"Don't go crazy, have a baby!"

Created By: John Davidson for digphilly.com

The Sixth Borough's "Adults" proves some of the finest Fringe Fest acts are homegrown

The Live Arts and Philly Fringe Festival has our town all atwitter this week, with artsy types gallivanting from venue to venue and alt-weekly staff bloggers studiously sitting through show after show and penning platitudinous blurbs for each.
Billed as an increasingly ultra-international extravaganza of artists from seven countries on four continents, the festival is supposedly exploring themes of ethnicity, class and culture from an "international perspective," whatever that means. We've got artists from such far-flung places as Vietnam, Congo, Belgium and Bulgaria gyrating around Philly stages this week, doing their international perspective art thing.
But the fact is, some of the best shows at this year's festival come from our own art scene here in Philly, however unglamorous and non-international that might seem. Case in point: The Sixth Borough's sketch comedy production "Adults" at the temporarily-opened Connie's Ric Rac in the Italian Market.
I knew The Sixth Borough (Corey Cohen, Gregg Gethard, Patrick Kelly, Emily McGraw, Jason Messina, Frank Tartaglia and Tabitha Vidaurri) was going to impress even before the show started because of the troupe's introduction on the playbill, which read: "The Sixth Borough is a sketch comedy group comprised of seven people who purposely chose to stay in the 215 area code to pursue their comedic dreams. Rather than ship off to NYC or LA like ever other goddamn person these days, they want to build the alternative comedy scene in Philly, because as we all know, Philly is great. Well, except for all the murders."
I liked them already. Also, before the show and during scene changes they played famous adult contemporary tunes (in line with the theme of "Adults") on the house stereo. There's something hilarious about sitting in a theater while "All For Love" by Bryan Adams plays back-to-back with tunes like "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes. Just good stuff.
"Adults" is as funny as anything you'll see on SNL or Comedy Central. Taking the theme of adulthood as a starting place, the show opened with a rousing theme song with the chorus, "don't go crazy / have a baby." From there, things just got more ridiculous with a series of sketches that poke fun at contemporary manifestations of adulthood and so-called adults.
The show culminates in a repeat performance of the opening song, only with cast members holding baby dolls, walking out into the audience trying to give them away as they gustily sang "don't go crazy, have a baby." It was quite possibly the perfect combination of creepiness and humor.

So don't get all worked up by rumors of naked Belgians painting themselves on the street corner or some other Fringe Fest bullshit. Support local theater and go see "Adults."