Extra Virgin, Bridezilla Strikes Back! and The Irish Curse Among Sold Out at Fringe

By Ernio Hernandez
17 Aug 2005

Extra Virgin, Bridezilla Strikes Back! and The Irish Curse join The Rude Pundit and Silence! The Musical among the shows that have sold out their limited runs at the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival. Other shows have sold out performances.

Fleet Week: The Musical, The Miss Education of Jenna Bush, The Friar and the Nurse, Elements of Style, Movie Geek, Sex with Jake Gyllenhaal and Other Fables of the Northeast Corridor, Thick, Tarot Reading, Half Life, It's Phuc Tap! and The Last Two Minutes of The Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen have all filled select performances to capacity.

Additional performances of popular and sold out shows will be added daily, according to a Fringe spokesperson, dependent on actors' schedules and theater availability.

The festival's big first-day ticket sales intake of just under $25,000 in sales (all at $15 per ticket) was up about 45% over the previous year's at this time. By the one-week mark (Aug. 8) it had reached $100,000. Numbers after the festival opening have not been tabulated as of yet due to the lengthy process of cash-at-the-door sales take, but are expected to add $70,000.

A complete guide for all the shows at this year's New York International Fringe Festival, through Aug. 28, is now available online at www.FringeNYC.org. Tickets to all shows are $15 each, and multi-show discount passes are also available. For more information, call (212) 279-4488 (in NY) or (888) FringeNYC (outside NY).

More than 200 submissions were invited to FringeNYC 2005 (almost 180 of which will participate). As in previous years (e.g. The Passion of George W. Bush and Infertility, The Musical That's Hard to Conceive), some shows employ unique titles to vie for attention among the many works to be seen at this year's festival.

Among the eye-catching titles this year are:

  • A Lesbian in the Pantry
  • A Play with Myself
  • BRIDEZILLA STRIKES BACK!
  • by Oscar Micheaux
  • BYUIOO
  • Cemetery of Lips
  • Dance With Me, Harker
  • DYKAPALOOZA
  • FLUFFY BUNNIES IN A FIELD OF DAISIES
  • Fucking Ibsen Takes Time
  • GRANDMOTHERFUCKER & THE SEDUCERS
  • JESUS IN MONTANA: Adventures in a Doomsday Cult
  • LOL
  • My Pony's in the Garage
  • SITCHAASSDOWN
  • Slow Children Playing
  • Sunset Bitch
  • TEST TITLE
  • The Greatest B-Movie Ever Told
  • The Mayor Who Would Be Sondheim
  • The Miss Education of Jenna Bush
  • The Monster Under My Bed Drank My Vodka
  • Weddings of Mass Destruction
  • Yes, We have No Bananas!
  • You Wanna Piece of Me?

    Following in the Urinetown formula, a number of musicals are announcing their genre within their name, including:

  • Billionaires for Bush — The Musical
  • Byzantium: A New Musical
  • FLEET WEEK: The Musical
  • SILENCE! the Musical
  • SUV: The Musical!
  • The Banger's Flopera - A Musical Perversion
  • The Great Official Subway Musical
  • Treaty 321! A Musical
  • WARFIELD, USA: The Musical
  • You Again, a musical about cloning

    Lastly (though pared down from previous years), there are the standard long-named shows including:

  • Animal Farm project I - Version White: Funny Pigs
  • Edna St. Vincent Millay Speaks to the Committee on Immortality
  • Professor Dilexi Presents Dramatis Personae of the Apocryphal Menagerie
  • Sex with Jake Gyllenhaal and Other Fables of the Northeast Corridor
  • The Last Two Minutes of The Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen
  • Uncle Sam's Satiric Spectacular: On Democracy and Other Fictions Featuring Patriotism Acts and Blue Songs from a Red State
  • UNSPEAKABLE: Richard Pryor Live & Uncensored, a dramatic fantasia

    Among the more famous of Fringe alumni are the Off-Broadway stagings of Never Swim Alone, 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com, Debbie Does Dallas, Matt & Ben, The Joys of Sex and the upcoming Off-Broadway show, Dog Sees God. The grande dame of all Fringe alum is the Tony Award-winning Urinetown, which graduated to Off-Broadway, then Broadway and has since toured across the country.