Review: BADDER AUDITIONS a Sequel to Last Year's Hit at the Fringe Festival

Badder Auditions produced by Whim Productions is sidesplitting, roll on the floor good fun and is currently playing as part of the Kansas City Fringe Festival 2015. Showing at the City Stage located inside Union Station it is a sequel to Bad Auditions, which was a hit for the 2014 Kansas City Fringe Festival.

Producing Artistic Director of Whim Productions Kevin King returns to the stage as the director looking for talent to fill his script. Unfortunately, he has overbooked his six o'clock appointment with eight of the strangest, bizarre, and okay let us face it weirdest actors to ever step on a stage. What ensues is one of the funniest hours of any Kansas City Fringe production.

Tara Varney, a member of the 2014 cast, returns with an outdated head shot to audition for King. Last Fringe Festival she was a crying actor who could not hold back the tears long enough to audition. This year she no longer cries at the drop of hat, thanks to the assortment of pills she is taking. She is hilarious as she takes more and more prescribed meds and they take effect.

Devon Barnes is fabulous as the actor who plans to audition with a song, a duet that is. Barnes plays a neurotic, obsessed, deranged actor who would benefit greatly from a handful of pills from Varney's bag. Jeff Smith and Laura Jacobs are magnificent, Smith as a Texan with white cowboy boots and Jacobs as the professional who has to keep her lines on her phone. King calls both back for a second reading of the script he has written.

This Fringe submission is filled with talented actors who according to King brought their own creative characters to the stage. Other actors to thrill the audience on Wednesday night were Eli Purdom, P. T. Mahoney, Rasheedat Badejo, and Susanna Lee aka Lucky Deluxe. Additional actors Pete Bakely, Erika Lynnette Baker, Jeni Diamond, Bonnie Griffin, Bonita Hanson, Ryan Hruza, and Kat Ruprecht make up the remainder of characters that will perform Badder Auditions during the Fringe Festival.

This is one of only two shows I have attended so far that I would want to watch a second time. Badder Auditions continues through Saturday July 25. Purchase tickets at the door and a Fringe button is required for entry. Photo courtesy of Bob Evans.