Ernest Kearney

ONE OF THE TOP SHOWS I’VE SEEN, AND ONE OF THE TWO BEST PIECES OF ENSEMBLE WORKS AT THE FRINGE (THE OTHER BEING “THE INDIAN WANTS THE BRONX”). A SUPERB PRODUCTION WITH AMAZING ACTORS THAT SHOULD NOT BE MISSED. A FULLER REVIEW WILL BE APPEARING IN THE TVOLUTION.... full review

ONE OF THE TOP SHOWS AT THE FRINGE, AND ONE OF THE TWO BEST PIECES OF ENSEMBLE WORKS I’VE SEEN (THE OTHER BEING “NEVA”). A POWER HOUSE PRODUCTION OF A FORTY YEAR OLD WORK THAT UNFORTUNATELY HAS RELEVANCE AGAIN TODAY. AMAZING, SOLID WORK. A FULLER REVIEW WILL BE APPEARING IN THE TVOLUTION.... full review

Daniel Llewelyn-Williams’ one man show, A Regular Little Houdini is an enchanting blend of history, tragedy and magic. Set in his home town of Newport, South Wales during the Edwardian era, Llewelyn-Williams’ coming of age story of a little boy who idolizes the escape artist Harry Houdini draws on actual events from the town past. It is this legitimacy and Llewelyn-Williams’ all too apparent love of his birth place that give an added luster to an all ready stunning performance. Joshua Richa... full review

HOW TO BE A VIRGIN (IN 12 MORALLY AMBIGUOUS STEPS) At the outset of Carla Neuss’ smart and very witty play we are shown a graph that places the number of those who remain virgins after the age of twenty-five at two percent of the population. We’re told this is the same percentage as those who are vegetarians and those who believe the earth is flat. This well crafted piece relates the story of a young woman struggling against the world at large to retain her maidenhood and triumphing. Now... full review

EVERYONE HATES MARTIN SHKRELI. If you don’t know who Martin Shkreli is – you should. He’s the poster boy for that cancer which is rotting away at the American soul even as you read this. In September of 2015 Turing Pharmaceuticals, of which Shkreli was the founder and CEO, obtained the license for manufacturing Daraprim an antiparasitic drug needed by AIDS sufferers. Shkreli increased the drugs price from $13 per tablet to $750 per tablet demonstrating unfortunately that the benefits of ... full review

MARK TWAIN ANSWERS ALL YOUR QUESTIONS The celebrated writer and humorist begins the evening by dying in a hail of bullets from a police shootout that then evolves into your classic porno flick with the sound of a zipper preceding an officer bringing out for inspection his lethal weapon. Later in the evening Mr. Twain accidently immolates himself. Twice. While historical validity is not perhaps a high point here, Ed Goodman’s interpretation of Twain is truly an uncanny experience and one m... full review

A HORSE WITH A VIEW Last year Christopher Piehler delighted audiences with Reserve Champion, an autobiographical tale of how as a young boy he fell in love with horses. That love affair continues in A Horse With A View, a quartet of tales in which women break his heart and horses heal it. Piehler tells his adventures of horse back riding vacations among the “roos” in Australia, of sinking in Scottish bogs, and of how he disappointed everyone in Hungary by not being German. The show dis... full review

Wow. That’s about the most apropos comment across the board on Squeeze My Cans, Cathy Schenkelberg’s riveting, heart wrenching and ultimately redeeming tale of her decade plus involvement with Scientology. Wow to the account of her descent into the Kafkaesque universe of L. Ron Hubbard’s “religion” that first seeks to entice and then consume all that come within its grasp. Wow to the price both financially and emotionally the cult cost her. Wow to her eventual struggle to free herself and... full review

OFFICE BEAT A TAP DANCE COMEDY As conceived by Mindy and Gage Coperland with original music by Andrew Van Vlear, Office Beat is a tale of office politics and labor unrest told completely without dialogue. Well without spoken dialogue that is, but there’s plenty of snappy repartee in the marvelous toe-tapping feet of the Tap Overload Dance Company. Set in a happy hoofing workplace where productivity is paced with a two step, the story opens with a budding office romance between the r... full review

(A)PARTMENT 8 One thing I appreciated about (A)partment 8 is that it was indeed the fringiest of the Fringe. Annie Lesser takes the concept of the solo show to a fuller plane by joining a single performer with a single audience member. Here we have a performance that cannot be judged “good” or “bad”, but only if it worked or didn’t for the individual audience member who experiences (A)partment 8, and within the construct of the piece to have a participant run screaming from the site could ... full review