NY Fringe Festival Review: Camp Super Friend

Camp is for Super Heroes, but Lessons are for Everyone

Presented by: Taproot Theatre Company
Writer: Bethany Wallace
Director: Josiah Wallace

Summary:
Super Hero Marvel (Solomon Davis) can speed read and retain information, but doesn’t know how to make friends when his father (Peter Nolte) drops him off at Camp Super Friend, where heroes with various powers are put through a course by Cosma (Laura Bannister) who challenges them to work as a team. Jet (also Nolte), who can move so quick you can’t see him and who has a plane on his shirt, is also a super bully who appears to have a lot of friends. Marvel decides to follow his example, but soon finds it doesn’t win him any friends.

A subplot involves a scheme by Professor Nemesis (also Bannister) and her henchwoman Una (Adrienne Littleton) to steal the heroes’ super powers. To thwart it, Jet, Marvel and the other campers have to join together (the cast is rounded out by Charissa Huff, playing some sort of bug super hero).

Highlights:
• A cute show for little kids which entertains as well as teaches important lessons about how to make friends and treat others. The kids in the audience often participated when prompted by responding verbally with lessons that had been taught earlier in the show. They got it.
• Adult audience members were laughing, probably more than the kids, at the silly, over-the-top humor. One scene involving the collection of chipmunk saliva caused me to laugh out long and hard. Very funny and well executed.
• All of the cast members sans Davis play multiple parts and do a good job of making some lightning-quick costume changes behind a colorful backdrop depicting cartoon scenes from camp life.
• The audience at the Saturday 2:15 performance deserves super hero awards. Never have I seen a more attentive and well-behaved audience of kids.

Lowlights:
•The bug hero is underdeveloped. Not sure what her powers were, exactly.

Christians might also like to know:
•Taproot Theatre Company was founded in 1976 by six college graduates from Seattle Pacific University. From its beginnings as a touring group, the company has become one of Seattle's largest mid-size theatre companies serving more than 150,000 people annually throughout the Pacific Northwest with a full Mainstage season, touring programs and Acting Studio. Taproot Theatre exists to create theatre that explores the beauty and questions of life while providing hope to our search for meaning. Visit them at http://www.blogger.com/www.taproottheatre.org.
Fringe Tassels Awarded: 3

VENUE #14: The Cherry Lane Theatre
Run has ended

--Lauren Yarger