Yes, I know it’s been a week since the Fringe finished up, but, yes, I should mention the last two shows we saw.
A Horse Walks Out Onto the Stage and Dies: A show about a talking horse that has hurt its leg, it tries to use that bit of frippery to explore questions of life, death, the singularity of fame vs the common destiny of death, and allied themes. It’s not entirely successful, nor entirely a failure, and it has a certain small bit of charm, as well as the self-conscious flavor of the Fringe.
Daddy Issues: A one-person show featuring a pillar of a favorite company of ours, Allison Vincent of Trans-Atlantic Love Affair, this is an intensely personal meditation on the relationship between Vincent and her father, a man with a high level of training and accomplishment, who sank into a turbulent and wasteful physical and metaphysical swamp. Concentrating more on the reactions of Vincent rather than that of the father, I confess it stirs, at least for me, a fascination with what went wrong with him: an accomplished cardiologist, were there unmanageable costs in attaining that position? A loss of that necessary balance between understanding how to be part of a stable community, and that of personal accomplishment? A spiritual gap? I can only guess, and in that I’m somewhat hesitant, not wishing to sully her relationship with him, or anyone else’s, and yet the urge for analysis is undeniable, and it can be highly important.
Recommended, if she puts this on again.
