The Fringe Festival is the late August spree that's just ended, having taken its name to indicate their position at the outskirts of underground theater, and, having taken the town by storm with 90+ shows in two weeks. And with that sort of success, it should now reconsider its name; when a Times review creates a waiting list line as long as the ticket holder's, it's no longer Outsider Art.

Such was the case of "God's Waiting Room" at PS 122; once they got good ink, even the press was turned away. Same goes for the Neo-Futurists (formerly known as Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind) at the Ace of Clubs under Acme. Their second week-starter, compiling "the last two minutes" of the complete works of Ibsen into a two-hour performance might seem to be little more than a Cliff's Notes version of suicidal depression, but it sure put the assets in the seats. I just wasn't one of them.

Of those which I did get into, musicals were the first choice as spontaneous dance and song usually doesn't break out in the downtown performance art scene I frequent. Of course, we're all wondering when the new "Rent" might come along, so, when chance permits, I soak it up like a Broadway queen dating Stage Door Johnny.

Of course, the whole Brides of Dracula thing has been done to the Undead by now, but "Dance With Me, Harker" kicks the corpse a few more times for the fun of it…that being a setting in 1950's-era costumes. Then, picture the Count as a blonde, bearded, late-stage Morrison in leather pants and swagger, using his ladies to taunt the uptight real estate agent (never realized before, but that's what he is—evil critters though they be) as he gets his blood up for the big bite. No gothic mood here though, more like a Tupperware party: early victims wrapped in plastic sheets, operatic rock, and a Van Helsing that is more Nurse Crachit from "High Anxiety" than Viennese sausage—ultimately, just leftovers.

If you think, then, that "The Legend of the Gypsy Bride" sounds like a winner, it just could be--the title tells it all: exotic, erotic and loaded with passionate Romany music. The premise is the author (who also plays bass with the band onstage) is hanging out with a tribe under an overpass to the BQE. When he offers to write a movie about them, their leader Marko spins the eponymous yarn of when he tried to sell the stunningly gorgeous and clinically depressed Zazu to an auto dealership owner (who also has his own get-rich-quick marketing seminar in the midst of this) as his wife-to-be…while fending off the same scheme's earlier failure: a vengeful Albanian meat-cutter. There's lots of jokes made of pungent similes, wry toasts to box wine and plenty of sexual innuendo, and the tunes aren't half bad either, especially when you have three dames with great gams, lifting skirts and kicking up high heels in the limelight.

And speaking of legs, another one that might have some is an odd hybrid of a '60s rock legacy and a '40s movie staple. "Shakedown Street" is a film noir set in San Francisco and features the music of one of that town's favorite set of composers—the Grateful Dead. It is a curious-yet-effective bit of retro-engineering to craft a plot out the lyrics of the band's leading poet-ally, Robert Hunter (often setting dialogue extensions in the bridge or chorus). The lack of existential dread aside, you won't bother looking for the Hamlet amid the Hammett if you like the arrangements and aren't put off by a pit band of upright bass, piano, flute and sax, trumpet and trombone. Yes, and the vocals are equally mainstream musical. Diehard Deadheads may come away aghast at the operatic surges and swells, trained vibratto and basso timbres replacing the boogie 'n' blues. For those whose fascination is flexible, however, the material may prove more interesting than a mere accompaniment with which to "truck" by. And that's the reason this may have a chance; it has the feeling of an old-time Rodgers and Hammerstein vehicle…it only smells a bit odd.

Now, under that aegis, it is hard to find much of anything that matches the ambitious book to "Byzantium"; we're talking Constantinople in 532 A.D. here. As for the story, there's something of "Man of La Mancha" meets "Camelot" meets "Evita." A Serbian monk delivers a tribal chieftain's daughter to the Emperor Justinian as a bride but is secretly in love with her. The Emperor, however, prefers the monk—to build Hagia Sophia, the great Eastern Christianity cathedral for him. On the other hand, the Emp is in love with an "actress" (read: prostitute) at the Circus arena. And this causes the citizens of town to rebel against him. So it has a lot of plot—what about the music? While the tunes aren't exactly hummable, neither was "Evita," at first hearing and memory only serves repetition. However, there are a few neat little show-stoppers and a very clever second act opener…which is the other half of the battle.

While not exactly a "musical," it must be the 'sound" that drew an audience to "The Unholy Secrets of the Theremin." Two musician-performers (a Shriner in white robes and fez; a Napoleon in black) trade identities, and whole expository passages, as they tell of Leon Teremin, the Russian inventor of the infamous machine of monster-noises as well as the unearthly recordings of Clara Rockmore. As the script is pretty much a recitation of Teremin's life and achievements in America, and subsequent suppression by the secret police on return home, there's little new here (and the closing speech on phenomenology would be better suited to brief precis of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem), yet watching the white wizard waft and wiggle wriggles out of the waves should be enough. Sure, the laughs were there for the "Day The Earth Stood Still" and Star Trek themes, but when was the last time you heard "Eleanor Rigby" played by air violin?

And speaking of '60s nostalgia, as ripe a plum as ever's been plucked was the tribute to the ourvre of Russ Meyer, entitled: "Go Go Kitty Go!" The King of the B Pictures (or at least, undisputedly, the D-cup ones) made some of the finest examples of K-Mart Realism when it was still Woolworth. The plot of this one recycles his cycle maniacs and discotheque dancing dames, most notably from his magnum opus "Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill". There's Tura Sultana and Kitten Natividad stand-ins who keep up a game face while wheeling about in cardboard hogs, slo-mo trashing a clandestine meeting of crooked cops, and kidnapping the senator's daughter. Also, a murdered transvestite lounge club singer, payoffs and cover-ups for the crusading reporters to dig up, and even an acid trip with a gorilla. Yeah, baby!—this oughtta be the last Austin Powers movie.

On the other end of the scale, Greek tragedy got to have its night court to try the case of "The Philomel Project: a barbarous pleasure." If you were unfamiliar with the tale coming in (a minor myth involving the husband of the title daughter of the King of Athens, who bringing her sister Procne to visit, promptly gets a hard-on for her, convinces her her sister is dead, marries and rapes her, then cuts out her tongue, hides her in a tower, goes home to wifey…a tapestry of the whole incident is woven…the sisters later turn into birds…annnd you can look up the rest in Bullfinch, ok?) you weren't likely to learn more from this piece. Six women played all the roles, interchanging the male tormentor by putting on a sport jacket, and running through enigmatic postures and gestures, resulting in a semi-dance number. Then, when confronting the audience with a shouting session of male cliches on the fair sex, a semi-transgressive anger-tract farce. Neither fish nor fowl it was, at least, no more than an hour and, hence, at least, a puzzle.

The other "hit" of the Festival (or so I'm told) is just the kind of good old American sexism that made Sarah Jessica Parker a household name and empowered the Kim Cattrall Brigades to make 'slut' into the New Playgirl. Yet "Fluffy Bunnies In A Field Of Daisies" (the title referring to a sought-after picture of innocence in love by one of the characters) doesn't stand on the old cliches, preferring to work through into some new ones. Like how one actor seemed, for all the world, to be replicating the early roles of Nicholas Cage in his dumb-but-incoherently-cute era. And how another finds an inseparable union between the inarticulateness of L.S.D. (from the movie of "The Producers") and Maynard G. Krebs. And while the group that gathers at a local watering hole to philosophize about the state of interpersonal relations is a jolly crew to overhear, you wouldn't want to be caught among them for any length of time. Like the title, it does have a fairytale ring about it…and so does deadly amanita mushrooms.

At the farthest edge of the shows is the sort of stuff that the old East Village was made of: material that challenges and assaults without leaving any fixed sense of an agenda, purpose or meaning—you have to fill in the blanks, even if it is your own empty stare.

"Soiree DADA: Neue Weltaufen" is a recreation of the Tristian Tzaraza cabaret in pre-WWI Switzerland, transmogrified to here and now with very little change. Dada does not require updates. And the oddest part was how much it felt like a Fluxus event, except that the four in greasepaint and formal attire were much more verbal and intense with props and japes and audience interactions, right down to asking various members to compose a play via the Exquisite Corpse method. Who needs Blue Man Group when you can have whiteface and witty non-sequitors?

Just as gone ga-ga, "The Crazy Locomotive" ran off the rails from the moment the audience enters, finding a sect of worshippers reciting commercial slogans as paeans to the Intelligent Designer of the Universe (one supposes). The play itself was written by Stanislav Ignacy Witkowitz , the premiere poet-maudit of Poland, before WWII and has not aged a day. True dada/surrealism is based upon the eternal conundrums and can speak to every generation. This cast stokes the jokes and emotes at turbine revs, screaming and whispering, frantic and furious, finally deciding that the train of History should make no more stops, plowing through passengers waiting at the depots, ending up in a crash that segues into a filmed denoument. (Shout out to Lydia Lunch for turning me onto this guy years ago.)

For the simple thrill of female dancers strutting and posing like Miss America contestants (part of the time in red stilettos), the hypnotic attraction of pouring sand, and the rhythms of the escola da samba right out of Rio, "The Velocity of Things" is as satisfying a title as can be found for such an evening. Between times, there are races about the space that collapse into freeze-frame, Cunningham-like clots of programmed interweaving of bodies and spin-offs from random clusters, and choreographed sequences that might come from a carnivale parade route. It is the sort of delerium you get from nitrous oxide, only leaving the head much clearer once it wears off.

On the quieter side of the street were such little gems of no consequence at all but ones which enriched the minds (and hearts, perhaps) of sympathetic viewers. The recreation, or (even inhabitation, or visitation) of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in "The Consolation of Poetry" is an achievement simply by virtue persuading viewers that the spirit of the poetess can reach across time, and the everpresent baggage of cliches, to share the core values of writing, reading and assimilating a text fully and without preconceptions. "She Wear A Peacock Crown" is taken from two Bengali short stories, one by the contemporary laureate of India, Rabindranath Tagore, about the plight of women in Hindu society, and while they are a trifle dated, both show what a radical thing it was to approach their material worth and human status not that long ago. And Tagore's has a special rhythm that, while probably untranslatable in its fulest meaning, still manages to echo Shakespeare. "The Kimono Loosened" is the tale of a modern family dissolution that leads to the daughter being sold into concubinage at a geisha house, her only friend in the world a doll that holds all her memories and secrets. As a one-woman show it may not be a tour de force but still holds a tremenous, quiet power in an hour.

And as a showcase for talent, if this isn't a Fall Preview of items on somebody's schedule by at least the post-Xmas season, then our avant venue savants must not be interested in making money.

the end

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