Best Bets at Rochester Fringe: Michael Lasser's picks

One review of “The Bicycle Men” called it “a genial
spoof.” So is this going to be one of those things that’s
much funnier when you’re having a fourth beer with friends and making up a
musical at 3 in the morning? But a naïve Yank who gets stuck while biking
through France also conjures up the possibility of a demented Henry James
(though without anything resembling a sense of humor). If the play’s oddball
characters and surreal puppets avoid the trap of self-consciousness, this silly
musical could be a treat. The Fringe says it’s appropriate for ages 16 and up. (Wednesday 9/19 8:30-9:30 p.m., Thursday
9/20 6-7 p.m., Friday 9/21 7:30-8:30 p.m., and Saturday 9/22 1:30-2:30 p.m. at Geva Theatre Nextstage. Tickets
cost $15.)

When “Casey Jones Costello Sings the Great American
Songbook,” audiences will encounter a college student who looks even
younger than his years, but who sings these songs his grandparents still know
with affection and sincerity. His voice is pleasant and his singing style
unadorned. You will also understand every single word in these incomparable
songs of sentiment and wit by such masters of the craft as Irving Berlin,
Lorenz Hart, Yip Harburg, Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin,
and Johnny Mercer. This may be one of the few Fringe performances where simple
honest sentiment prevails. (Friday 9/21 5-6 p.m. and Saturday 9/22 7-8 p.m. at Java’s.Free admission.)

The ancient Sumerian epic “Gilgamesh” includes a Flood story
that predated and influenced the Old Testament’s Noah story. More importantly,
it is one of the first tragic tales in which a king worthy of his quest seeks
immortality and, of course, fails. The gods toy with him as they do with all
humans. Into that world struts a single 21st century actor playing nearly two
dozen parts with his sense of irony intact. “Charlie Bethel’s Gilgamesh” offers up a jaundiced take on one of the humankind’s most extraordinary sagas. (Saturday 9/22 3 p.m. and
Sunday 9/23 8 p.m. at Geva Theatre Nextstage. Tickets cost $15.)

Don’t yawn, don’t shift in your seat, don’t even goddam blink,
because you might miss an entire play from “44 Plays for 44 Presidents.” Each president beginning with George — and including Zachary, Millard, Ulysses,
Rutherford, Chester, Calvin, and Barack — is the subject of a two-minute play.
Like a lot of the presentations in the Fringe Festival, this one is also
self-billed as “hilarious” and “irreverent.” The performers are young
professionals from the Geva Theatre Conservatory. (Saturday 9/22 8-10 p.m. and
Sunday 9/23 3-5 p.m. at Geva Theatre Nextstage. Ticket cost $15.)

Vaudeville was the most important form of American show
business until the Great Depression, Talkies, and radio combined to bury it in
the 1930’s. Until then, every town big enough to have a theater had daily
eight-act bills featuring everything from animal acts to comics to
song-and-dance men. A touring star like Nora Bayes or Sophie Tucker would come
to town for a week and take an entire floor of the best hotel. “Flower City
Vaudeville,” a local troupe, emphasizes the novelty acts and the comedy,
rather than the songs and the soft shoe. It appears to be vaudeville with a
smattering of circus tossed in, but how do you resist people who ride a
unicycle, juggle, and play the washboard? They don’t do show biz like this
anymore! (Saturday 9/22
2 p.m. and Sunday 9/23 12:30 p.m. at RAPA’s East End Theatre. Tickets cost $5-$10.)

“Love at First Waltz” (a sublime title that has
already got me swaying) brings together BIODANCE, a locally based modern-dance
company, and Resonanz, a 40-voice touring choir from
within the Rochester Oratorio Society. In the middle of the 19th century, the
waltz was controversial; in the early 20th, syncopation (by way of ragtime) was
equally raffish. But each soon became the defining popular music of its time.
Their composers — Johannes Brahms, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and
more — started on the fringe but we moved them into the mainstream. One of the
music’s natural habitats is a cabaret, and so it will be here. (Sunday 9/23 6:30-7:30 p.m. at RAPA’s East
End Theatre. Tickets cost $8-$12.)