What I liked
From being a huge fan of her standup and sketch comedy work, I’ve known Madi has incredible, magnetic energy and a sharp sense of humor, particularly about her own identity and past. To see her examine those very same pieces of herself in an interrogative, emotional, and insightful way, while still miraculously maintaining that energy and humor, is genuinely thrilling. Her dynamic with Avery, one of the most delightful and relentlessly hilarious performers I’m lucky to know, is the show’s backbone, their presences key to the show’s shifts between gleeful absurdity and devastating reality. I entered the theater knowing these two would put on a great show, I left thinking they could do anything. A thematically appropriate use of Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” is just icing on the cake. I laughed, I cried, I thought about my Dad Stuff, what more can you ask for from Fringe?
What I didn't like
I have no improvements to suggest. Madi and Avery have already experimented with the show’s structure and layout before and during this Fringe run, and the core ideas, dynamics and energies are so strong that the show will more than handle any future alterations or evolutions they wish to make.
My overall impression
Madi Hart and Avery Girion somehow manage to break apart the “breaking apart a solo show” structure of a Fringe show, using the very notion of staging a solo show to dive into Madi’s dynamic with her father, an absurd character no comedian could make up if they tried, creating a delightfully relentless, deeply moving show that reveals itself as one of the more entertaining-yet-bracing examinations of what we reject from our parents and what those rejections can show us about ourselves.
