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Dear Fringegoer:

What’s the next item up for bid? Narrative.

So you’re headed to Showcase Showdown, SpeakeasyDC’s storytelling/The Price Is Right mashup?  Awesome; you’re gonna have a good time.

And you say you’re an extroverted sort, and so will be putting your name in the running to be called down as a contestant, and possibly earn the chance to win glamorous prizes? Glad to hear it!  Knock yourself out. Mazel tov.

Little advice?

The mechanics of Showcase Showdown are straight-up TPIR: Once your name is called, you’ll take a seat in Contestants’ Row (read: three downstage chairs) and bid for a chance to play a game.  But you won’t be bidding on a lounge suite, a canister vacuum, or a 18-inch television encased in a faux-walnut console the size of the Altar of Baal. Instead, you’ll be listening to a SpeakeasyDC storyteller, who’ll stop midway through and ask you to guess a number relevant to the story he or she is telling. You’ll bid (guess), the story will continue and the number in question will be revealed — and the contestant who came closest to the actual number without going over will win.

Basic, right? A process most of us soaked up via pop-culture-osmosis over years of ditching school to laze on the couch snarfing Pop-Tarts, right?

If we are to judge by the performances of Showcase Showdown contestants to date: Wrong.

Lookit:  There’s a simple science to bidding on The Price is Right. Pencil-necked academics have published papers on it.  Game-theory geeks have filled message boards with bid-bloviatin’.

But you don’t need to worry your pretty little head with any of that.  We’re gonna break it down for you.

Keep this mnemonic in mind:  ABC3.  Always. Be. Contestant #3.

You want to be sitting in the chair farthest downstage, because (unlike TPIR, which rotates the order of bidding), the Speakeasy DC folk always start with the contestant in the chair farthest upstage.  This will provide you with the singular advantage of knowing your competitors’ bids, which allows you to exploit a quirk of the rules to best effect.

Remember: The idea is to come closest without going over.  You don’t get extra points for guessing on the nose.

Okay, let’s role-play:

It’s last Friday night.  You’re a beardy guy who’s made his way into Contestants’ Row.  The first contestant was asked the number of times the storyteller … did something (no spoilers here).  The true number could be just about anything, really – 1 to 100 or more, it’s anyone’s guess.

Contestant #1 guesses “3.”

Contestant #2, for reasons of her own, guesses “5.”

Now it’s your turn, Beardy McGurk. Here are your options.

1. Guess “1.” A time-tested strategy, to be employed if and only if you believe your fellow contestants have all overbid.  As a gambit, it is simple, elegant, and not a little bit snooty; it says “Oh, DO let’s allow cooler heads to prevail, hmm?”  It’s effective, having sent many a corpulent Keokuk realtor into the waiting arms of Bob/Drew. In this particular case, however, the odds are against it being the smart move; ideally, you want to see a little more daylight between “0″ and the lowest bid before busting out the ol’ 1er.

2. Guess “6.” You know who wins in life?  Who wins elections, money, narrative-based-game shows?  I’ll tell you: The bold, that’s who. Granted, this is an aggressive tactic. Which is to say: Yes, it’s a dick move. You’d be claiming for yourself all rational and imaginary numbers above 5, essentially shutting out contestant #2 — and she looks like a nice person.  But you know what, Grizzly Addams?  There’s Fringe glory at stake here.  Fringe glory, and an Econo-size bottle of Palmolive.  Which, we shouldn’t really have to point out, SOFTENS HANDS WHILE YOU DO THE DISHES.  So risk the approbation of the crowd, and nut up already.

There’s … another option, of course. It’s the one chosen by that beardy guy last Friday night.  Call it the Path of What The Fuck Are You Doing, I Mean Are You Kidding Here, With This?  Because that’s what the ardent TPIR-watcher two rows in front of me exclaimed, when she witnessed it.

3. Guess “4.” Yep, no kidding: 4. The one number that occupies the tiny patch of real estate on the number line between his fellow contestant’s guesses. I mean: Come on.

Do we even need to tell you he didn’t win?  We don’t, right?

Here endeth the lesson.  But if you glean only one bit of wisdom from this experience, let it be this:

Don’t bid like Beardy Guy.

It was clear that the sizable and chatty crowd in the Burke Theatre was ready to have a blast.  The Fringe goers who were looking for a subdued evening of theatre had gone other places.  This was going to silly fun.  And Speakeasy DC did not disappoint with The Showcase Showdown.

The folks from Speakeasy, DC’s life storytelling company, are putting on a show that’s a bit different for them (from what I can tell).  The company that brought us Fringe classics The Sin Show (‘09) and Chocolate Jesus (‘08) are back, and this time they’ve turned their storytelling prowess into a game show, with real audience participation. They’ve spoofed the heck out of “The Price is Right” and put all sorts of games in between their stories.

For those of you who don’t know Speakeasy, they train people in the art of storytelling and do regular shows where people get up and tell true stories on a particular theme (for NPR listeners, it’s a lot like The Moth.)  We saw Chocolate Jesus two years ago and really enjoyed it.  This new production takes all the fun of their regular shows and spruces it up with little variations on TPIR pricing games like “cliff hangers” for the audience to enjoy in between acts.

As always, the Speakeasy crew spins some wonderful yarns. 
Cindy and Mike Kane are particularly enjoyable as they tell the tale of an affair and a cat, and Christopher Love had the audience riveted with his story of a roommate from hell.  John Kevin Boggs is fantastic as the host Rob Parker.  His hokey cheese is just what any TPIR spoof needs.  And B. Stanley is spot on as the announcer.

I don’t know that this is a company that needs gimmicks to make their formula work, but I don’t think the sparkly sequences and audience participation hurt at all.  The stories may not have been as deep as those in some of their other shows, but they were fun, and fringe-y, and that’s what matters.

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We’ve chided the SpeakeasyDC folks in this space before – gently, and never less-than-admiringly – about their ringer status.  For years now, they’ve been the trust-fund babies of Fringe, what with their built-in local fanbase, deep(ish) pockets, their mutant ability to sell out shows without working up a sweat and, yes, their reviews, which dependably land on the Fringe-Metacritic scale somewhere between “fawning” and “fellating.”

They’ve got laurels, is my point, and the impulse to rest on them must have been powerful strong. After all, the Speakeasy formula would seem to encourage repetition; certainly last year’s Sin Show – seven storytellers taking on the Seven Deadlies – wasn’t appreciably different than their previous Fringe outings, or indeed their weekly shows, unless “a bit longer” counts as different.

There’s also the fact that the stories these performers tell have been workshopped to hell — painstakingly shaped, honed, crafted for maximum effect.  Which, if you think about it, is about un-Fringey as it gets.

And that’s probably why this year’s outing, with its slap-dash gameshow bells and whistles (the bells, at least, are quite literal) feels so heartening.  The storytelling’s just as strong: Witness Sheldon Scott’s portrait of himself as a young overachiever, which he stuffs with rich language that should sound written, but never does; or Jessica Solomon’s note-perfect, finely detailed evocation of 1992. It’s also just as varied: Solomon seems to be just discovering the beats and laugh lines of her story, while the wounded, faux-exasperated tone Mike Kane employs to relate a tale of cat-napping seems more calibrated – but just as funny.

But the low-rent, low-fi, low-brow Price is Right gimcrackery in which they’ve couched the stories?  The contestants from the audience? The golden-throated announcer (B. Stanley, who’s more Gary Owens than Johnny Olson/Rod Roddy, really)?  The glamorous prizes (read: Shake n’ Bake)? The  louche host (John Kevin Boggs, who bats a perfectly respectable .500, in quip-per-laugh ratio)?  The interstitial vintage commercials (seriously, that Old Spice spot is just disquieting)?

It’s all filled with awkward pauses, blown cues, strained laughter, panicky performers, and flop sweat.  It’s cheesy and exciting and kind of awkward, and watching it you can’t miss the fact that these people have stepped outside their comfort zone, that they don’t know quite what’s going to happen, and that wherever the evening ends up, you and they are gonna discover it together.

SpeakeasyDC: Welcome to Fringe.

See it if: Your favorite pricing game is Cliffhanger.

Skip it if: Your favorite pricing game is that shitty golf one.

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Fringe Festival: What we’ll be seeing
by Stephanie Merry
July 6, 2010

Speakeasy DC needs no help with publicity given that its Fringe shows routinely sell out. Yet, because last year’s “The Sin Show” was my favorite performance of the festival, I must give credit where it’s due. This year’s entry adds a dose of spectator participation, including the chance for audience members to decide whether the story they just heard is true or false.

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