Love You to Death

Two stages offer British accents; a fringe festival puts the accent on new works

Comments (0) By Elaine Liner Thursday, Jul 18 2002

The Festival of Independent Theatres is currently up and running at the Bath House Cultural Center, the fourth year presenting a rotating repertory of new plays by some of Dallas' fringe companies. Among the offerings: Echo Theatre's Vita and Virginia, a reading of letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West; Core Performance Manufactory's Fish, a new play by writer-actress Cyndi Williams; Cara Mia Theatre's El Presidente y La Mascara de Oro by Danny Daniels; Ground Zero's Bad Roofby Tim Hatcher; and Theatre Quorum's Perchance by Angela Wilson.

One of the funny ones is Art on the Fridge by Valerie Brogan, produced by Wingspan Theatre Company. This one-act of comic vignettes focuses on America's worship of the icebox. Four actors--Paige Reynolds, Susan Sargeant, Regan Adair and Linda Comess--enter and exit through four refrigerator doors.

Check, please? No, it's Czech police who keep the Great Sebastians under house arrest.

Details

The Mysterious Mr. Love continues at the Trinity River Arts Center through July 28. Call 972-490-4202.

The Great Sebastians runs at Theatre Three through August 10. Call 214-871-3300.

Art on the Fridge, part of the fourth annual Festival of Independent Theatres, continues at the Bath House Cultural Center through August 3. Call 214-670-8749.

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We get an ode to the icemaker as an icon of success. The fridge, we're told, is the center of the home, "the very heart of democracy." Shame lies in the dirty vegetable crisper. Contents get scrutinized in one sketch by a squad of fridge police.

The best of the scenes introduces a gay man devoted to Marilyn Monroe, whom he calls "an innocent girl born with debilitating glamour." He's acquired her refrigerator at auction and transferred his adulation to the old machine, whose hum comforts him. Regan Adair is sweet and affecting as the Marilyn fan, caressing his beloved appliance with the care an archaeologist would afford a relic unearthed from an Egyptian tomb.

Catch Art on the Fridge when it's performed again at 2 p.m. Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday or on July 27, 28 or August 2.