Orlando Fringe Festival reviews: Secrets, colonizers and sacraments
Today's Orlando Fringe Festival reviews include “Colonial Circus - A Hysterical Take On History of Colonization," "Cracks: A One-Trans-Woman Dark Comedy Memoir," “Fool of Grace,” “A Hollywood Horror Story,” “1-Man No Show,” “Private Parts: The Secrets We Keep,” "Solovela: An Improvised Solo Telenovela” and “Winning: Winning.”
The 35th year of the Orlando Fringe Festival - the longest-running such fest in the United States - officially begins May 12. For two weeks, Loch Haven Park and surrounding venues become home to more than a hundred short plays, concerts, dance programs, stand-up comedy shows, magic showcases and more.
You can also find free entertainment outdoors in the park, a free art exhibition and free children’s programming known as Kids Fringe on the weekends.
Here’s how it works. If you want to do more than see the free stuff or hang out on the lawn, where there’s food, drink and a full bar, you can buy a $10 Fringe button to see any ticketed show; that money pays for the festival’s overhead. Then, buy a ticket - $15 or under - to a show that catches your eye; that money goes directly to the show’s artists.
There are box offices in the park’s Lowndes Shakespeare Center and Orlando Family Stage, where many of the festival’s color-coded theaters are located. Or peruse the schedule and show descriptions and buy tickets in advance at orlandofringe.org.
It might be better to do the groundwork in advance. On the day of your visit, leave plenty of time to find parking, which fills up fast. And note that most shows don’t allow late entry - and there are no refunds. So plan ahead, show up early and get to your shows on time.
Each year, the Orlando Sentinel kicks off its coverage with reviews of shows that have been presented at a previous Fringe Festival or the Fringe’s Winter Mini-Fest. Here are eight of those to get us started.
Brilliantly straddling the serious and the silly is "Colonial Circus - A Hysterical Take On History of Colonization" (Pink, 55 minutes). What's so funny about colonization? Well, nothing, of course. But that's what makes this show such an unexpected delight.
Shreya Parashar and Sachin Sharma don the clown's whiteface to touch on issues related to colonization: religious conversion, resource exploitation, death and more. And they do it with physical comedy, singsong sounds and audience involvement - a particularly shrewd decision that makes us all complicit in what is happening and what has happened.
The pair have great comic timing, beautiful rapport and the ability to be funny with just a single word, given the right inflection - from a matter-of-fact "Question?" to a Cockney "Guv'nah!" The comedy is found in everything from a typeface reference to mayonnaise, and if you feel a little uncomfortable, you probably should. If you feel a little disoriented and apprehensive about what's coming next, well, imagine how those who endured colonization felt.
And yet, through it all, you're likely to be laughing along with your fellow theatergoers. The introspection will come on the way home. The show won the Critics’ Choice Award for best comedy at the 2025 Fringe Winter Mini-Fest.
Speaking of unusual clowning, "Fool of Grace" (Ten10 Brewing, 60 minutes) - previously titled “Full of Grace” - finds Andrea Barello as a most unusual priest. He conducts a service - reading eyebrow-raising Bible passages, marrying a couple and hearing comical confessions. There's even a baptismal splash zone.
In other words, the name change makes perfect sense.
At my viewing, the padre was blessed with multiple good-natured and entertaining volunteer participants; this show depends heavily on who gets involved. A lot of the material is low-hanging fruit, along the lines of "the church is anti-sex and anti-gay." And the pace suffers, with repetition early on.
But Barello is likable, and the weirder the show gets, the better it gets. This won't convert anyone to an anti-church crusade, but it could be cathartic for those ill-treated by organized religion.
Claire Lochmueller is one of those ill-used people. In "Cracks: A One-Trans-Woman Dark Comedy Memoir" (Scarlet, 60 minutes) she tells a compelling story about growing up in religious and military environments, all the while knowing her true gender didn't match the sex assigned her at birth.
Lochmueller almost crams too much into this show, directed by David Resnick; I wanted her to slow down at times, emphasize key phrases and let the reality of her situation sink in on the audience.
Her anecdotes can go from comic to wrenching in an instant. And in one hour, I gained more understanding of the transgender experience than I have in all my life until now. Insightful, entertaining, heartfelt and true. It's classic Fringe.
Award-winning artist Ingrid Garner ("Eleanor's Story") is known for historical storytelling. In “A Hollywood Horror Story" (Pink, 60 minutes), she gives a bio of Maila Nurmi, the 1950s horror-TV host known as Vampira who paved the way (bitterly) for '80s icon Elvira. The name-dropping, from Orson Welles to Marlon Brando to James Dean, is part of the fun, and a pantomime burlesque number scores big.
Garner's arch delivery, darlings, is effective - although it wouldn't hurt to add some more tonal and tempo variations to highlight the clever turns of phrase that pepper the lively script.
Fans of horror, camp, the counter culture and the golden age of Hollywood will all find shivers of delight in this polished piece.
In a twist, I was onstage in "1-Man No-Show" (Silver, 60 minutes), Isaac Kessler's utterly daffy, delightful and disorienting exploration of what theater really is. That sounds a little heavy. This show is anything but. It's really a clowning and comedy romp that relies on Kessler's outsized yet chaotically appealing personality to sell his gags: "I come across a little bit… me!" he cheerfully admits.
His bonkers creation, which won the Critics’ Choice Award for best solo specialty show in 2025, is rambunctious in all the best comic ways; you truly have no idea what to expect next. And Kessler gleefully holds it all together while effortlessly earning laugh after laugh.
Another audience member and I were randomly selected to participate in one bit, and it's only fair to report Kessler's critique: "It was a struggle at times," he deadpanned. Well, that clearly was my fault, because Kessler is making comedy gold in this silly salute to imagination and creativity that is quintessentially Fringe.
In "Private Parts: The Secrets We Keep" (Ten10 Brewing, 60 minutes), award-winner Joanna Rannelli ("Bangs, Bobs & Banter") shares the unspoken truths of her family. Rannelli has a wonderfully engaging presence, and director Kerry Ipema helps her lure the audience in with comic interludes of secrets from age 7, before the heavy stuff hits later.
Even in the more serious stages of the show, Rannelli projects a lightness, and the laughs don't stop for long. The glint in her eyes and the smile dancing around her lips will keep audience members rooting for her, even as they consider their own hidden truths.
Diane Jorge brings a big personality, a sly sense of humor and the perfect mix of humor and - Que horror! - the scandalously melodramatic in "Solovela: An Improvised Solo Telenovela” (Blue, 60 minutes), which won the 2025 Critics’ Choice Award for best improv solo show. Jorge picks one audience member, gathers details about their romantic relationships, jobs and enemies, and then crafts a telenovela based on the information in which she plays all the characters.
Telenovelas - Spanish soap operas - are even more over-the-top than their American cousins, and Jorge knows the lingering glances, the dramatic pronouncements and the shocking surprises. In some respects, it's a love letter to the genre - down to the pre-commercial title jingles she performs, just as you see on TV.
Jorge is personable and funny, and her improv skills are nothing to sneeze at either. Que divertida!
Finally, my colleague Patrick Connolly writes that "Winning: Winning" (Blue, 60 minutes), goes on a "silent-ish" journey of self-discovery with Toronto native and part-time clown Gordon Neill - who once auditioned for "Canada's Got Talent."
Through clowning and miming, Neill tries to eat a cupcake while wearing a dog cone, play the guitar and face his own fears - even encouraging the audience to hurl insults at him during one part of the show. As directed by Isaac Kessler of "1-Man No-Show," it's absurd in a fun and "only at Fringe" sort of way.
As the show draws to a close, Neill finally finds his voice and reveals to the audience the true nature of facing fears. For a whimsical and self-deprecating show, the last segment presents a surprisingly vulnerable plot twist that gives it a lot more meaning.
Orlando Fringe Festival
• Where: Shows at Loch Haven Park are in color-coded venues; off-campus locations are identified by name.
• When: May 12-25.
• Cost: $10 button required for ticketed shows, then individual performance tickets are no more than $15.
• Schedule, tickets, more info:OrlandoFringe.org
• More reviews:OrlandoSentinel.com/fringe
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