'Bad Dad!': A Stand-Up Guy; 'Poker' Plays Its Cards Right

The funky Warehouse Arts complex is Grand Central Station for the Capital Fringe Festival, but it probably won't be around this time next year. Thanks to rising property values downtown and a tax increase that can't be met by hosting offbeat music and theater acts, the storefront performance spaces (including one of the friendliest bars in town) seem doomed.

For now, though, it's appreciated as the heart of the Fringe. Although 30 venues are participating in this year's festival, roughly one-fifth of the performances are at one of the Warehouse's four rough-hewn rooms or out in the alley off Seventh Street NW.

Eight shows were on the bill there Thursday night; here's a report from half of them:

In the Warehouse Beyond at 6, Mark Whitney, a mild-looking self-described convicted felon, began his strange tale of tax woes in "Bad Dad! (A Comedy of Errers)." Cross a Vermont farm boy with a San Diego surfer dude -- he's lived in both places -- and you can picture Whitney, now middle-aged but still boyish in simple costumes, including a Ben & Jerry's T-shirt and an orange prison button-down.

His story's true, but you have to wade through a dry bit about selling vacuum cleaners to get to the good stuff: a sketchy bank loan, an ice cream franchise and (gulp!) a near-million-dollar debt to the IRS. Although "Bad Dad" is essentially a stand-up act, it grows into a compelling story even without reliable jokes. Luckily, by the end, Whitney's landing punch lines with confidence.

Whitney says he wrote "Bad Dad" last month. It's unclear when Rick Hodges, another father with a personal story to share, penned his one-man "The 'R' Word" (through tonight). Looks pretty fresh, though: When he took the tiny Warehouse Colosseum stage at 8, the script was in his hand.

"Retarded" is the "R-Word" in question; Hodges has a 6-year old daughter with Down syndrome, so the term and its flippant use has his attention. But although his show -- partly inspired by seeing the hit monologue "Help Wanted" at the Fringe last year -- offers some valuable insights, it's more generously shared than skillfully shaped.

Mark Phillips, on the other hand, has skill to burn in his "Cheating at Poker (and Other Scams)." Nearly 20 people gathered informally around a table at 10 in the Warehouse Beyond and watched as Phillips a.) described how he was fleeced at an impressionable age, and b.) demonstrated how it's done.

Phillips is slick; you can't follow the cards. Three-card monte? The joker's over there, and you would've sworn it was a queen. Phillips deals and chatters and comes up aces. His show is low key and short (35 minutes, and playing through tomorrow night), but it'll make you think twice before betting at poker. Unless, that is, you have a discreet partner at the table; he shows you how that works, too.

By 11, things ought to get weird, right? Venus Theatre's "Lysistration," closing today, delivered, taking the Mainstage for 70 minutes of Greek-derived, "Cats"-obsessed, antiwar postmodern feminism with thrashing rock-and-roll and a big group hug.

It's a jumble, but a genuine Fringe-y jumble: campy and traumatized in equal measure (and for mature audiences only). A band of women are mystically summoned to battle, um, you know, War and The Patriarchy, which leads to bedroom vengeance and Beat-style incantations. Unbearable? Nearly, but it's funny, energetic and restless enough that you don't quite end up wanting to nuke a San Francisco Democrat.

There are venues besides Warehouse Arts, of course, one of them being the small backroom stage at Playbill Cafe, where Jonathan Padget's "The Blue Lagoon: A Musical" happily splashes through tomorrow. This is a two-character sendup of the famous tale made infamous by the Brooke Shields movie.

Padget works for The Washington Post's Style section as a copy editor, and readers can take that as a full disclosure or as a partial explanation of his 45-minute show's tone, in which restraint and snarkiness jostle for control. (Snarkiness wins.) Lovely melodic themes, two goofy performances and an inflatable baby pool as the lagoon in question -- how Fringe is that? It's beyond the nucleus that is the Warehouse, but so are 85 other shows during this 11-day binge.

The two-year old festival will get by without the Warehouse if it has to, but Washington would be diminished by the loss of this complex, which has made an especially strong reputation this decade by fringing all the time.