Don't Sit in the Front Row if You Haven't Done the Reading

Last night the trek through 31 shows started with A Perfectly Wonderful Evening.

They started the evening with massive sound problems. Reminder: if you are looking for perfect production values from a play, Fringe is probably not the best place to search.

The play centers on Howard Blooms fascination with an apprarently real-life meeting between Groucho Marx and T.S. Eliot. Jim Stump plays Bloom, and those of you who follow Cincinnati theatre will have seen him on stage--he's marvelous as Bloom, the most famous literary critic of our time. Jim is pretty much channelling him throughout the show.

I probably can't comment on the play beyond that, since "Bloom" called on me to answer a question during the play. I didn't have an answer--I hadn't done the reading. This is a lesson that I know well having been an English major.

So, having been "in" the play in some sense, I'm particularly ill-suited to critique it beyond that.

Go see it for the outstanding characterizations, and stay with the fantasy sequences.... it's well worth it.