Review: HIGHER THAN RAINBOWS, 110% WIZARD, and YOUNGER US at The Orlando Fringe Festival
Day two of festival coverage brings a not-so-high-school-musical, a magician's beef with American Airlines, and a ghost of parties past.
HIGHER THAN RAINBOWS (Peach Venue)
Firebird Theatrical
Written and Directed by Daniel Kermidas
Choreography by Shawn Lowe
At the intersection of Bare: A Pop Opera and High School Musical (with a splash of Dear Evan Hansen) lies HIGHER THAN RAINBOWS, an original musical written and directed by Daniel Kermidas. Jason and Sean are two high school seniors in love; however, while Jason is an out-and-proud theatre kid, Sean is a closeted quarterback. Further complicating matters is Jason’s Best Friend, Sarah…who is also in love with Sean. With a handful of other conventional high school archetypes thrown in—namely a popular mean girl and a duo of low-IQ jocks—the plot lurches forward as the boys try to navigate keeping their secret. Kermidas’ score is light, easy on the ear, and nondescript. Some numbers erupt out of nowhere, while others run tonally counter to the dramatic moments they are meant to meet. Most of the characters fall short of being likable; their motivations tend to be flippant and occasionally incomprehensible. This results in significant, unaddressed casual cruelty between friends and several inexplicable decisions made by everyone involved. It’s important to note that the final portion of the show is ground to a halt by an incredibly explicit and violent depiction of sexual assault. Frankly, the scene feels gratuitous, lacking the deliberate artistic framing found elsewhere (like Hair or West Side Story). Conversely, one of the finest moments in the production—a tender, well-written, and excellently performed coming-out scene between Sean and his father—follows almost immediately after. HIGHER THAN RAINBOWS is a mixed bag of tones, materials, and messages, but an earnest cast does their absolute best to sell it all with a smile.
110% WIZARD (Silver Venue)
Created and Performed by Keith Brown
A festival regular, Keith Brown masterfully blends a particular penchant for storytelling with impressive illusions in 110% WIZARD. Brown regales the audience with a recent foray into the cruise ship entertainment circuit—specifically, the nightmare of securing representation, heading out to a contract, and promptly having American Airlines lose his entire “magic” suitcase containing every piece of his show material. Fortunately, the cruise ship staff gathered enough miscellaneous items for Brown to cobble together a performance of basic yet dazzling illusions, a few of which still grace the Orlando stage this go-round. Like any seasoned magician, Brown frequently enlists the help of audience members (and occasionally their unsuspecting friends and family at home via phone). An Orlando Fringe audience is like none other, and it’s an eager one at that, making for a wonderful array of interactions—and an even more fun reaction to the payoffs. Brown’s illusions are, for the most part, simple in scale; but they’re enough to leave this critic’s notebook with a huge word scribbled in all caps and underlined three times: “HOW?”
YOUNGER US (Brown Venue)
Written by Soph Rubin-Siegel
Directed by Jeremy Herbert and Josa Eve Alvarez
If the Brown Venue stage was sparsely populated last night with a one-man show, the space was filled to the brim with the cast of YOUNGER US this evening. Soph Rubin-Siegel’s play invites us into a celebration of life for Peter, a young man who recently passed away (of what, we never find out). A large cast fills out family, friends, and lovers as they commiserate, commemorate, and clash over love, loss, and life. The staging is intelligent—Herbert and Alvarez allow it to rely on thrown focus between vignettes of conversations at the party—but it still tends to get crowded due to the space limitations of the venue. Peter appears to a small swath of the attendees (his partner, Marc, and two enlightened stoners), but this device is a bit undercooked, frequently leaving Peter to simply linger silently. Even for a post-death party, everyone feels stuck in a miasma of discontent; their litany of interpersonal conflicts remain frustratingly vague. Despite the lack of clarity, the script is otherwise well-written but is occasionally rendered inert by slow pacing. Herbert and Alvarez have admirably allowed their actors to live deeply in the emotional moments, but that doesn’t result in tight pauses. For all of this, the stage feels wonderfully alive the entire time, with games of beer pong and other conversations happening behind the action; but if it weren’t for a woo-woo aura reader and Marc’s theatrical aunt, this celebration of life would remain relatively life-less.
The Orlando Fringe Festival is celebrating its 35th anniversary and runs now through May 25. Show tickets (and Fringe Buttons, required for entry) are available at the multiple box offices on site or at the website below.
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