Buddha and the Rock Star is never boring. It is a fully conceived dance/theatre/film-and-lights-media piece, as ambitious a work - by Rosaruby Kagan - as I have ever seen in any Fringe. It has a cast of eight who are all as able at dancing as they are at acting. It is, in short, a polished show.
But what the work fails to polish to a sufficient luster is Kagan's pretentious, leaden writing. While the dancing and acting soars, Kagan's text keeps things earthbound. "Am I damaging my soul for the sake of my life?" "Have I been breathing my breath for you?" However, there is enough else to fill the stage and make the heart sing. The actors, all gorgeous and fit, are insanely energetic. They all have what appears to be pretty complete training in both movement/dance and acting and that is a rare thing indeed. Kagan's work, in this respect, is efficient and imaginative as she tells the story of a young woman trying to find her true self while passing through that stage of life in which we all get a little...er...sexually silly. The eroticism is definitely there, but much of it, sadly, is on the floor too far downstage for much of the audience. But this is a quibble which could be solved by some quickie reblocking. The rest of he performance, simply, flies.
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Four out of how many?!!! Is that a good rating? How about a graph with all the shows, times, ratings all in ONE PLACE.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the goodish work.
Hey! Anon! how about you take the nanosecond to go to the top of the page to the Fringe aggregator to find all the articles, explanations and maybe even some charts and graphs.
ReplyDeleteGreat Review! Good Criticism :) Thanks!
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm slow. But as an real (aka average) theatre goer I don't see any graphs or charts. So, maybe you should make it a little more obvious / user friendly for us Luddite's.
ReplyDeleteWhen my visitors find my site hard to understand I try to see it from THEIR point of view. Not imply they are lazy, and at fault.
That's a little backassward.
Finally I find your reviews an excellent resource, otherwise I wouldn't bother to post a comment. I'd simply move on.
Keep on Fringe'n
You're right...I was being sniffy. The ratings 1-5, are now explained at the top of the Fringe Aggregator page, linked to from the top of every page on the site.
ReplyDelete