KC Fringe "The Bottom of Everything" review by JLin

This isn't the end, it's just the bottom.

Rating: 4

The Bottom of Everything

KC Fringe Festival

Different Choices Productions' The Bottom of Everything

The Bottom of Everything is billed as "a play about redemption and what happens when we fail" but I felt that it was so much more than that, and told in such a simple way.  Derrick moves in with some old high school friends after spending three years in jail and falls back into old habits.  This group of twenty-somethings work at jobs they don't care about just to make rent and buy drugs and alcohol, giving the audience all the comedy and drama you could expect to receive from such circumstances.  From drunken hook ups to overdoses, this play has it all covered and forces you to ask yourself, "What was your one mistake?".

Playwright Denver Little succeeded in creating a script that felt like real life, rather than an imitation.  The dialogue was natural and there was no unnecessary filler; it was incredibly well written.  The only part that I found out of place and confusing was the very opening of the play.  In complete darkness, a voice over is played.  A man's voice is telling a story and starts to sing a song.  I couldn't tell you what that man said or what the song was because it was so disconnected and hard to focus on when there was nothing to look at.  All I can honestly remember is something about someone's birthday.  Other than that strange beginning, I was very impressed.

I was disappointed with Derrick, played by Justin Whittaker.  There were several points during the performance in which he was an actor reading lines rather than a character living and responding in the moment of the play.  Also, though this has no affect on his acting abilities, I was often very distracted by his strabismus (a condition of the eyes) because I could never tell where he was looking.  Because it doesn't change Whittaker's performance in anyway, this probably wouldn't have been a factor in a larger space because the audience would be too far away to tell.

Wes, played by Kyle Dyck, is the source of most of both the hilarity and sorrow.  "Once a dumbass, always a dumbass," he gives us plenty to laugh at for the first few scenes before going into a seizure from a heroin overdose.  Even if I didn't know Kyle personally, it would have been incredibly hard to watch.  If you have ever seen a real seizure, you will know that Dyck is pretty much spot on.  Nate was portrayed by the playwright himself, so he, of course, had no trouble playing the character as it was meant to be.

The most impressive performances were given by Bob Linebarger (Curtis) and Maggie Parker (Leta).  Their characters were so incredibly real; nothing was overdone or undersold.  When Leta is first introduced she is incredibly drunk and actors often struggle with making this believable.  Parker was fantastic, using subtle movements, such as almost falling off of her high heel, to show her intoxication rather than staggering around the stage.  In the final scene Curtis is crying over lost loved ones, and Linebarger had no trouble producing real tears.  I often find myself shutting down when actors scrunch up their faces and wail to make it seem as if they are really weeping so I was glad when this was not one of those cases.

In general, this is a wonderful show (if you can stomach the hard hitting issues) and one that you really shouldn't miss.  I hope that this production is reprised for a fourth time in the near future so that more people will have a chance to see it and remember "this isn't the end.  It's just the bottom."  4 out of 5 stars.

For the remaining performances of The Bottom of Everything see kcfringe.org