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Although the regular new York International Fringe Festival closes its many doors of Sunday after a mere 197 shows being produced several times each (!), a select few will be chosen for extra performances. You can see www.fringenyc.org breathlessly awaiting those announcements and for info on how, where and when you can see any of the shows, including those reviewed by my colleagues here at NiteLifeExchange and myself. The reviews are all over the website and here are my latest viewings.
When Lilacs Last looks at what an uproar can happen when attention is paid to the poems of Walt Whitman and the man himself, because of 
his homosexuality. It’s 1955, and the town is in an uproar that someone would dare name the bridge after him. Well, not the whole town. Two teenage boys relate to the poetry. Could they be Gay? They haven’t quite addressed that with themselves, let alone each other, and denial can be a survival skill if your father is physically abusive and hates them "damn queers" with a passion only a full-fledged ignoramus/bigot can have. It gets pretty ugly with name-calling and being hit upside the head and alcohol-fueled rages.
This is an outgrowth of a production by The Shipley School in Pennsylvania, where students fleshed out the script through improv. Some parts are still played by students in a naturalistic style, though they seem more comfortable in some scenes than others and still have a way to go in their acting and diction lessons. Interestingly, some of the scenes you’d guess would be the more challenging come off with more ease. One of the two boys’ roles is being shared, so later performances will feature a different actor than the one I saw. The recited bits of Whitman's poetry get short shrift and little flair by anyone. They seem encumbered by the language and it rarely flows like a river. The tension, however, can surge like a river in a storm, and the hard-to-watch, realistic violence is well choreographed. So much of this is admirable: the message of tolerance, the sweet, non-manipulative development of the boys’ friendship. But the fathers seem too similar, even though that makes a point, but the boys don’t directly bond in a great dialogue scene over this shared home life problem as you’d imagine. Some impressions don’t need repetition, such as the mob hurling epithets. Tony Devaney Morinelli is writer and director and, though the work has its slow spots and unpolished, awkward moments, at times it is riveting and always admirable in its intent as a cautionary tale and plea for tolerance. Not preachy per se, and not suffering from too much TV "Movie of the Week" syndrome of soap opera and easy answers, its heart is in the right place and brings a vote for Whitman along the way.
Despite conventional wisdom, sometimes things created by committee can be pretty together and, in this case, altogether a hoot and a half. 
Two hoots would be our top rating, actually, and there were times I felt The Secretaries started to wear thin as the secretaries went on and about becoming thin or we waited for the plot to thicken with promised murders. A creation by the irrepressible group of creative women known as The Five Lesbian Brothers, this broadly played goof goes back to 1993. The Secretaries features a group of favorite type of typists --- fast and funny. They work at a lumber mill and have a big sign posted behind them announcing how many days it’s been between unfortunate “accidents” of the fatal variety. We’re told at the offset that we shouldn’t assume they are accidents. They are as regular as the women’s menstrual cycles, which they talk about having together. Played with a giant wink and not unlike some B movies of slash and/or trash, with less blood and more loopiness, the women compete to be "Secretary of the Month," and favorites of the female boss which can come via sexual harassment or just plain sex. Elizabeths abound with Elizabeth Bell a special delight as the put-upon worker who is the least assertive. Ashley Elizabeth is the name of another character, played by Karen Stanion, entertaining in her slow-burn jealously when a newcomer, the perky Patty steals attention. She’s skillfully played by Elizabeth Whitney with sunny goodwill and slowly encroaching awareness that something is rotten. She makes a big splash diving into the secretarial pool and they drift from friendship to foeship. (Is that a word? It is now.) Newbee Patty begins to date one of the lumberjacks whose plaid, warm coats are coveted. Genderbendingly, Virginia Beata gleefully plays both this buzz saw guy, conveniently named Buzz, and the out Lesbian of the office, Dawn Midnight. Both want the initially clueless Patty who gasps to Dawn, “Are you a Gay?” Dawn rolls her eyes and plans a roll in the hay. And the laughs come rolling along.
This is a production of TOSOS, the Gay/Lesbian-more-than-friendly theatre group of renown and renewed activity. Artistic director Mark Finley helms this revival, keeping the pace generally brisk, but letting us drink in the wonderful poison brew as insults and threats are hurled. Particularly strong is the way Patty’s initial naïve nature is handled and her enthusiasm at being a secretary, her life’s dream. As the boss, Jamie Heinlein prowls around her prey with the calculated, lip-licking plans of the queen of the jungle. It is, after all, her jungle. There are many sharp moments and unexpected LOL reactions from the enthused crowd as well as the pleasure that comes with the anticipation of running gags, sick or slick. It began to bog down three-quarters of the way through for me, and could use some more variety in the tone and action. It is, however, well worth seeing for its expertly handled performance style and irreverence. It’s good, clean fun in its own special way. Entertainment is high on its agenda.
Moving on from the work of The Five Lesbian Brothers and their play with laughs and Lesbians and looniness, let’s consider a play about male Gays with only one laugh and lots of creepiness and dysfunction. Over and Over is a play about two unpleasant people having an unpleasant encounter, something they apparently do over and over. Obsession seems to be the order of the day for them. A kind of emotionally sado-masochistic, cat-and-mouse game between an obnoxious, hateful cat and a mouse who is, well, mousy and mild but with his own mean streak, is a game nobody wins, least of all the audience forced to sit through this relentless talkfest that varies only between vicious insults and wimpy whining. That’s not my idea of variety. And it’s not my idea of compelling drama. Taking a cue from its title, the conversation becomes repetitive, like a longtime couple who fight about the same things all the time, but stay together. That’s not quite what we have here. The two men, who are now occasionally scheduled sex partners (“You won’t call me. You’ll text me in a few weeks!”) and may have had potential for something deeper, are a mess together and maybe separately. One is Mitchell (Andy Ridings), a closeted man now living with a woman and the other is Jimmie (Tanner Cohen) a prancing, sniping, snarling, snickering fellow who plays a teenager on a popular soap opera. Mitchell has a fear of the dark, so when they meet, Jimmie relishes keeping the lights off in their arranged meeting place, a theatre he’s rented. This is how the play begins and we’re forced to hear their first few minute of talk in almost total blackness. Things only get darker, if you get my drift. And it’s tedious. Angry, bitter couples can make for good theatre—there’s a long tradition. But this is no Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It’s just that cat and mouse game turning into a verbal cat fight with little hope of a ray of sunshine or revelation. Don’t wait. It ain’t coming.
As the two call each other’s names and call each other’s bluff and toss insults, the actor struts around in just a pair of striped underpants, taunting his mate who pleads with him to get dressed so they can have a serious talk. Instead, he demands to know what he does sexually with the woman and crows about how he knows he wants him right now as a repeat bed partner again. After all, isn’t that why they are meeting up? And it doesn’t endear us any more to the soap star (whose mouth should be cleaned out with soap) that he is vicious even when he suspects the other man has come to tell him that he has become HIV-positive. He hasn’t. Their disease is of the emotional kind, but we don’t learn anything from this play and just feel trapped with them, especially as one or the other uses a seat in the audience to talk to the other or listen to him. Not that they ever truly listen to each other. Tim Aumiller is both writer and director, so one assumes this is the way he wants us to see the action. Oh, by the way, that laugh comes only at the expense of the city’s geographically-challenged boroughs. “What happened to her?” they wonder of someone in one of the few light moments. “She moved to Queens and she disappeared. I hear that’s what happens when you move to Queens.” Besides sharing a penchant for cruelty and not being able to resist a potent sexual desire for each other, supposedly, they also share some pleasure singing a few lines of a song from the movie Yentl. You had to be there. But I don’t recommend that.
Also on the Gay side, in a serious political awareness way, is the story of San Francisco activist, Harvey Milk in Dear Harvey, reviewed at this website by Daryl Glenn.
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