[ arts + culture ] obsession back to his childhood playing the abominable 1980s home version, when Hollywood felt as far away from his Canadian home as the moon. The appeal of Jeopardy! might be elusive to trivia muggles, but those (like Buri and I) with the genetic predisposition toward intellectual competitiveness understand the appeal of finding self-respect in the accumulation of obscure knowledge. I can certainly identify with Buri’s wry self-awareness about how useless his singular talents are now, in a world with smartphones and Google. But it turns out that, in game shows and in life, the winner isn’t always the smartest or fastest, but the one with an unnatural ability to handle pressure. Buri’s tale might not be a major tragedy in the big scheme of things, but between laughs he builds tension around the story of his defeat like it was the Super Bowl, making it impossible not to empathize with his agony coming so close to his dream, only to have it snatched away. But everyone who plays Jeopardy! — or the game called life — loses eventually; what matters is that you’re willing to play. Buri didn’t get rich or famous like he hoped, and he’s made peace with his loss on Jeopardy! likely being the longestlasting fact of his existence. Buri has the courage to embrace his biggest failure; may we all learn to be so brave. Bugged Lady
The spacefaring cast of ‘Star Shanties: Songs From a Galaxy Far, Far Away’ make a stop in the Or-Lan-Do system
BEST OF THE FEST Top reviews from Orlando Fringe Festival 2022 BY SETH KUBERSKY
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fter two years of pandemic scalebacks and cancellations, the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival (through May 30; orlandofringe.org) has bounced back, and we’ve bounced with it. Here are just a few of the many, many reviews we have posted at orlandoweekly. com, and you’ll want to act fast: With just five more days of shows, tickets will be selling out. Star Shanties: Songs from a Galaxy Far, Far Away
The ragtag crew of the “Wretched Hive” has just survived a pirate attack while on a shady interstellar shipping run on the Outer Rim. Desperate for galactic credits to repair their vessel, they accept the undignified assignment of entertaining inhabitants of the Or-Lan-Do system (located on the Fringe of known space) with their time-honored work songs about the Kessel Run, Hondo Onaka and other obscure icons from that galaxy far, far away. Back in the prehistoric days before MegaCon and social media, science fiction-obsessed fans celebrated their geekdom at gatherings by “filking,” or singing traditional-sounding folk songs with original lyrics about Hobbits or Spock. Star Shanties may not explicitly use the word filk to describe their Star Wars-inspired songs, but they clearly fall into that noble nerd tradition with this funny, full-throated delight for Jedi masters and nerf-herders alike. Writer-director Arthur Rowan (known on the RenFaire circuit as Rowan the Bard) teamed up with Ashley Willsey (producer of 2014’s Fringe hit Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson) for this minimalist yet slickly produced production, which features costumes that would be perfect for Disney-bounding on Batuu and cargo-crate props that look like they could have been jettisoned from the Millennium Falcon’s smuggling hold. The idea for this show may have started as a spoof but this talented quintet takes their singing very seriously, and a tender ode to Alderaan’s explosion nearly brought a tear to my eye.
This show is best enjoyed by those invested enough in George Lucas’ universe to know Princess Leia’s mother’s name (spoiler: It’s Breha) and appreciate jabs at the Galactic Starcruiser’s pricing structure. And the brief but witty book linking the musical numbers brims with fourth wall-breaking meta jokes, while simultaneously doing more to develop its characters’ personalities than Episodes VII though IX put together did. But you don’t have to know Lekkus from Lothal to enjoy the lusty a cappella harmonies and primal handdrummed percussion. If there’s a flaw, it’s that (like many real folk songs) the tunes tend to go on for one or two verses longer than necessary, but at under 45 minutes this saga certainly doesn’t outlast its welcome. With all due respect to the other spacefarers out there, this might be my favorite saga-inspired Fringe show since Charlie Ross’ One Man Trilogy. At the risk of sounding cliched: The Force is strong with this one. I Lost on Jeopardy
For years, my wife has been encouraging me to audition for the iconic television quiz show Jeopardy!, based solely on my mastery of useless trivia, but I’ve always refused based on my inability to contend with the clicker. It turns out that you can accurately simulate chiming in at home using a spring-loaded toilet paper roll holder. That’s just one of the fascinating pieces of ephemera I learned from Winnipeg history teacher George Buri, who was one question away from achieving his lifelong goal of being a winning contestant before being foiled by a Final Jeopardy question. In this funny and unexpectedly inspiring one-man show, Buri takes us from his 25-hour road trip to Kansas City for an in-person audition to his final heartbroken drive away from Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. Along the ride, we learn tips for getting on the air — don’t be overly opinionated or too introverted — and trace the roots of Buri’s
Take an exploratory field trip away from the Fringe campus to nearby Harry P. Leu Botanical Gardens and you’ll find the most fascinating — and frightening — introductory biology class you’ll ever attend at Bugged Lady. Professor Levi (Sandi Linn) is lecturing on invertebrates she has known and loved — as well as misogynistic academics she has hated and lost — in a truly one-of-a-kind performance that fuses the pleasures of Wild Kingdom with The Silence of the Lambs. As Levi gleefully gives the audience an intimate look at her collection of real live insects — including hissing cockroaches, stinging scorpions and hair-flinging tarantulas — she slowly lets slip the gory details of her bug-based homicides. Linn, who wrote the script herself, is a trained scientist and education supervisor for Leu Gardens, so I’m sure you’re perfectly safe attending her class. But her increasingly agitated performance is so magnetically authentic — and her animal assistants so primally triggering — that you’d better arrive for class early and bring paper for taking notes ... just in case. Generic Male: Just What We Need, Another Show About Men
At first glance, actor Ashley Jones appears so entirely average that you’ll insist you must have met him before, but I can pretty much guarantee you’ve never seen an acrobatic clowning show as cleverly complex as Generic Male. In this virtuoso showcase of both verbal and physical gymnastics, Jones and his overbearing stage manager (Darren Stevenson) harass hapless audience members into helping them perform a slickly executed series of physical comedy skits skewering stereotypes of masculinity. Kicking off with a synchronized dance number in possessed sweatpants and an absurdly overblown argument over stolen seating, the show only gets more surreal from there. This pair doesn’t merely break through the fourth wall; they tear it down entirely and dance merrily on the rubble. The staging of some moments involving costume changes and wired microphones were clunky, leading to a few uncomfortably slow transitions during the press preview. However, the pair swiftly recovered with a moving military mime solo, followed by a wondrous weight-balancing duet highlighting the balletic beauty of male connection that becomes the show’s enduring image. Generic Male is like Cirque du Soleil meets Samuel Beckett with a dash of Monty Python, a combination that I enthusiastically endorse for all audiences, whether or not you support the premise that the generic white male patriarchy needs to perish. [continued on page 13]
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MAY 25-31, 2022 ● ORLANDO WEEKLY
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