Review: A Hollywood Fringe Festival Overview Pt. 4

Broke Bitch Got Rich

Autobiographical solo shows can be hard. There’s a thin line between revelatory and indulgent. Thankfully, Betsy Cox knows where that line is and her show is a hysterical account of her traumatic upbringing in Louisiana where a monstrous mother and an absentee father shaped her and inspired her to get out and claim her own life. Struggling with undiagnosed ADHD, her story is riveting and relatable, her raw honesty full of pathos and self-awareness. Dressed in frilly pinks, bows and lace, she plays countless roles, inhabiting each with creative, energetic life. She has natural presence, commanding attention and conveying depth whether she’s cracking wise or turning a harrowing point in her story, a story that is, in the end, of hope and resilience. With just boxes populating her black box stage, she explores the theme of trying to fit in them and the joyous freedom of breaking out of them and choosing oneself.

This show has closed.

Pandora’s Boombox

PANDORA’S BOOMBOX is a delightful clown show with minimal dialogue (well, almost no dialogue), but plenty to say. Karen Hall and Cota E, starting out in white body suits with only their faces, hands, and feet showing, play with four white transistor radios on the stage, slowly expanding their set of props until the entire space is littered with all sorts of colorful feathers and fabrics, baubles and jingle bells. And can there really be such a thing as too many jingle bells? It’s an engaging and playful pantomime with the actors not just all over the stage but in the audience as well (prepare to participate). They are acrobats and harlequins, tumblers and bumblers. There’s something hypnotic about it, the 75-minute runtime slipping by without lagging. It’s soothing and somehow heartening that such whimsy can exist in such a dark and bleak world.

This show is closed.