THE THEATER MIRROR, New England’s LIVE Theater Guide
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MARQUEE | USHER | SEATS |
INTERMISSION | CURTAIN |
note: entire contents copyright 2005 by Carl A. Rossi
with:
Pete Gaioni
Michael Gaucher
Walter Hildner
Rodney Van Derwarker
I first saw Fresh Fruit in its Christmas revue YULE EN ROUGE, three Decembers ago; they are currently offering CHIX WITH DIX(IE) at Club Café. The title may be different but the material is the same: cleverly reworked lyrics set to pop tunes with topics ranging from on-line lonely-hearts to our current President’s resemblance to a chimpanzee. There is a clever moment --- a female pig singing “I Loves You, Porky” to a well-known cartoon character --- and a brilliant one: a filmed sequence of two geishas lip-synching to Puccini’s “Un bel dì” while the English subtitles has them bitching about their white-devil johns; the rest of the hour is safe, pleasant, girly fun.
In reviewing YULE EN ROUGE when it played at the Tremont Theatre, I scribbled the troupe would do better in club-restaurants rather than conventional theatres and my hunch proved correct: the Club Café back bar is a perfect setting for the Fruits, small, intimate and cabaret-like. Should they choose to take root there, these Fruits could flourish as has Mr. Landry’s Orphans at the Ramrod Center for the Performing Arts.