From Bush to 'Butter,' Churning Things Up

"Something for everybody" -- impresario E. F. Albee's maxim for the wildly multifarious art form that was vaudeville -- is an apt motto for a later entertainment paradigm: the fringe festival. Only consider that this year's Capital Fringe lineup includes productions as stunningly different as "Ariel Sharon Hovers Between Life and Death and Dreams of Theodor Herzl" and, well, "Butter: A Love Story."

"Ariel Sharon" is a bold, sobering examination of a century of Zionism. "Butter" is a spoof of television cooking shows, complete with cabaret songs and a piñata.

Taking the non-oleaginous work first, David Zellnick's "Sharon/Herzl," a world premiere, is part of Theater J's "Voices From a Changing Middle East" series, a mini-festival within the Fringe. A work that's technically still in progress but feels nearly full-fledged, the play runs in an entertaining bare-bones production at Theater J through Sunday. (Those planning to attend should note that it runs about 20 minutes longer than the two hours cited in the Fringe's online guide.)

The play flashes back and forth between the lives of Sharon, the controversial Israeli politician, and Herzl, the Budapest-born writer-visionary who championed the idea of a Jewish state starting in the late 19th century. Zellnick tracks contrasts and parallels between the two lives, raising provocative questions about how violence, pragmatism and utopian yearnings have fit into the history of Zionism.

In its present form, "Sharon/Herzl" is an expository and somewhat overdeliberate play, but the performers in John Vreeke's production have located the vibrancy in the major characters. Michael Russotto does a swell job spinning Herzl's personality from his early flaky-playwright days to his later political incarnation. Rich Pelzman makes a compellingly unnerving Sharon, and Alexander Strain has some delightful cameos as Mark Twain and other figures.

That's all a lot more nourishing than "Butter," Kristin Cantwell's amusingly conceived but painfully executed solo show, which reprises some of the themes in her 2006 Fringe offering "Confessions of an Invisible Woman" (about being overweight).

In the new piece, Cantwell plays Sandy Patti, the perky, Rubenesque host of "Quasi-Home Cooking" -- a cable program that would alarm most any nutritionist. Between demonstrations of Butter Burgers and pound-cake-and-Cool-Whip parfaits (which she tops with miniature sombreros, in keeping with a fiesta theme), Sandy sings the Kander-and-Ebb song "Sara Lee" and other nosh-related ditties. Well, "sing" is putting it kindly, since Cantwell can't carry a tune (unless she's giving a terrific impression of someone who can't carry a tune?).

If you can bear some ear-aching moments, though, "Butter" is an intermittently funny parody of Food Network programming.

A different kind of media phenomenon gets attention in "This Digital Life: BASIC Instructions for Coping With the 21st Century," a set of three brief sketches running through Saturday at the Goethe-Institut. Written by Joseph Price, the pieces reflect on the potential sociological and philosophical hazards of the new cyber-era: Can virtual sex be adultery? What are the ethics of purchasing domain names -- or of removing videos from YouTube?

Written and performed in an unpolished manner, before a screen that displays the characters' instant messages and the like, "This Digital Life" is no great shakes as art. But it does muse thoughtfully about the moral ramifications of our click-and-drag era.

While the fracas portrayed in "This Digital Life" might break out anywhere, the encounters in "A White House Tale" (through Sunday at the Goethe-Institut) occur within specific confines: the walls of the Lincoln Bedroom. This "comedy improv" (as it is subtitled), conceived and directed by Frank Mancino, reimagines "A Christmas Carol" with George W. Bush in the role of Scrooge. A wearying roster of historical and contemporary figures -- Franklin Roosevelt (Mancino); Winston Churchill (Bryan Cassidy); Barbra Streisand (Teddy Ostrow) -- puts in perfunctory appearances, to the bafflement of the president (Kim Curtis, in black plaid pajamas and a Dickensian nightcap). At the end, the audience votes on whether the Prez should stay the political course.

The performance of "A White House Tale" was neither funny nor incisive. (Admittedly, given the improv factor, the show presumably changes from day to day.) Still, a Fringe-goer hankering for light political satire can find it here -- and that's a generally good thing.

Vaudeville might have come and gone, but the variety at Capital Fringe is still engagingly democratic.