The Festival of Fringe, part 2

So I'm going to be reviewing the other 2 shows we saw at Fringe fest, namely Tales from the Tunnel by Troy Diana and James Valletti; and The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea explorer, a one man show featuring Tim Watts. David already reviewed the more risque shows that we saw...in comparison, these were more G rated for sure.

http://www.talesfromthetunnel.com

Tales from the Tunnel was basically a series of based-in-truth "subway stories" told by the group of actors portraying various characters throughout the play. I thought it was great! As a native New Yorker who has commuted on the subway since age 11, these stories really rang true for me and I got a kick out of them. Granted, they were definitely on the more outrageous end of the crazy subway story spectrum, but they were believable and amusing. I mean...we've all got subway stories, and it was just a great time to see New York stories told to a group of New Yorkers who all knew exactly what they were talking about and were able to laugh about them together. Stories ranged from funny (e.g. girl freaked out because she felt a tongue on her foot when the subway lights went out) to depressing (e.g. people making fun of an Indian woman) to ridiculous (e.g. people having a flipping contest on the subway bars) to really heavy (e.g. a subway conductor marking to the minute the anniversary of Sept. 11). I highly recommend this play to everyone. The only thing I can't endorse is the batshitcrazy lady on crack wearing a straw hat imitating a Chinese woman selling ridiculous toys at the beginning of the show. Yes, I recognize the subway character she is trying to portray; I have met my share of Chinese women going from car to car selling ridiculous toys on the subway...and I see where humor can be derived from that. But cracktastic woman made me uncomfortable...and reminded me of Mr. Peepers. But ANYWAYS, other than that, excellent show!

Now, on to The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer. Can I just say? SO CUTE. And SO CREATIVE. Basically, this really awesome Australian dude does a bunch of singing, puppetry, and drawing on a computer screen to tell a story in a supercool multi-media way.

See?

The dire-looking pale dude in the picture is Australian one-man-show dude. And the white blob that is a styrofoam ball & his hand...that's meant to portray Alvin Sputnik in his deep sea exploring outfit. How cool is that!

So the show is about some guy named Alvin whose wife dies in a very environment-destroyed covered-in-melted-glaciers future Earth. He thinks his dead wife's spirit went into the depths of the ocean, so he volunteers to go on a mission to save earth by swimming to the ocean floor and finding a giant happy livable world underneath the earth's crust and making the feet of his sea suit stick to it and vibrate to detach this underwater earth from the rest of the earth's crust and deploy it to the earth's surface where it could float on the ocean like a giant bubble and people could live happily in it. No, seriously. I didn't make that up. That's actually the plot.

So here's Alvin swimming downwards, as depicted on the giant screen, as Australian dude ukeleles or whatever:

And on his journey to save humankind, Alvin encounters many strange and curious characters, like...koosh ball!

And whale puppet possessed by his dead wife's spirit represented by a glowy light that the whale swallowed! (Him & the whale do a happy blissful dance. Also, note that this Alvin is a finger puppet downsized from the hand puppet):

Aaaand yeah. Go see this show too, because it's short and sweet. You can learn more about this show here: http://www.weepingspoon.com/AlvinSputnik/Welcome.html (incidentally where I also stole all these amusing pictures from the show).

And in conclusion, David & I are domestic, but we DO get out of the house sometimes!!