Fringe Reviews, Day 4

Sorry for the delay in this one: on Sunday I went to see How to Fake Clinical Depression. It was a good one-man show, staring some guy (no playbill). Not a particularly standout of a play, and reviewing it three days later probably doesn't help.

The gag, you see, is his experience in faking depression in order to earn money. As an aside, this isn't the first autobiographical (or allegedly autobiographical, to steal an editorial outlook from this week's Fringe-reviewing SEE Magazine) play I've seen dealing with humorous or dramatic events. Do would-be fringe stars go around the rest of the year placing themselves into awkward positions in order to make for something to present? If so, that's sort of pathetic. And much of what this actor describes falls squarely under that category. Mad that a research study doesn't place insane barriers of tests (expensive tests, mind you) to make difficult the filtering of perhaps thousands of potential applicants, he takes it upon himself to lie, and basically pad his acting resume. If the goal was to meet diverse people and show during a Fringe play later how well he can do other voices (impersonations only qualify when you can confirm that is what he is doing), then congrats. For anything else, the play gets a little too manipulative, and sometimes that's taken personally.