Minnesota Fringe Festival

We got a lovely review from Alan Berks the founder of MinnesotaPlaylist.com. Alan says, "This was a strange play but really good. Really strange and really good. Surprisingly accessible, considering. And Kevin MacLaughlin gives the best performance I've ever seen from him. I've seen him mostly do broad comedy but this performance was - how shall I say? I'll say something I never thought I'd say outside a sentence that had the words 'James Brown' in it -- his performance was "'soulful.'" Thank you Alan!

A serial killer reforms, founds Serial Killers Anonymous and totally wrecks his marriage in this dark comedy about boredom, community and child murder. You'll never think of '80s music in the same way again.

Bring us your disaffected and your tattooed, anyone who finds middle class trappings particularly icky. Your Lithopedion combines disquieting events with dark humor, designed to have audiences laughing automatically at things usually hidden behind the label "inappropriate." Specifically, dysfunctional marriages and mass murder. The show is all about veneer, and a chance to laugh at the basest impulses of American culture as the killer and his equally unhinged wife desperately search for the most questionable kinds of happiness. Like the couple themselves, there are profound problems just under the surface of the play, quickly revealed as the show jolts the audience along an unstable, fragmented false-narrative of dysfunction, family, and 12-step programs. So it always keeps the audience from settling in to representational conventions, or kicks them out of such expectations as soon as they get comfortable. It's a creature that walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, but on close inspection is really a fish.

NYTheatre.com says that "Maxwell has a definite eye for the bizarre" and reveals the works subversive structure when it says the "script doesn't . . . coalesce into a script as such."

The cast

Cherie Anderson
Role: Director
Cherie Anderson is free-lance theatre director and playwright. Anderson has directed and/or written theatre pieces for The Red Eye Collaboration, Theatre UnBound, Bedlam Theatre, Theatre L’Homme Dieu, Patrick’s Cabaret, WorksPlays, MadHatter’s Theatre, and the Little Opera �" Orchestra Society. In addition, she was the Artistic Director for Dream Lab Theatre �" A theatre for children.

Sarah Broude
Role: Wife
This is Sarah Broude’s first appearance with The Fringe. Since returning to Minnesota, she has worked with The Yellow Tree Theater (Pools and Miracle On Christmas Lake) and The Cromulent Shakespeare Company (Richard III, Hunchback, and Shakespeare Soup). You can see her this fall in The Flower Shop Project’s production of In the Weeds.

Justin Maxwell
Role: writer
Justin Maxwell’s plays have been performed in both Minneapolis and NYC, with“~6x³=SAFETY” recently being published in the journal Second Run. Justin is currently a TCG Affiliated Writer and has essays appearing this year in American Theatre, The Writer’s Chronicle’s Pedagogy Forum, and Contemporary Theatre Review. Justin is the drama editor of the online literary journal Midway.

Kevin McLaughlin
Role: Lithopedion
Kevin McLaughlin wrote & performed comedy for ten years with his troupe Hot Dish! and has since enjoyed an ongoing affair with the Ministry of Cultural Warfare. Other recent romps include Joseph Scrimshaw’s Stitch, Bitch N’ Die! No Refunds Theatre, Ensemble Productions, and the Fun with Law’s hit musical Soulless, Bloodsucking Lawyers.

Opium, Fireworks and Lead

Your Lithopedion

Sun., Aug. 2 @ 4:00 p.m.
Tue., Aug. 4 @ 10:00 p.m.
Thu., Aug. 6 @ 7:00 p.m.
Fri., Aug. 7 @ 4:00 p.m.
Sun., Aug. 9 @ 5:30 p.m.

Warning! Violence, Adult language

Venue Augsburg Studio
For ages 18+
Written by Justin Maxwell
Web site FacebookGroup:YourLithopedion
genres Comedy, Satire
subjects Family, Relationships
features Regional premiere (Minneapolis-St. Paul), Original script/choreography, First-time Minnesota Fringe Festival producer

Overall rating

User reviews

Dark and Brilliant
by Melissa Beukema Follow this reviewer
Rating 4 kitties
The flat delivery of the scene titles was great. The concept was fabulous and the wife was terrific in her ignorance and desperation.

I would love to see a longer version of this where we see more of the successes and pitfalls of 12 stepping.

A Bold, Successful Experiment
by Jon Mikkelsen Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
One of the darkest, blackest, most existential shows I have seen. The script is fascinating and perplexing. The subject matter makes you cringe and laugh. The audacity and courage of the performers impresses.

This show is experimental, for sure. But it is well thought out and executed and its pleasures derive not from its need to entertain so much as from the mesmerizing spell it casts.

The dead pan, measured pace would make you think the show would wear thin quickly, but what the playwright, performers and director have put together is completely compelling.

Not exactly a feel good Fringe show and thank God for that.

Engaging and disturbing
by August Berkshire Follow this reviewer
Rating 4 kitties
This will pleasantly and creepily help fill your schedule. The expressions on the face of Kevin alone are worth the price of admission.

"I love 80s rock"
by Dave Romm Follow this reviewer
Rating 3 kitties
Ann Landers said something like, "relationships are made in heaven when the rocks in his head match the holes in her head." In this case, the rocks are really rocks, and the calcified baby that is the title character (look it up) is a serial killer and his wife is alternately a harpy and an enabler. Some clever bits of stagecraft and good acting don't really help the script, which is interesting but doesn't go anywhere. In many respects, this is the counterpoint to the Fringe show June of Arc, but that's a different discussion.. A Shockwave Radio Theater Review.

Longer reviews with pictures at Baron Dave's LiveJournal and snarky comments on Facebook.

Mesmerizing
by Eric Netterlund Follow this reviewer
Rating 4 kitties
This show oozes a laugh-out-loud brand of dark humor. When I first read that this was a dark comedy about a serial killer, I was a bit wary of how it would treat its subject matter. I was relieved that it neither trivialized nor romanticized its character's hobby/obsession.
Overall, great show! I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Free coffee at the Hardware store!
by Ben Chadwick Follow this reviewer
Rating 4 kitties
Disturbing, disjointed, demented, and deadly. Kevin and Sarah give terrific performances of this difficult material. Tell your kids not to talk to strangers and don't take rides from stranger. Never trust your neighbors with the gazebo in the back yard. I will never think of a hardware store the same way again. This show will give you the creeps.

Dysfunction at its finest
by patty schaefer Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
Sarah Broude breathes new life into her role as the stereo typical house wife where picture perfect presentation to others is all one needs to cover the seething ocean of dysfunction that seeps into every orifice of her marriage. Her desperation at maintaining a visual ideal of the perfect home and marriage is evident and her frustration was beautifully portrayed to the audience.

A whole new Kevin Mclaughlin
by Matt Dawson Follow this reviewer
Rating 3 kitties
Anybody who's seen (and loved) Kevin McLaughlin in his many comedic roles should see this show. He's totally transformed! Go Kevin!

Brilliantly creepy
by Fringivitis Vulgaris Follow this reviewer
Rating 4 kitties
Every person with problems can benefit from finding the appropriate support group. Every marriage has its challenges. Every bit of real estate can use some improvements! This story is not linear but coalesces nicely to form a semblance of the whole. Plenty of funny props too.

Pure Genius on a levels!
by re gurgitate Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
After truding among swine I have found the pearl! A highly entertaining tale of the suburban serial killer, I cannot recommend this highly enough. Trust me I do not give 5 kitties lightly, but I would give this 10! Sarah Broude as the wife was a revelation and Kevin McLaughlin matched her abilities step for step. This is the must see show of the Fringe!

Fantastic Fringe Fare
by Gabrielle Rose Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
The next time you’re confronted with a serial killer, spare him your polite pleading: you’ll only bore him towards your inevitable death. He’s heard it all before, and in all likelihood your importunate requests will rob you both of the kind of passionate ardor your last breathtaking moment deserves.

While the play is most definitely a prop-laden minefield of rich subtexts and innuendos, what comes across quite poignantly is that no matter how intense our passions, how close we choose to dance on the precipice of the void, we’ve all experienced the kind of tedium that leads to existential dread, even serial killers. Lithopedion copes with his deadly ennui in the very best all-American spirit: he starts a neighborhood Serial Killers Anonymous group. And while all of us can relate to the pain that boredom breeds, it takes an extremely witty script and some uncanny acting talent to make you laugh – hard – at lassitude. Kevin McLaughlin’s fabulous characterization of the serial killer-cum-home improvement guy-cum latent self-help guru is at once creepy and sympathetic; you’ve gotta feel a little sorry for a guy whose intrepid devotion to his hobby is just not doing it for him anymore. Meanwhile, Wife, whose relentless libido and fantasy pregnancies, played with tremendous verve by Sarah Broude, provides a brilliant counterpointe to her husband’s grimmer obsessions. One caveat, though: If you’ve got a ♥ for adorable little stuffed animals, you might be better off staying at home with the beanie babies. This is definitely not a show for the humor-impaired.

Loved It!
by Jeffrey Spencer Follow this reviewer
Rating 4 kitties
This show gave me everything I want in a fringe show. Excellent acting, inspired staging, and risky direction of a fresh, smart script.

Quirky, and stylized with messages on several levels, I was completely taken in with a fascination of who this stoney serial killer is and why his wifey wife refuses to see him for what he is. While exploring a marriage in the bizarrist of circumstances, Maxwell ends up describing the majority of marriages that I am familiar with. The point is we're never talking about what we're talking about. The real issue is always something else.

be afraid to laugh and be afraid not to!
by shutup quit asking Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
this show was squirmingly smart and funny. We laughed because we knew that we didn't want to, but had to. Put this on our list!

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