Fringe, Reviewed: The Absolutely, Positively...
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.
"...performing a play despite your own assumption that you can't."
[ theater ]
The Absolutely, Positively, Forget-About-It, Last Night at Von Dahm's Sports Bar, Wing Hut and Karaoke Place, by Actors International Theatre
Attended: Monday, Sept. 15, 7 p.m., Shubin Theatre, 407 Bainbridge St., show is now closed
It's the last night before the closing of Von Dahm's Sports Bar, Wing Hut, and Karaoke Palace. Three old acquaintances meet up to rehash the past, stare down the present, and face the future. Drinks flow, karaoke is sung, and old issues are trotted out, thrown out, and mostly worked out.
WE THINK:
Produced by Actors International Theatre, a company run by and exclusively made up of people with vocal and physical disabilities, The Absolutely, Positively, etc. is exactly what Fringe theater should be: a forum for those whose voices are usually unheard in the arts.
The show’s three actors met about 10 years ago through the National Stuttering Association, and none of them grew up expecting to be onstage in their mid-lives. In the talkback after the show, actor (and schoolteacher by day) Sue Camlin explained, “This whole thing is [about] doing what you’re scared of.”
As for the quality of the show itself, well, it was clear that they’re no professionals. That’s the point, though. Absolutely, Positively … is a tale about doing something unexpected with old friends, whether it be keeping a historic bar open despite raging gentrification, or finding love amidst the warbles of public domain karaoke songs, or performing a play despite your own assumption that you can’t.
Perhaps the only people who saw this show were friends and family of the actors – the head of the company stopped me on my way out of the theater to ask, wide-eyed, who I was – but that made the event feel more inclusive, more homey. (The wine they passed out in jelly jars at the beginning helped, too.)
