Fringe, Reviewed: Desperately Seeking the Exit
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Best enjoyed by Anglophiles who share Marino's fascination with the differences between Brits and Americans.
[ theater ]
Desperately Seeking the Exit by Peter Michael Marino
ATTENDED: Sept. 5, 8 p.m.; Sept. 19
Acclaimed behind-the-scenes comic autopsy on a $6-million musical flop makes its Philly debut.
WE THINK: Fringesters might be rightly wary of seeing another play by the man behind one of London's biggest musical-comedy disasters. And while Peter Michael Marino's solo monologue postmortem of his stage adaptation of 1985's charming Madonna movie Desperately Seeking Susan will not have you Desperately Seeking the Exit (title lifted from one of the 2007 flop's many negative reviews), it does hint at why Marino is now performing his own material on the Fringe circuit instead of raking in the royalties from the West End or Broadway.
Actually even his Philly Fringe venue (Voyeur) is too big for the kind of interactive comedy act Marino seems to be going for. "I got applause in Florida when I said that London was my second favorite city after Orlando," he noted in the silence that followed his similar statement about Philly. Writing like that would be enough to sink any show but Marino's monologue blames his musical's downfall mainly on the cultural disconnect between the show's New York setting and the London theater where it premiered and ran a mere 15 performances. His Fringe show will, in fact, probably be best enjoyed by Anglophiles who share Marino's fascination with the differences between Brits and Americans (his British producers insisted that the Madonna character call pot marijuana, for instance) more than I did.
