Fringe 2014

Fringe, Reviewed: # (hashtag)

"Yeah, people still text and drive. What else, what deeper message, can you give us?" 

[ theater ]

# (hashtag), by ETC Theater

Attended: Sun., Sept. 7, 6 p.m.; closes Sept. 12

WE THINK:

In the official Fringe Festival guide, ETC Theater’s description of this year’s show, # (hashtag) is written completely in (what else?) hashtags. One of those is “#thecitypapersucks.” Apparently, we published a lackluster review once (#somewoundsneverheal). I’d be tasked with the unfortunate duty of informing ETC that this year’s show again earned them an unkind review, but that seems unfair — after all, the group is being honest up front: it also publicizes the show as “#theplayforpeoplewhodon’tknowwhathashtagmeans” and that’s truly the only subset of people that I can believe would find # fresh or particularly funny.

Prefaced by a screen projecting real, ridiculous tweets (the funniest moments of the show, along with Todd Cardin's portrayal of a homeless man who takes credit card donations), each scene is inspired by a hashtag from Twitter — things like #textinganddriving and #whitegirlproblems. Yes, white girls — because they’re the only ones, I guess — are asinine on Twitter. Yeah, people still text and drive. What else, what deeper message, can you give us? The fact that a recurring joke involved Rebecca Black’s “Friday” (2011) exemplifies the time warp in which the play seems to be stuck.

The seemingly deeper theme of the play, that each and every tweet we send out, some half a billion per day, is backed by a story worth telling, is arguable but definitely worthy of consideration — the scene inspired by the hashtag #flyeaglesfly showed us a father and son, bitching about life and work but bonding over their beloved Iggles. There’s something there, but it felt disingenuous and dragged on too long. It’s a shame, because in my heart (which since I work for City Paper, obviously #sucks) I want this scrappy little theater company to break a little ground, and I think it really could.

The primary premise here, that hashtags or even Twitter themselves are, at this point in our cultural discourse, things that beg to be mocked or even discussed, is a stale one in this context. Sure, we continue to laugh or balk at particularly witty or outrageous tweets, but # props up its jokes and observations on merely the fact that Twitter, which came into our lives in 2006, exists. It’s sort of like Michael Scott doing a Borat voice in 2014.

Then again, in the program, ETC writes “the ETC [audience] is made up of mostly middle to upper class suburbanites who, if not for us, would probably never have heard of Fringe Arts, let alone come out to see a show.” Well then, ETC audience, allow me to explain: the Internet is this totally wacky thing that is a global system of interconnected computer networks…