Queen City Flash Broke Into Our Hearts with Killjoy, Ohio at Cincy Fringe
We were going to pick our jaws up off the floor but they disappeared.
By Ricky and Dana Young-Howze
The buzz around this show was deafening when Dana and I first started the Cincy Fringe almost two weeks ago. And one thing that we will say starting out is that Queen City Flash’s social media game was a far cry ahead of everyone else. So when we first opened up on a handheld camera panning over the credits we didn’t know what was in store for us but we did get this epic vibe…a camera is walking down the hall and into a closet and then two faces show up on the screen. And then it started with words that will live in infamy with Dana and me forever: “Do you want to tell a story”?
That slow walk to the closet and our glimpse that Trey Tatum was alone in there was a very important step. It's reminiscent of how a magician shows us the “Cabinet of Mystery” is empty before “Wanda the Weirdo” steps out of it. It is important that we are reminded that these two actors are alone in separate houses while performing. Why? Because with what you're going to see in the next hour will either seem like cheating or straight up witchcraft if you didn't.
Dana and I were stunned silent. They were able to weave a story that caught your attention from the first walk down Route 666. And all of a sudden this little zoom play went off and something unexpected occurred. They had stage lights! Freaking lights and colored washes behind them! What right do these guys have being both good and putting a conflabbed color wash in a Zoom play!?!
And that's not all they had. Through uses of lighting effects, filters in front of the camera, and using duplicate props and tricks to make it look like they're passing things to each other they created this kind of magic realism that makes you totally forget that they're in separate houses. Your mind can't even fathom that they're more than three feet away from each other. Because if they aren't your brain will explode from the cognitive dissonance!
Trey Tatum and Jordan Trovillion have a crazy rapport which is great because their timing has got to be spot on. Because not only does Tatum have to grab a phone on his side at the exact moment that Trovillion is handing out a phone until it is out of frame where she can drop it, there's a moment when Jordan is tossing him keys and it's just amazing as he actually catches a set of keys that are tossed his way. You know there's a simple answer but your only thought is “this is totally witchcraft”.
And all of a sudden you’re seeing details from them that a normal audience would miss. They can hold things up to the camera. They can do tiny little things that were usually too intimate for even the smallest black box. This means the show is very special. We’re being treated to something genuinely special that we may never see in the same way again. And these two and their director Bridget Leak deserve a ribbon for daring to go there and lay down the gauntlet.
And then there are all the little threads that get set up in the beginning and brought around full circle. I'm not a huge fan of extra complicated exposition but it's a credit to Tatum's craft as a playwright. So when you hear about ice cream cones, sex cults, and postcards each of those places come back to pay off for you in a very strange way!
Even the most random side quests pay off at the end. We have a bet that the lost “silver bracelet” they talk about in a random monologue is different every time and they have a blank in the script to work it in when the time comes. (If that's not the case let Dana down gently we have five bucks riding on this).
And it also had the audacity to be touching. We make a joke because it is easy to make me cry watching a show. I cry at the drop of a hat. But when you get Dana tearing up you have a real winner on your hands. She never cries and she was reaching for tissues with this one.
We got so emotionally invested. They built characters so quickly that we immediately bought into them. And we hands down celebrate that Jordan and Trey don't get together at the end of this! We're so tired of Manic Pixie Dream Girl seductresses and we were afraid of that the minute that she broke into his house and started being witty. So happy to be disappointed in that regard.
This show is the proof that going to the Fringe is about the nuggets of gold shows like this. This is the diamond in the rough that you go to Fringe's for because you’ll never find them anywhere else! They have no right being this good. Now we're not saying that other Fringe Shows weren't equally as good but something about this play caught us off guard.
It's a very heavy play for being so light-hearted. There's a lot of themes packed into this: Love, joy, friendship, camaraderie, loss. But those are the best plays. They make you laugh, cry, punch a wall, maybe all three but in the end you get this release. We got a true catharsis with this piece.
And now it's your turn to get some of your own! Go to their ticket page and see this show for yourself! And of course tell us how you liked it on our social media.
