Fringe Fest: The good and the very bad

The perfect part: The actresses of Roles for Women take casting into their own hands.
photo by Richard Brusky

by Jacob Coakley

Roles for Women

By Erica Griffin, produced by Table 8 Productions

I’d say Dick Johnson had the best ensemble of actors ... if it weren’t for the ladies of Roles for Women, playing five women suffering through their most extreme audition ever. Griffin does an excellent job capturing small moments, pushing the characters through them and letting their actions generate the laughs. The actresses embraced this with gusto. You could feel the glee at having fully-formed characters that had nothing to do with “girlfriend” or “romantic interest.” If sometimes that enthusiasm veered a little too closely to self-parody for the sake of a laugh, that was only a slight problem.