Mr. Fox
by Greg Landucci
Fringe legend TJ Dawe and Greg Landucci have teamed up again! Following the sold-out success of the 2006/07 Fringe hit DISHPIG ( “Best of Fest” Winnipeg, “Patron’s Pick” Orlando, “Pick of the Fringe” Vancouver) they bring you a behind-the-scenes look at the twisted world of a rock radio station mascot.
June 24th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
From the ORLANDO FRINGE, MAY 2008
By Elizabeth Maupin
SENTINEL THEATER CRITIC
Mr. Fox comes on strong, just like Radio Station 99.3, The Fox, or CFOX, where young Craig Lombardi is trying to get a job. Craig’s willing to do anything, so he winds up playing Mr. Fox, the station’s mascot, and the job is both his first big achievement and his introduction to the great, cruel world.
Greg Landucci, at the Fringe last year with the exhilarating Dishpig, once worked as a radio-station mascot, so I’m guessing there’s a lot of truth in Mr. Fox, which Landucci delivers with all the force of one of those hard-wired radio jocks.
Introducing each character with a big, laminated cue card, he races from a squeaky-voiced academic to a hard-guy mascot specialist and from the three rules of mascotting (“do not take the head off in public”) to the 13 important qualities of mascotting, which wind up, ominously, with “the ability to withstand high temperatures for long periods of time.”
There’s an aura of goofy innocence about Landucci, and so you always feel for him – when he finds that he’s the best Mr. Fox around (“That was excellent foxing, man,” a DJ tells him) and then when the fickle crowds turn. But this is also rock ‘n’ roll storytelling – high-energy, loud and lots of fun. Our Mickeys and Minnies could take a lesson here.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Interesting look at what it means to be a mascot. As someone in the media, I thoroughly enjoyed laughing it up at this hopeful commercial DJ. I may be in community-oriented media now, but I did start out in commercial radio. I found myself reflecting back to those days on my walk home. I loved the stereotypes here. Several of the characters were much like people I worked with. My station didn’t have a mascot, but it did pride itself on the local remote broadcasts and presence in the community. So some of the things that Landucci’s characters were saying, I’ve heard it all before. And I thought the script was pretty good. Not an ending I expected, and I have to admit I’m still waiting to know what did actually happen. I was a little surprised at how little movement there was in the show, though. There was a lot of ’setting up the story’ in the beginning, so I was a little worried. But that resolved itself in the end. And Landucci’s main character was spot on.