The campiest and most outlandish thing I saw at this year's Cincinnati Fringe Festival was "You Only Live Forever Once," a high-energy puppet show from Minneapolis-based Four Humors Theater, a wacky parody of the James Bond thrillers.
Four actors play the primary roles to interact with puppets, which also serve as their stand-ins for some of the scenes too complicated to stage. I guess we can call them puppets, if drawings and photographs pasted onto popsicle sticks are puppets. Although extremely low-tech, however, they are clever and used with a high level of creativity and energy. And this is supposed to be campy, so it works out all right. The script works in every cliche in the genre: Cocktail parties, quirky villains, dashing spies, femme fatales, crosses, double-crossses and triple-crosses, chase scenes on the land, air and sea. You name it, they've crammed it into a 60 minute show. The gags come thick and fast, so we don't have to dwell on the clunkers (though there weren't that many).
This was Four Humor Theater's fourth Cincy Fringe appearance, and we hope this means they've become a festival staple.
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