On The Fringe

The New York International Fringe Festival, with its cheap, abundant plays, can be an experimental theatergoer's dream. But with its 200-plus options, phonebook-size guide, rocky record for quality, and August schedule, it can also be a sweaty nightmare.

So if you can't face another Sophie's Choice between a rock opera about rats or the latest clown offering from France, here are a few offerings that — due to pedigree or sheer audacity — have already lifted their heads above the haze.

Since Fringe shows operate without nuisances such as "budget" and "luxurious rehearsal periods," they often manage to be theater's first response unit to current events. The gags in "Hillary Agonistes," for example, should be fresh, imagining an America that has Hill on the Hill, but God at the helm. After a Rapture-like miracle seizes American citizens out of their very beds, the government may have to rethink its attitude towards "rendition."

Some groups look on the newsreels without irony, as did the Acting Up company from Lafayette, La., who took its documentary techniques into the post-Katrina nightmare and emerged with their dance-theater offering "Sustained Winds." And if you'd rather think about the Big Easy without blubbering all over yourself, there is even "Pogo & Evie: A Zydeco Musical," from the "Urban Cowboy" writer Aaron Latham.

The Fringe is an international festival for a reason, and suddenly a city whose doors often smack foreign artists coming (visa fees!) and going (small audiences!), gets downright hospitable. In from Melbourne, Australia, "An Air Balloon across Antarctica" won Darragh Martin good notices for its explorer-meets-hamster travelogue. An Austrian production of Robert Schneider's "Dirt" offers a valuable chance to see the touted Germanlanguage playwright in translation, and a number of festivals have already fallen all over themselves for "The Sunshine Play," Romanian Peca Stefan's English-language discussion of a country still rocking from communism's haymaker.

If you're feeling nervous about the number of British plays on Broadway, perhaps now is not the best time to mention that many of the most eagerly awaited Fringe entries would prefer tea in the dressing room. Bad Penny Theater and theatre503's co-production "Up the Gary," the all-that-Gary-Glitters-is-not-gold tale of impersonation and redemption, got kudos at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for its leading man. And "Stand Up Black Britain," featuring Gina Yashere, John Simmit, and Curtis Walker, looms large in the Fringe comedy offerings. The "can't miss" production, though, has to be "Pigeon Man Apocalypse," William Whitehurst's solo drama, which rips the top off one man's mind, and had the London Times twitching with approbation.

Some people just don't learn — even after they succeed in snazzier venues, they keep coming back to the Fringe. Luckily, that loyalty means that the Rude Mechanicals (best known for their long running hit "Lipstick Traces") has sent back Corey Patrick with the Shepardian comedy "bombs in your mouth," in which two half-siblings duke it out in a kitchen. So too returns perennial favorite Susan Louise O'Connor, laying bare her bad dates in "Susan Gets Some Play" by oddball Adam Szymkowicz, whose "Nerve" garnered early hipster buzz.

Familiar names abound. Dan Fogler, last seen cutely bumbling his words onstage in "Spelling Bee," tries his hand at writing with "Elephant in the Room!" a modern spin on Ionesco's "Rhinoceros." And he's not the only Broadway alum sprinkling his fairy dust around the Fringe: Stephanie D'Abruzzo (of "Avenue Q" fame) appears in "Kiss and Make Up," which gently extracts the air from an ill-fated community theater production. The Fringe, oddly enough, is also the place to see the premiere of "Reader" by Ariel Dorfman ("Death and the Maiden"), who turns his usual political gaze inward for a Pinteresque experimental drama.

But the Fringe isn't a place for reasoned considerations, for coolheaded investigations into the medium of Brecht and Ibsen. It exists so that we can see shows like "Bash'd!-A Gay Rap Opera," the Canadian beat-boxing breakdown of beat downs, performed by "jammers" called Feminem and T-Bag. It exists so that we can see Leslie Harrell Dillen's "Action Jesus" on the same afternoon as "Hail Satan," in which playwright Mac Rogers introduces Beelzebub's little girl to mid-level management. It exists so we can let go our snobbier selves and vault our usual barriers of taste. That's why I'm most looking forward to "Bukowsical!" a goofy, well-received L.A. import by Spencer Green and Gary Stockdale. Somebody has to cheer that sot Charles Bukowski up, and if the Fringe, with its sweaty efforts, can't do it, then nothing can.