different than what it is at, say, The Jungle–it’s more middle American, less likely to go out afterwards so that they can smoke cigarettes, drink wine, and argue with their friends about what they’ve just seen.
It’s no fault of Stevie Ray (the one-man performer in The Male Intellect), but this show just isn’t very funny. The script is based on predictable Men-Are-From-Mars-Women-Venus jokes that mostly fell flat last night. And that’s all the nastiness she wrote, because the experience was otherwise swell. The Chan serves up a damn fine margarita and walleye! And the company’s good, too–and by that I mean the folks who were sitting next to me last night (my party of two was seated family-style).
Onward to the weekend before us…
Here are the Fringe shows I plan to see:
Dancing Rats and Vampire Moms
How To Cheat (As previously noted)
The Depth of the Ocean, a show staged in the pool at the downtown YWCA. How neat!
I’ll be spending the better part of my weekend fringing… But if you’re not into that sort of thing, there’s also the Coral Lambert: Iron Pours show opening at Gallery 13 and the This Side Up cardboard exhibition at Creative Electric Studios. There’s some cool happenings associated with Tekween, a festival dedicated to exploring visual art by local Arab artists. There’s the Bike-in At The Bell. And, down in Rochester, there’s the Headphone Festival–which sounds worthy of a road trip, if I do say so m’self.
Leave a Reply Cancel reply