We decidedly made the most of our last full day at the Fringe Festival. A total of three shows were on the schedule for the day, interspersed with food and lots of walking. We started the day with an early morning – or, an earlier morning than usual. Jamie and I had to make our way to the Assembly Roxy venue by 10:30am, and it was a lovely ten minute walk from the hotel. Walking around with Jamie was something that I had become very fond of, and we were both excited to see the first show of the day: Cartoooon!! (Those two extra “o’s” in the title are on purpose, by the way.)

Searching for shows to take Jamie to had been fun, and I was excited to take him to this one. The description of the performance began with, “High energy! High comedy! High unicycles!” and continued on to say that “the show fuses circus with Manga cartoons to deliver a masterclass in the universal language of laughter.” It was a show that felt destined for us to see. We got there with twenty minutes to spare, which I had come to learn was the preferable option to being late to a show, and running the risk of not being let in. 

The venue was a new one for us, and they were just opening their doors. Cartoooon!! was the first show of the day at Roxy Assembly, the volunteers and workers only beginning to set up the outside seating. Jamie and I sat ourselves down on a bench that was more of a boulder than bench and watched as the venue came to life. We were the first ones there when it came to the audience members of Cartoooon!!, and I had a slight fear that we were going to be the only ones there. As it grew closer to the actual time of the performance, more families began to appear, and although the theater wouldn’t be full, it was the perfect amount of people. Not too little, and not too much; it was a very Goldilocks moment. 

Creativity bounded off of the stage from the moment we stepped into the theater. The set in front of us was a bright circus tent, lit by dark purples and blues. It was a calming atmosphere, as if we, the audience, had stepped into a children’s– well, cartoon. Jamie and I chose the fourth row, being close enough to the stage to appreciate what was to come but being far enough that we felt more secure than we would have in the first row. The show was interactive, after all, and there’s a certain hesitancy to put yourself forward like that. Not that being in the fourth row saved us from being stepped over, anyway, and we found that out within the first five minutes of the entire show.

The show was, in summary, a lot of fun. The duo that made up the performing group, Witty Look, were full of energy and appreciation for the craft and audience. They interacted with the audience throughout the entire show, with Cheeky, the woman of the duo, even stepping out into the audience multiple times. (This is when Jamie and I were actually stepped over, the cause of which was Kiki hurrying to get back onto the stage.) Witty Look seamlessly blended comedy with physicality, which is not an easy thing to accomplish, and yet, there they were. I hadn’t heard Jamie laugh as hard as he did during that show in a long time. 

The final act of the show included a unicycle as tall as the auditorium allowed, which was genuinely insane to see. I know that they do that show practically every day, and that that stunt probably isn’t even the riskiest one, yet there is something about watching a man teeter on a ten foot tall unicycle (made up of other unicycles stacked on top of each other) that really gets your blood pumping. Daiki was on the unicycle for about two rounds around the stage before hopping off, which was two more rounds than I could ever expect to do. I broke my ankle once when I stood up; I know for a fact that I would be breaking more than that on a unicycle.

After the finale of circus-try, Daiki breaks the entertainment into a more emotional story. Daiki and Cheeky must say their goodbyes, to each other and to the audience. Whatever circus Cheeky stumbled into is not meant to be experienced for more than the runtime of the show. Returning to reality after a world shattering experience is always hard, after all, and there is no comedy when Daiki, who appeared from a suitcase at the beginning of the show, once again disappears into it. The show is over, and it was wonderful.

When leaving the venue, Cheeky is at the exit with a bucket for donations and the merchandise that comes from donating. Jamie and I both decided that the show was more than deserving of the little cash we had, which was five euros. Cheeky happily exclaimed that Jamie now had to choose a pin, one of either Cheeky or Daiki. Jamie, with no hesitation, chose Cheeky, to which she smiled and put her hand to her face, as if to say, “oh, stop it!” 

Both Jamie and I walked away from Cartoooon!! with wide smiles and a very hopeful expectation for the rest of the day.

The next show on the itinerary for the day wasn’t until the afternoon, so Jamie and I had time to kill. Time to kill flies by when you have things to do, however, so we had hardly gotten back to the hotel before it felt like we had to get moving again. Our mom was lucky enough to have nothing to do for the day until the show at night, the pièce de résistance of our time at the Fringe. I’m getting ahead of myself, though.

Our next show was at 2PM. It was another one that I had found specifically for Jamie, and I was excited to spend more time with him. (Don’t let him know that.) It was another perfect show for my nerd brother, because it was focused around video games. Yes, indeed, this show, entitled Game On: Boss Level, was an interactive kids show that was themed after popular video games. Now, I feel the need to immediately tell you the word that describes this show best, so you can’t build up any expectations. This singular word to describe Game On: Boss Level would be– chaos.

I mean, you see those photos, right? Absolute insanity! Basically, it was the perfect show for Jamie and I. He got to cause chaos, I got to laugh at it; there could be no better brother and sister outing. I was also able to support the man that ran the show and maybe spoil Jamie a little bit by buying the show’s souvenir bag, full of nerdy goodies that Jamie was excited about. It reminded me of when I was younger and my parents would take me to shows, like the How to Train Your Dragon LIVE show that my dad took me to. There’s nothing like a good souvenir, in my opinion.

Once again, we played Pokémon Go on our way back to the hotel. We jumped over puddles and walked past venues while catching a copious amount of “little guys” as I like to call them (whether they’re little or not), all the way back to the hotel. The sky had begun to fade into a stormy grey by the time we entered the Residence Inn, which foretold the rain that we would have to battle later when we walked to Nando’s for dinner.

Let me tell you something about myself. For years, I had no desire to eat chicken. One night can ruin an entire food, after all, and let me tell you, chicken was ruined. The South African chain Nando’s specializes in chicken, so you can imagine that I was a bit hesitant when my mom suggested it for dinner. However, the vegetarian options were more than appealing, as well as the fact that it was very reasonably priced. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from Nando’s, but let me just say… I would consider it magical. It singlehandedly brought me back into eating chicken, which is an impressive feat.

We ordered a decent chunk of their appetizers, including their delicious grilled halloumi and sweet potato fries. Despite being known for their PERi-PERi chicken, Nando’s is overflowing with vegetarian options. My mom ordered the grilled mushroom and halloumi pita, which was a vegetarian option that, even at first glance, beat out most of America’s chain vegetarian dishes. Jamie and I got orders of the PERi-PERi chicken, which is Nando’s signature dish. The PERi-PERi is a pepper that they use in their signature sauce, and it is a signature sauce for a reason. It is, to put it lightly, absolutely divine. I have never tasted anything like it, and I doubt I will ever taste anything like it again. It’s a primarily UK chain, however, I am happy to report that there are Nando’s locations in Baltimore, which just so happens to be the city I will be attending college in.

The rain had turned into a sprinkle by the time we had finished our dinner. Nando’s was a place we were absolutely going to visit again when we got to England. Despite being more than full, Jamie had made us promise before dinner that we would be stopping at a unique shop that was on our way back to the hotel: a bubble waffle shop.

You may be asking, “what is a bubble waffle?” Well, it’s a waffle that is made to look like it has bubbles in it! And in this case, it was served like a crêpe, with Nutella and banana spread inside of it. It was honestly absolutely delicious. Along with the food being delicious, the atmosphere of the small store was lovely.

We had a lot of time before the third and final show of the day. This show was much anticipated by all of us, even Jamie, who, when we found out that this musical was being performed at the Fringe, read the entire book series that it is based around. What is this show? Perhaps my favorite show at the entire Fringe — Dusk: A Bite-Sized Love Story.

Dusk is a musical parody of, perhaps, the most well known romance of this generation: Twilight. Now that I’ve told you, you can see where the title of the parody comes into play. Because of something very annoying called copyright, the creators of Dusk couldn’t outright make a Twilight parody musical, so, they got creative in the most comedic of ways. However, that’s getting into the show itself, which we aren’t at yet.

The show was at 10:30pm, which we were still far from. We hung out at the hotel, munching on snacks and generally vibing. The fact that the show was at 10:30pm didn’t dissuade us one bit. In fact, the lateness of the show made the walk through the city to the theater really fun. There is an energetic beauty to a city at night, especially in the midst of a festival. The chill in the air kept us awake as we approached the Forest Theatre.

The line to get into the theater was fairly small by the time we got there, but it quickly grew in size. There were multiple theaters in the building that the Forest Theatre was in, and the sounds of various other shows echoed from the warmly lit building. As expected, Jamie was the only child there, which made his presence even better. Excitement for the show filled the chatter of the line, building up to the moment when we were let in to the theater.

I wasn’t able to get a good photo of the small theater itself, but I will do my best to describe it. The entire room was lit with blue lighting, setting up a chill ambiance. There were five rows of folding chair seats, out of which we sat in the second row. The stage itself was a marley floor with black curtains surrounding it, a projector screen center stage. (You can sort of see the stage in the photo below.) The seating was semi-crowded, which wouldn’t have been a problem if the entire theater wasn’t very, very warm. I sweat more during that show than any of the walks I had done on the trip so far. That, of course, didn’t ruin the show, which says a lot for the quality of the parody musical.

The show itself was one hour and fifty-one minutes. The runtime may seem like a lot, but when you consider that they’re cramming in the entire narrative of Twilight in musical form, they did a great job. There’s also a whopping eighteen songs that are performed!

You may expect, from the number of songs and the actual subject of the show itself, for the music to be subpar. That expectation would be completely incorrect. Each song was thought through and well done with rhyme scheme and the jokes that were woven in, jokes that often began the song in the first place. The performers were unironically really good at their roles, from both actresses playing bland yet dramatic Bea Stork (Bella Swan) nailing her nervous hair-behind-the-ear tuck to the accurately tall and lanky actor playing both Chuck Stork and Dr. Dad being able to pull off an onstage quick costume change between both father figures. He was also able to sing a song as Chuck about being secretly in love with Dr. Dad, which was, ironically, also the song where he did the costume change.

Dusk‘s story was very clever in the way it parodied Twilight as well. It centers around the plot of the first book in the iconic series, while also weaving in everyone’s favorite horror of CGI and baby naming, Renesmee (aka Edward and Bella’s child). Her name isn’t actually Renesmee, both because that’s the weirdest possible name and copyright, again. Instead, she is simply named R, with her adoring mother Bea calling her any word that starts with R, like “ravioli” or “rock.” R is the main character of sorts, with the entire musical happening because R wants Bia to tell her how she fell in love with Edwin. R asks for this because, as a freak of nature (half human, half vampire), she wants to know, from her mom’s point of view, what it was like to be human. In any other context, it would be a lovely and intriguing sentiment, except for the fact that this is a musical parody about Twilight and the actor playing Edwin has sequence on his chest to make him sparkly.

Overall, Dusk is 1000% worth the hype that it has received online, and if I had the chance, I would have loved to see it again. The writing is engaging and genuinely funny, respectfully poking fun at the source material. The choreography for the show is, most of the time, simple and hilarious, with the exception of their rendition of the iconic baseball scene, as it was actually really creative while retaining the comical aspect. If any of you get the chance to go see Dusk, you definitely need to do it. You may not know anything about Twilight, but you’ll have… the general idea of it after seeing this show. You’ll also laugh. A lot.

At the end of the show, the cast members announced that there would be an opportunity to get cast signed programs in the courtyard of the theater. Passing up a souvenir like a program to my possible favorite Fringe show was not an option, so, despite the fact it was midnight and the chill was starting to freeze my fingers, we waited in the courtyard. Time passed; my mom took Jamie to the restroom, most of the audience members left, leaving only a handful waiting. More time passed. Cast members were beginning to come out and exit, all with no program holder in sight.

“Well, I guess they’re not selling them,” a waiting lady said as her and her partner left the courtyard. We had waited a generous fifteen or twenty minutes, and it wasn’t looking too good for the programs to ever show. Disappointment was beginning to set in, but, at least we had the cool business cards to remember the show by. We walked out of the courtyard, but decided, hey, it can’t hurt to ask a cast member when they leave, right?

It just so happens that the next person to come out was the actress that played the almost-grown-up R(avioli) came out. She saw us standing there and asked us if we were waiting for the programs. When we said yes, she seemed surprised that the person in charge of programs wasn’t out there, because he was supposed to be.

After promising us that she’d get us our programs, she looked at Jamie and said, “you must be our youngest fan! Did you enjoy the show?”

Jamie nodded in reply, grin spreading on his face.

“Have you read or seen Twilight?“

We explained that he has, indeed, done both in preparation for this show. R’s smile was pretty damn big.

“I read it when the books were first coming out,” my mom added. “And then I passed it on to these two.”

“That’s great. It’s great to see that this story is still popular.”

Another actress walked past and R asked her to find the programs, motioning to Jamie happily and saying, “we can’t disappoint our youngest fan!”

The second actress looked around before spotting a specific car, and she promised to bring us the programs. We chatted for a little while longer about how impressed we were at the show and how well R had done. She had a really great energy about her. The other actress returned with the programs, apologizing for the confusion and length of time we waited. I didn’t say it out loud, but I was happy with the outcome; chatting with R’s actress, Eve, had been really fun.

We bought two programs, and we got a slight discount for the wait time. They were good quality, shiny and slick, and the signatures on the back were so lovely. After bidding the actresses a good night and good rest of the Fringe, we were back on our way to the hotel, Jamie and I holding our secured treasure close. My mom, the resident fan of Twilight, completely approved of the show, which made me really happy. The whole day made me really happy, and I hope that happiness shows in this post.