Review: Streisand, Angelou and Wheaties evoked in the eclectic Minnesota Fringe Festival

Chalk it up to the nature of sentience.

Even in the best of times, some people are pervaded by a fatalistic foreboding. Such feelings are keener now in our unsettled, rapidly changing world, and they animate, as text and subtext, many of the shows in the 31st edition of the Minnesota Fringe Festival.

Some works seek to offer an escape with laughter and divertissement. Others square up with the agita that many feel, giving a name and space to meditate on things that haunt the shadows of our dreams.

'Widening the Circle'

This piece by Des Moines-based Fellow Travelers Performance Group leans into the sociopolitical moment with heart and wit. Through a series of theatrical dances interlaced with video projections, performers Cynthia Adams and Paula McArthur sit, glide and dart across the stage, moving with honest, emotive elegance to spoken word and music.

In truth, a work that is so open about its concerns for the fate of the Earth, women's rights and the rash of school shootings, to name a few of its themes, is not supposed to be so engaging. But through their charisma, Adams, artistic director of Fellow Travelers, and McArthur, owner of Des Moines' DanzArt Studio, win us over. The two have an easy chemistry that helps to accent the tentpoles of a show that veers from fanciful entertainment to gutting gravitas.

"Circle" starts with a cheer as McArthur and Adams saunter onstage with wine glasses. They deliver a bit of bubbly whimsy in "A Women's Perspective, Revisited." Near the end of "Circle," the duo brings out a complement of Twin Cities performers, and also enlists audience members on "Lockdown," a piece about school shootings that ends with the outlining of bodies in chalk.

"Circle" also nods to Pina Bausch's "The Nelken Line," and to the suffragettes' movement. The latter history, plus excerpts of Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise" and Ruth Bader Ginsburg's writings, are used to address the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade.

In lesser hands, this could be a bunch of clunky failures. But Adams and McArthur make it all smartly engaging. (Wed., Sat. & Sun., Barbara Barker Center for Dance)

'The Life Robotic'

What would you do if Barbra Streisand ate your baby?

Well, if you're a robot and your partner is a mannequin, you'd probably try to get it back by using a boa constrictor to get the legendary signer to disgorge the kid.

Creator, director and music director John Hilsen has hit a nerve, and perhaps a few buttons, with this clever and fun audience interactive improv show about a metal-faced robot with a lit, insect-like antenna (Michael Rogers) that wants to have a human life. So, we, the audience, text lines that it can say to sound human or things it can do. These contributions direct the action of the show hosted by Maria Bartholdi and featuring Laura Berger, Rita Boersma and Erik Nielsen.

At Sunday's performance, the audience chose Manny the mannequin (Justin Betancourt) as a partner for Mr. Robot. We texted suggestions of romantic spots for dates and voted on plot points, including whether the robot and the mannequin should continue to be a couple or break up.

The audience also texted plot twists, including around the pregnancy when the couple began expecting a Christmas tree. Ms. Streisand comes into play as a way out of the pregnancy with a tree.

Stilted it may sometimes be, but "Robotic" is a loony hoot. (Tue., Thu., & Sun., Mixed Blood Theatre)

'All the Hullabaloo'

You've probably made angels in the snow. But have you tried making angels in cereal grains? In "Hullabaloo," choreographer Lily Conforti and her crew scatter Wheaties, Froot Loops and other cereals on the floor of the Southern Theater, summoning abandon in a show that underscores lighthearted nostalgia and whimsy. The piece offers a youthful celebration of random joy. It starts with feet and tushes poking out from under a quilted curtain and ends in playful glee. In between, Conforti and her crew tap into a longing for comfort and certainty, with jaunty music and sweet, athletic movements studded with surprising delight. Mon., Thu., Fri., Southern Theater)

'Something Together'

Even before the three performers come onstage, the company conducts a breathing exercise with the audience. "Something Together" is a show about presence and being fully alive. Under the aegis of Detroit-based Shua Group, it features Laura Quattrocchi, Joshua Bisset and Trishawna Woods. They do contact improvisation but what's unexpected is that Woods leads a bit of social dance, voguing and popping to house music. It feels like an exultation and a celebration of life, a metaphor for a festival that wants to sing even as audiences have been light. (Thu., Fri., & Sun., Southern Theater)

Minnesota Fringe Festival

When: Through Sun. at multiple venues.

Tickets: $20, plus a one-time required $5 festival button. Five-show passes for $70 also are available. minnesotafringe.org or 612-872-1212.