Beckett fans and others are waiting to see WAITING FOR WAITING FOR GODOT at the Fringe Festival this month
Multiple downtown locations
FringeCENTRAL: 27 Second Ave. between First & Second Sts.
August 9-25, $15 in advance, $18 at the door (some events free)
www.fringenyc.org
The New York International Fringe Festival features theatrical works that are just that — offbeat, quirky, experimental, and unusual dramas, comedies, musicals, and solo performances that exist on the fringe of conventionality. The seventeenth annual event takes place in eighteen downtown venues from August 9 through 25, with myriad productions that look to the past, present, and future of theater, paying homage to such playwrights as Shakespeare, Beckett, and Williams as they offer strange, serious, and surreal takes on humanity. Below are ten of our favorites, listed alphabetically and based on such reliable reasons as title, pedigree, topic, logo, or just for the hell of it.
Alabama Bound
Earlier this year, we saw Southern Discomfort, an entertaining one-woman show in which Elisabeth Gray played six characters in seven vignettes about life in the south. Alabama Bound, in which writer, director, and producer Charlotte Higgins plays five Alabama women, is a presentation of Southern Discomfort Productions, which apparently has no direct connection whatsoever to Gray’s show. (White Box, August 14-18, 25)
cal and grey
We’re suckers for titles set in lowercase letters, so we’re looking forward to Becca Schlossberg’s tale of two men rebelling against the powerful state. (Teatro Circulo, August 10-11, 14, 22, 24)
En Avant! An Evening with Tennessee Williams
The works of Mississippi-born playwright Tennessee Williams never quite go out of style; in the past year or so, there have been major, and minor, versions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, The Two-Character Play, Vieux Carré, and In Masks Outrageous and Austere. In En Avant! William Shuman embodies the enigmatic southerner who lived a rather dramatic life. (CSV Kabayitos, August 9, 16-17, 20, 23-24)
Free Desiree
Amontaine Aurore’s one-woman show about a pair of sistahs in the ’70s celebrating black pride boasts a “Seattle funk soundtrack,” which can never be a bad thing. (Jimmy’s No. 43, August 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 24)
Wei-Yi Lin stars in play about Japanese porn star Ai Iijima
I Am a Moon
The Japanese love their porn, and who doesn’t love Japanese porn? Zhu Yi’s play honors adult video idol Ai Iijima, who tried to put her sexual past behind her and enter more mainstream society. (Lynn Redgrave Theater, August 9, 12, 14-16)
Mercedes Benz Awkwardly
Yes, FringeNYC loves it some sex shows, and this Melbourne Fringe People’s Choice Award winner stars writer Hannah Williams as pole-dancing stripper Mercedes Benz. (Teatro Circulo, August 20-22, 24)
Mash-up of Shakespeare and Stoker should be a bloody good Fringe pick (photo by Neal J. Freeman)
The Nightmare ‘Dream’
We had a blast this past spring at Living Dead in Denmark, a mash-up of Hamlet and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as Shakespeare heroines battled evil zombies. The Nightmare ‘Dream’ brings together the Bard’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, presented by the appropriately named Bloody Shakespeare company, which calls this “the original douche teen vampire drama.” (Theater at the 14th St. Y, August 11-12, 15-16, 18)
Rubble
This story of a comedy writer, played by Bruce Vilanch, who is trapped in an L.A. earthquake with a series pilot on the line comes from the great Mike Reiss, who wrote, produced, and/or cocreated such animated classics as The Simpsons, The Critic, and Queer Duck. (Players Theatre, August 10, 14, 22, 24-25)
Stranded on Motor Parkway
In 1986, we were fortunate enough to find ourselves at Shea Stadium on October 27, as our beloved Mets battled the hated Red Sox in Game Seven of the World Series. Dan Fingerman’s new drama is about a family that has been torn apart by death but just might be able to get back on track if the Mets can pull things out. (Teatro SEA, August 9-10, 13, 15-16)
Waiting for Waiting for Godot
Don’t tell us you don’t absolutely love this title. Chris Sullivan and Dave Hanson star as a pair of understudies discussing life, art, and more while awaiting their big moment in Hanson’s ingenious riff on the Beckett classic. (Kraine Theater, August 21-25)
Based on Georges Simenon’s novel L’horloger de Saint-Paul, Bertrand Tavernier’s first feature-length film is a quiet, introspective triumph from start to finish. Philippe Noiret stars as the title character, Michel Descombes, a widowed clockmaker who is told by a police inspector (Jean Rochefort) that his son, Antoine (Jacques Denis), has killed a man and is on the run with a woman named Liliane (Christine Pascal). A despondent Michel struggles to understand what led his son to commit such a crime, examining deep inside himself in the process. The many scenes that center on the clockmaker and the inspector discussing life in general terms are simply wonderful, except when the cop talks about the movies, which takes the audience out of the film, especially when they mention La Grande Bouffe, Noiret’s previous work. Otherwise, The Clockmaker is an absolute gem, with Tavernier’s subtle narrative style guiding Noiret (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Le vieux fusil) to one of the greatest understated performances you’re ever likely to see. Winner of the Silver Bear at the 1974 Berlinale, The Clockmaker is screening August 8, 10, and 11 as part of the Anthology Film Archives series “Cine-Simenon: Georges Simenon on Film,” consisting of fourteen cinematic adaptations of books by the Belgian-born French-language creator of Inspector Maigret, including Marcel Carné’s La Marie du Port and Three Rooms in Manhattan, Patrice Leconte’s Monsieur Hire, Henry Hathaway’s The Bottom of the Bottle, Claude Chabrol’s Betty, and Burgess Meredith’s The Man on the Eiffel Tower.
Actor Josh Pais, who was in the Raphael suit in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, turns the camera on the neighborhood he grew up in, Seventh Street between Avenues C & D, in this fascinating documentary that examines class struggle, racism, anti-Semitism, poverty and homelessness, the drug trade, gentrification, but, above all, family and friendship. Along the way, Pais, who is almost too reminiscent of Ben Stiller, introduces viewers to a fabulous and frightening cast of characters, including Manny the millionaire, Mickey the con man, Rex the draft dodger, Merlin the homeless sage, and many more. This is a special little documentary that will surprise you, delight you, and scare you while making you think back about the place where you grew up. Of course, it is also about a part of Alphabet City that has continued to undergo significant change since the film was made more than ten years ago. Pais will be on hand on August 8 when 7th Street is screened in the 6th & B Community Garden as part of the inaugural MoRUS Film Fest, sponsored by the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, whose mission “is to preserve history and promote scholarship of grassroots urban space activism by researching and archiving efforts to create community spaces.” The festival continues through August 10 with such other events as a compilation of Loisaida films in La Plaza Cultural and Jacob Burckhardt’s Landlord Blues and Phil Hartman’s No Picnic in Orchard Alley. 
After a spectacular energy device known as the Tesseract opens a wormhole that allows the evil Loki (Tom Hiddleston) to enter present-day Earth and ultimately steal the machine, turning Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) into unwitting allies in the process, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) bring back the Avengers Initiative, reuniting Tony Stark / Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Steve Rogers / Captain America (Chris Evans), Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and an extremely tentative Dr. Bruce Banner / Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), who are gathered together to regain the Tesseract and foil Loki’s evil plans to take over Earth. Also entering the fray is Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Loki’s brother, who needs to decide which side of the battle he is on. As egos get in the way and wisecracks fly by like so much machine-gun rattle, particularly from Stark, the Avengers realize they are facing a supremely powerful force, one that will require, well, superhuman effort to defeat. Writer-director Joss Whedon, the genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly, plays things a little loose in this comic-book blockbuster, not worrying too much about gaping plot holes that could have been created by the Tesseract itself and letting the superhero banter and tech-heavy set pieces take center stage. Downey goes over the top as the brash Stark, while Ruffalo, following in the failed footsteps of Edward Norton and Eric Bana (and, of course, the great Bill Bixby), is relegated to a whole lot of brooding. But there’s still lots of fun to be had as the characters team up to save the world. Be sure to stick around through the credits for a pair of bonus scenes. The Avengers is screening August 5 as part of the free summer series “Coney Island Flicks on the Beach,” which continues August 12 with Fame, August 19 with a film to be announced, and August 27 with the sixtieth-anniversary presentation of