Reviews of shows from the New York International Fringe Festival will appear on ArtsBeat through the festival’s close on Aug. 25. For more information, go to fringenyc.org.
Long before there was Occupy, there was the O.P.
In 1808, the Covent Garden Theater, one of two theaters in London authorized to perform Shakespeare and other spoken drama, burned down, and the theater management hadn’t bought any insurance. After a new, more sumptuous structure was built and opened in 1809, ticket prices rose sharply to cover the construction costs. This resulted in one of modern history’s early consumer protests, known as the “Old Price Riots†or “O.P.†for short. Crowds sang, danced and jeered for 66 consecutive nights, displaying histrionics that rivaled even Lady Macbeth’s.
“Kemble’s Riot†recreates the ruckus in a compact, interactive history lesson, not unlike the sort of setup that might travel to high schools blessed with money to burn on arts programming.
Adrian Bunting’s play alternately shows two 19th-century thespians (Guy Masterson and Beth Fitzgerald) onstage fretting magniloquently about the underappreciated worth of their talents, their new playhouse and their roles as custodians of public taste, and two front-row audience plants (Matt Baetz and Marla Schultz, both stand-up comics) riffing in somewhat lower diction about the history and motivations of the O.P. movement. These paid peanut-gallerians, employing megaphones and other props, rally the audience to join them in chanting and chucking things at the stage.
The embedded actors deliver some rather forced comparisons to the recent financial crisis and bank bailouts. But for theatergoers attending a festival devoted to dirt-cheap dramatics, it’s still gratifying to learn of a magical age when hoi polloi thought affordable theater was worth fighting for.
“Kemble’s Riot†continues through Saturday at Players Theater
115 Macdougal Street, Greenwich Village.
