By Ernest Kearney — The folks behind Queen Bee were among the first I engaged with when plowing the collective crowds at the Office Hours. I found them engaging, and was immediately intrigued by their show’s concept; a parody of British author William Golding’s bleak 1955 novel Lord of the Flies.
I had high hopes. Hopes were dashed.
Not that the cast was lacking talent. But talent without structure, guidance and purpose is about as useless as a white crayon.
The thing about “concepts” is that if they’re strong, it doesn’t really matter how outlandish or inane they may be. If they’re committed to they’ll generally work. This is true of comedy (League of Gentlemen) and drama (most of the Shakespeare Retold series.)
Queen Bee moves off their very strong concept very quickly, which needn’t have proved disastrous if they had had any idea of where they were going.
The show needed a producer who, if nothing else, would have explained to the playwright her work was far from done and that 90 minutes is 89 minutes too long if your intended theme lacks clarity and a director would have, definitely, helped even if they brought nothing more to the production other than telling the cast they needed to “share their voices.[1]”
There are some moments in Queen Bee, such as a slo-mo girl fight sequence, that hints at what the show could have been if serious work and hard thought had been applied to it, but it wasn’t.
One of the great values of the Fringe is it gives creative individuals the invaluable opportunity to fail and learn. The folks behind Queen Bee have finished the hard part of that course let’s see how they do in the second half.
[1] It is staggering to me the number of times at the Fringe when sitting in the third row of the Stephanie Feury Theatre I am unable to hear the performers…
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Playing During The Hollywood Fringe Festival 2024
at
Eastwood Performing Arts Center (Main Space)
1089 N Oxford Ave
DATES
Saturday June 29 2024, 8:30 PM | 90 mins
For Tickets and Additional Information Go To: www.hollywoodfringe.org
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