This is not the usual review I write, because the STLFringe FEST 2022 is not the usual play I review. It does have a few plays in the usual sense, and I saw a few of them. And it has many other performances of various kinds, and I got to a few of them. The FEST is a feast, and I grazed among the offerings. I got to maybe a quarter of them. 

“Let It All Go” is a play in the traditional sense, written by playwright Patrick Runi, with a cast directed by Larry Rizzello that rehearsed and learned their lines. As a good writer, Runi wrote about something familiar, the isolation of the pandemic and its more-or-less end. He brings together the members of an AA group that meet again for the first time after the long break. They discover that some members have further developed their thinking on some political points and are eager to talk about it, breaking the limits of AA topics that maintain the healing community. It is a lot of talk, but the forbidden subjects generate the play’s energy and excitement. Director Rizzello wisely placed the two principal antagonists at the ends of the row of chairs set up for the meeting, so there was a back-and-forth energy. The ending took the play a further step into the profound.

The delight of the weekend for me was “Waiting for Bingo(t).” This is a one-act play set in Purgatory. The only way you can get out of Purgatory is to win at the eternal bingo game played there. I’m not sure who came up with this idea – though I have suspicions – because this was one of the 24 Hour Plays. A group of people are given a couple of leads and 24 hours to write, learn, rehearse, and perform a piece. I think there were some ringers here, because the three 24 Hour Plays were created and performed by our friends from the Cherokee Street Theatre, The Q Collective, That Uppity Theatre Company, and other acquaintances and rivals from the St. Louis Theatre Community. The title of “Waiting for Bingo(t)” leads you to suspect that its creators have some familiarity with dramatic and other literature. So does the play itself. When you’re in Purgatory, you might have anyone who’s ever lived there waiting to move on. And we do have, including Adam himself. It was witty, precise in its timing, and a joy.

Joan Lipkin took part in a second 24 Hour play creation, and it – no surprise – dealt in an amusing way with voting. The third took a game of Dungeons and Dragons as its framework, with the suggestion that an evil creature thought defeated in a previous round has returned, with a dangerous analogy in the life of one of the players.

A major nod to theatre at the Fringe, if not a play, was “Confessions of a Nightingale,” selections from the writings of Tennessee Williams. Much of it was drawn from his Memoirs and other essays and interviews. The performer faces the audience, as if he were responding to an interviewer, and for those not familiar with Williams’ life, it does cover essential material. If the Fringe program is correct, the performer was Dominic DeCicco, not physically the same type as Williams but with Williams’ manners and way of speaking. 

JackDonkey Productions from Minneapolis calls their devised piece “A Drug Play,” and it does begin with extensive commentary on the problems and failures of the drug war. But it soon becomes a movement expression of the struggles and pains of addiction, very tightly and admirably performed, if left pretty much to the interpretation of the person watching.

Pat Ryan does call his piece, “Everything on My Mind (Except Sex),” a “new play.” But he’s really doing stand-up. And his mind does wander around. Some of it is amusing, sometimes he’s still getting a better grip on the material.

By accident, I caught some of the stand-up performances in Mollie Amburgey’s “This Is Casually Happening: A Comedy Showcase Celebrating Female Comedians.” The title says it all. And those female comedians are good – polished, intelligent, in control of the material and its presentation. 

Female comedians of a different kind sparkled in A Storyville Burlesque from Lola Van Ella and her company. Van Ella always has an educational edge to her presentations. In this case, she began with a lecture about the history of the Storyville section of New Orleans, famous for its brothels, the women who took charge of their own lives there, and the “professors” who played piano in the lounges and created jazz. Lecture over, each of the three entertainers with Lola had her turn, accompanied by a terrific pianist and singer, and then Lola did her thing. I’m sorry I don’t have names, so I shall have to praise them anonymously. 

I did hear a couple of the musical presentations. I’ve admired the acting of Khnemu Menu-Ra when he was in St. Louis, so when I saw his name in the Fringe list I checked it out. I saw only one of the “The Three Stages of Love: A Cabaret Show” that he performed at the Fringe with his colleagues from Chicago, Miki Byrne and Terrie Carolan. I’m glad I got to the one. I wish I’d made it to the others. But that’s the way with the Fringe: always too much.

I closed out Saturday night with a little treat for myself, not theatre, but one of my favorite entertainers. Chuck Flowers has done some theatre, but now he mostly does cabaret. He’s at home with the Great American Songbook and some of the outliers, plus anything you want from soul and R & B and, yes, musical theatre. He had a great trio – keyboard, bass, drum set – backing him up. 

I have yet to see that great Fringe perennial Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind. I missed it again. 

—Bob Wilcox

Photo by Robert Crowe
From left, Victor Mendez, Ben Ritchie, and Rachel Bailey in Waiting for Bingo(t).