On the Fringes again

Congratulations to choreographers Jennifer Schmermund and Anahid Sofian, the well-respected Middle Eastern dance master, for their charming contribution to John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, concluding its Fringe Festival run on Saturday, 7:30pm, at NYU's Skirball Center. With its book by William Peter Blatty--yes, the Exorcist guy--and direction by Jeffrey Lewonczyk, this musical comedy about spy planes and bellydancing harem girls and Arabs who love football seems anything but promising at its start. It's dated and peppered with cultural references that fall flat today, pitched at people who actually remember who Polly Adler was. (For the rest of us, I Googled her: a notorious madam.) But I sat tight and held on as the comedic acting improved, and the gently satirical silliness pulled me in. The music--written by Michael Garin, Robert Hipkens and Erik Frandsen--is played live on the side of the stage by a wonderful combo led by Garin. It's old-school entertainment, and you probably won't be able to get "Bubbi, Habibi, they both mean baby" out of your head. Want to risk it? For ticket information, click here.

Another Fringe production at the Skirball had the exact opposite effect: growing more absurd and annoying by the minute, lasting many minutes indeed and seeming to last even more minutes than it actually did. The Hoarde: A Dance Drama by Courtney Ffrench's Vissi Dance Theater promised much in its firey opening, full of complex and inventive deployment of its multicultural cast of dancers. However, it quickly degenerated into a hyper and showy confusion of musical and dance styles. Designed by Ffrench as a feverish fantasia, the piece involves events in a village under siege and in the dark kingdom of the Hoarde. Two gentle, young lovers (Min and Isis, danced by Ariel Polanco and Jalila A. Bell) are victimized and abducted by invaders (the Hoarde, whose goose-stepping march is curiously Rockette-like) led by arrogant Osiris (Charles Logan) whose makeup and costuming suggest a theatrical mashup of punk, goth and gay. The musical collage might have been served up by an out-of-control iPod, featuring everything from John Williams movie scores to Roberta Flack's "First Time Every I Saw Your Face" (for the love scene) and Donna Summer's "Love to Love You, Baby" (for the rape scene), everything from Carl Orff to Carlos Santana. Characterizations get muddy, the story grows sloppy and nuttily operatic towards the end, and the dancing suggests everything from derivative Ailey to Las Vegas extravaganza, sometimes simultaneously. Ffrench commands a hearty, skillful and often genuinely expressive cast of dancers who put it all out there for you. The final show runs on Saturday at 5:15pm. Want to risk it? For ticket information, click here.

Lucid--a less-than-satisfying Fringe drama about quantum physics, lucid dreaming and expanded consciousness at the Cherry Lane Theatre--does not have dance but it does have the luminous presence of Natalie Thomas (formerly, a Ballett Frankfurt soloist) and sharp, appealing performances by Jeremy Goren and Pat Swearingen. Two shows remain: Friday at 4:45pm and Saturday at 9:15pm. For ticket information, click here.