What I liked
First of all, the quality of the writing (by NYC-based G.D. Kimble) is substantial and quite high, especially for Fringe which can tend toward the flashy and shallow.
There are real ideas contained in Kimble’s two one-act plays (“Jen Tries Vacation” about a yuppie couple on a restaurant adventure and the wild Chekhov mashup “Locomotive Repair in Three Easy Steps”) joined by a more or less common theme of the gentrification process and what it unearths about a society’s underlying inequalities.
Which I suppose could all sound heavy if you haven’t seen the show. However, The Gentrification Cycle generates entertainment from beginning to end, a few moments of genuine poignancy, a feast for the mind that also serves up its share of belly laughs. While continually, absurdly, inviting us to think.
The cast is uniformly excellent … not a bad performance in either play and some quite ones.
I would single out for special praise Allison Youngberg, who plays the young wife in the evening’s first play who gets lost in a seedy neighborhood, Her committed performance is a lesson in how to make every moment in an absurd play ring true. We might not always know exactly what the character’s saying or why she’s saying it, but Youngberg does and that makes her scenes real, funny, moving. Youngberg also produced.
What I didn't like
Two quibbles. I missed an overall directorial vision, which could have visually united these two plays or at least provided us with a common thread … similar to the yarn unspun by the husband in Jen Takes Vacation that ends up threading its way through the audience.
And, on the night I saw the show, there were some minor technical glitches. For instance the samovar never smoked, although I have been assured it now smokes with a vengeance thanks to professionalism and a never-say-die-until-the damn-thing-really-smokes attitude.
I mention the samovar because its technical failure actually complemented the theme of the Chekhovian second play in which everything in the stratified society it depicts is breaking down … or in need of destruction. A sort of reverse gentrification is at work in Locomotive Repair in Three Easy Steps and the future will be bloodier and less genteel as a result. While possibly no less stratified?
My overall impression
Don’t miss this show! It’s your chance to see the talented work of an intelligent, insightful, entertaining young playwright named G.D. Kimble. And to see a raft of excellent performances in the service of his comic, probing, satirical vision. Kudos to the creative team for bringing these plays to Fringe!
