Fringe Festival: "From Here to Maternity"

Day: 8

Show: 27

Title: From Here to Maternity

Category: Comedy

By: Shanan Custer and Joshua English Scrimshaw

Created by: Custer and Scrimshaw

Location: Illusion Theater

Summary: A comedy about what it means to become a parent.

Highlights: If you've seen Shanan's Ivey Award winning show 2 Sugars, Room for Cream, this will seem familiar to you - it's a similar concept except the subject is pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood, rather than coffee (and if you haven't see it, you should check it out at Park Square in January). The through-story is series of scenes about Meg and Charlie as they journey through the decision to have children, pregnancy, and childbirth. In between we see related sketches, including a fight between a midwife* and a doctor, a reading of "Curious George Goes to Day Care," a song from Shanan, and an interpretive dance to "Cat's in the Cradle" from Joshua. Individually Shanan and Joshua are hilarious (see also Our American Assassin and Kafka Nuts), and together they're comedy gold. Although they're married to other people, their real-life friendship makes them a very believable married couple. The scenes and situations are real and natural, and it's just plain funny, even if you're not a parent.

*There are several jokes about hairy legged or pitted women, about which I refer you to a Fringe show I saw last week, Natural Novice.