Table 12: A funny existential crisis

Photo by Scott Pakudatis

In No Exit, Jean-Pau Sartre posited that Hell is being forced to spend time with other people. Freshwater Theatre's Table 12 ramps that idea up a notch, by pushing the mismatched souls together at that most fiendish of modern-day gatherings: the wedding.

Freshwater mades its debut at the Minnesota Fringe Festival and is revisiting the show as part of its 5th anniversary. It's a glorious, funny, and strangely life-affirming piece.

Table 12 is where the misfits at this particular wedding have been stashed away. Here we find the freaky next-door neighbors, the newly made husband's boss, the sort-of family member (he divorced the bride's sister), the embarrassing friend, and Charlie.

Charlie's a very special case. He's family (a cousin of the groom) and he dated the bride for a couple of weeks in the past. He's also crashed the rehearsal dinner by singing a full set of altered love songs to express his life to a woman who had chosen another man.

Cute in a romantic comedy. Stalker-ish in real life. Family connections kept Charlie at the wedding, but there are some rules, which are closely enforced by the table's waiter.

That's the set up. What happens is what you would expect from a gathering of mismatched souls lubricated by alcohol and either angry at their place at the wedding, or resigned to the fact that they are at the losers' table.

It's howlingly funny, too. Like a lot of comedies, there are people here you probably wouldn't want to spend much time with in real life, but are a lot of fun to watch. It's not just a zoo exhibit. Eventually, you begin to side with them -- even sad-sack Charlie and drunk Amy, who invited a blind date to the wedding; a date that didn't show.

Table 12 comes with a prologue as well: two pieces from another Fringe show, An Adult Evening with Shel Silverstein. The pieces are equally absurd slices of life. In one, the worst father in the world gives his daughter her 13th birthday gift (it doesn't go well). In the second, a husband confronts his wife about her habit of raiding garbage cans (it goes worse).

The shows are presented in rep with We Just Clicked: A Festival of Short Plays about Online Dating at the Phoenix Theatre. Find the details online.

Photo by Heidi Bohnenkamp

A couple of notes about other recent shows seen:

Ed confession time. I don't get Disney musicals. I mean, I know why they are popular and understand at an intellectual level what the appeal of them is for audiences. Yet, since I grew up during the dark times for the company, so unless they produce musicals based on The Rescuers or The Black Hole, I'm not going to have any nostalgic connections to the material.

That doesn't mean I can't have fun at the shows, it's just that certain bits expected by the rest of the audience leave me cold. This brings me to Beauty and the Beast, now at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres.

It's a handsome, well-directed and performed production that still  had me looking at my watch more than once. Much of that was during the scenes involving Gaston, the vain real villain of the piece. The show spends so much time with him -- and away from building the relationship between Belle and the Beast -- that I started to wonder who the stars of the show were supposed to be.

That slows the show down, but there is eventually enough good will to win you over, especially with the winning performances by Ruthanne Heyward and Robert O. Berdahl in the title roles; Mark King as Lumire; and Scott Balckburn as Cogsworth. Also, special note to Rich Hamson's terrific costumes, which bring all of the cursed souls of the castle to life in a much more limited budget than your Broadway, or even touring, production. The show runs through Sept. 24 at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres.

Finally, you only have a week left to do this, but if you haven't made it over to the Jungle for Two Gentlemen of Verona, you definitely should. Sarah Rasmussen's all-women production is a pure delight.

We could talk about the politics behind putting women into these highly "masculine" roles, but really what we have here is a chance for a terrific ensemble of actors to work together. And really, the chance to see the likes of Sha Cage, Christiana Clark, Mo Perry, Wendy Lehr, and a host of others work together should be enough to get you to Lynn-Lake.

And if that's enough? Well, there is Bear the dog playing Crab the dog -- complete with a Elizabethan ruff. Two Gentleman of Verona runs through March 27 at the Jungle Theater.