Production photos from John & Abigail are now available. You can see them here. Only two more shows remain: Saturday at 4 pm and Sunday at 2 pm (both at the Bryant-Lake Bowl in Minneapolis, MN). We’ve been getting some fabulous reviews. A few sample quotes:

“Alexander cuts a fine figure as John… he smolders…” – Fringe Audience Review

“This play… is full of insight and charm.” – Fringe Audience Review

“I found myself being drawn into the letters of two remarkable people and the sacrifices they made…” – Fringe Audience Review

“Patriotic Minimalism: John and Abigail does what Fringe shows do best…” – Fringe Audience Review

I also highly recommend Killer Smile, written by Steve Moulds and directed by Brian Balcom. This is quite possibly the best show in this year’s Fringe (my own work of towering genius excepted, of course… >ahem<) and there’s only show left (Sunday at 4 pm). So what you should do is come and see John & Abigail at 2 pm and then drive a half mile or so down Lyndale Ave. to the Theater Garage and catch Killer Smile at 4 pm.

EDIT: The production photos were taken by Marci Tiesel. Ms. Tiesel is also available for weddings, birthdays, and other celebrations. She can be reached at 612-743-4634.

Adapted from the Letters of John and Abigail Adams

Friday, August 3rd – 6 pm
Sunday, August 5th – 10 pm
Wednesday, August 8th – 6 pm
Saturday, August 11th – 4 pm
Sunday, August 12th – 2 pm

Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater
810 West Lake Street
Minneapolis, MN
Uptown Tix – 651-209-6799

John and Abigail opens tonight at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater in Minneapolis, MN as part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival. I both wrote the play (adapting it from the original letters of John Adams and his wife Abigail) and star in it (as John Adams).

When you come to see the show, don’t be afraid to introduce yourself. Please be aware, however, that — due to the tight schedule constraints of the Fringe Festival — my crew and I only have 20 minutes to completely vacate the theatre and make way for the next performance. So you might have to hang around for a bit until we’ve finished scurrying around.

Hope to see you there!

SEEN ON THE INTERNET: Someone plagiarized Jane Austen and then submitted the work to eighteen major publishers. This would be pretty stupid in its own right, but the bloke receives something of a reprieve because it was, in fact, a stunt. He typed out the manuscripts, using a pseudonym that cleverly alluded to Jane Austen’s early pen-name, and submitted them to see what kind of reaction he would get.

So why does this guy deserve a prominent spot on The List of Idiocy?

Because he actually thought that this would be some sort of meaningful demonstration of the difficulty of getting a novel published.

Wait. It gets better: He actually uses the boilerplate rejection letters he receives as “evidence” that the publishing industry wouldn’t publish a piece of classic literature if it arrived at their doorstep.

Think about it for a second: If you’re reading a manuscript (one of many dozens that you receive every day) and you quickly realize that what you’re reading is, in fact, the plagiarized opening chapter of a Jane Austen novel, would you bother writing out a lengthy response explaining that you would publish this novel if it were not, in fact, plagiarized? Probably not. You’re just going to grab your standard rejection letter, stuff it in this moronic plagiarist’s SASE, and stick it in your Outbox.

Or you’ll simply dump the whole package into your trash bin, which is what many of the publishers apparently did. (And, hilariously, this too is used as “evidence” that Jane Austen couldn’t get published today.)

The only thing this “experiment” manages to “prove” is that someone blatantly plagiarizing Jane Austen can’t get published today.

Now, if you want to talk about the possibility that short-sighted publishers are rejecting manuscripts which later go on to be huge successes with massive readerships… well, you don’t have to look too far. A sequel to The Hobbit was requested by the publisher, who then rejected The Lord of the Rings twelve years later (before a fortunate chain of events led to the book being published). Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time was rejected 26 times before it was published. More recently, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was rejected by at least a dozen publishers before being purchased by Bloomsbury.

Is it possible that there are authors just as talented as Jane Austen who have never been published and whose work has been lost to the misty tides of history? Almost certainly. Has this somehow become more prevalent in recent years? Almost certainly not.

For example, let’s take Jane Austen herself: She originally sold Susan (the novel which would later become Northanger Abbey) to an extremely minor publisher in 1803, four years after it had been completed. This minor publisher never actually got around to publishing the book, however, and it was not until 1811 that Jane Austen’s first novel, Sense and Sensibility, was published… at her own expense.

That’s right, Jane Austen herself was originally published by the 19th century equivalent of a vanity press.

So even if we were to accept this idiot’s premise that submitting blatant plagiaries of Jane Austen’s work demonstrates anything at all about the likelihood of escaping the slush pile, the only thing he’s demonstrated is that absolutely nothing has changed in two hundred years. (At least, when it comes to editors being gifted with some unique insight into what will or won’t be embraced by the public.)

As some of you may already be aware, the 35W Interstate bridge across the Mississippi in Minneapolis collapsed last night at around 6 o’clock p.m. I am posting this around 1 a.m. to let everyone know that I am safe, and — as far as I can tell — everyone I know in the area is safe. I have, however, been forced to turn off my phone, because I am exhausted and I must sleep. Thank you for your concern, however. And my own thoughts and best wishes lie with all those who are still awake tonight with doubt or fear or grief in their hearts.

The reason I’m so exhausted at the moment? We finished the tech period for John & Abigail today. With the exception of mending a few buttons on our costumes and tucking away a few other odds and ends, we are as ready as we’ll ever for our opening at 6 p.m., August 3rd at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater (810 West Lake Street). We’re essentially taking tomorrow off to give everyone involved a chance to recuperate and rest, so that we can explode onto the stage Friday night with the best play you’ll see at this year’s Minnesota Fringe Festival.

I’m a bit bummed at the moment.

I recently discovered the BBC series Hustle. The show is about a group of professional con-men and every episode features a con in the style The Sting. As soon as I heard the concept, I knew this was a show I had to check out. And as soon as I saw the first episode I was completely hooked.

The show truly delivers on its promise: Every episode is a tightly-scripted and carefully-constructed piece that delivers the special magic of the long con. It really does feel as if you’re watching an episodic version of Ocean’s Eleven.

Adrian Lester, who plays the role of the mastermind and leader for the group, exudes the confidence, slickness, and sex appeal of a Brad Pitt or a Robert Redford. Robert Vaughn, who plays the wizened master, has the quiet mastery of a Paul Newman or George Clooney. The cons themselves are clever, elaborate, and masterfully executed. The entire show reeks of glamour and cleverness and sophistication.

But what really makes the show click is that the writers and directors clearly understand that, when you’re making a movie (or television series) about a long con, the first thing you must do is con the audience. The creators of Hustle are constantly trying to keep one step ahead of you, and it’s a real joy to try to keep one step ahead of them.

So why am I bummed?

I’ve just hit the fourth season of the series, and it all seems to be falling apart. Adrian Lester, for whatever reason, left the show. This has left the show without it’s strong center — it’s become Ocean’s Eleven without Danny Ocean. At the same time, the writing seems to have become sloppy, bloated, and ham-fisted. The cleverness and slickness is gone. Some of this may be intentional since, without Adrian Lester’s character, the team itself lacks that cleverness and slickness. But the result is simply not as satisfying.

And perhaps the creative team has simply used up its ideas. There are only so many ways in which the basic components of a con can be spun, after all, before you’re really just spinning your wheels. I was certainly seeing some weaknesses appearing even towards the end of the third season.

For example, one of the clever storytelling conceits the show employed in its very first episode was the freeze-frame: While the con is running, the action will suddenly enter a freeze frame — except for the grifters themselves, who will take the opportunity to turn to the camera and begin explaining the nature of the con. This was slick and clever and very well done. It has led to a general friendliness with the fourth wall in the series, in which the audience is drawn into the grifters’ inner circle through knowing looks, glances, double-takes, and the like.

But as the series has gone on, this use of the fourth wall has begun to be, in my opinion, abused. This unfortunate trend culminates late in the third season when the entire cast suddenly breaks into a full-fledged Bollywood musical number. They were, at the time, executing a con in which they attempted to convince a mark to invest in a Bollywood film (so there was some semblance of a connection). But, whatever the excuse may have been, the reality is that not only the con, but the characters and the dramatic reality of the sequence were all put on hold for a self-indulgent and utterly unnecessary extravagance.

So, in any case, I’m bummed because I have a strong feeling that this show has jumped the shark on me.

If it has, though, I’m going to keep my eye on the silver lining: I got eighteen really exceptional episodes of television in the show’s first three seasons (of six episodes each). And if that’s all I get, that’s more than most series can ever boast of.