Review: Jem Rolls' MAXIMUM CRUSOE at the 7th Annual TAMPA FRINGE FESTIVAL

"The Divine within me bows to the same Divine within you." --the actual translation of the word "Namaste"

"If tomorrow is gone, then all you have is today." --Jem Rolls

There's nothing like the small but mighty Tampa Fringe Festival. It's such an eclectic mix of shows, some this year featuring action figures, others focused on religion or the lack thereof, and there's even the TransMasculine Cabaret, Starring Vulva Va-Voom (a perfect middle finger for Florida in 2023). You have something for the children ("Kids Fringe") as well as the more adventurous adults ("The Broken Penis Story"); let's just hope the audiences don't mix up the two theaters for those.

In major news for the 7th Annual Tampa Fringe, there are now two venues (with several locations in each) for the shows this season: The HCC Performing Arts Building and, best of all, the new home of the Fringe at the Kress on 7th Avenue in Ybor City.

This year promises the great, quirky local artists that we're used to but there's also a myriad of international greats to experience. Like Jem Rolls' MAXIMUM CRUSOE, straight from the U.K. His tale of being stranded on an Indian beach during the Pandemic is the first Fringe show that I got to see this year.

Tall and very British, barefoot and bearded like Tom Hanks hanging with Wilson in Cast Away, Mr. Rolls cuts an imposing figure. Looking like a mad artist, he has an intense stare, hawk eyes; he resembles a bearded Jeff Corey. And, bathed in a sole spotlight, he exudes so much charisma and likability as he uses the entire stage to dive into his tale.

"How was YOUR 2020?" Mr. Rolls asks at the top, and we all titter as we submerge into our own memories of that fateful time. But they are nothing like his true story of spending 656 days as the only atheist on the Indian beach during the pandemic where "every day is like Sunday...Same, same, but the same." We flashback to that scary time where the world was frightening and we weren't guaranteed a tomorrow. Or, as Mr. Rolls puts it, "The future has now been abbreviated and is now the F.U."

But then an epiphany strikes. After eating the perfect kingfish, and spending so much time floating arms stretched in the ocean, he comes to the conclusion that this must be the afterlife, and if that's the case, he and everyone else he meets are already dead (reminding me of the young lady in Carnival of Souls but not as macabre). "We've rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible," Mr. Rolls states, an allusion to John Cleese in the famous Monty Python Pet Shop sketch.

He brings this afterlife idea up at the time to anybody who will listen. "Are we all angels in each other's heaven?" he wonders. Or is he going mad? "Am I eleven disciples short of a Last Supper?"

In the show's strongest moments, each person Mr. Rolls meets comes up with their own death, since they (and we) are all supposed to be in the afterlife anyway. Exiting the HCC Rehearsal Hall, this thought continued to haunt me. If we are all dead, then how did I die? (I come up with various ideas, one including a hot air balloon, but I will save that for another time.) But as Mr. Rolls shows us, there are many clues to suggest that we are NOT in an afterlife. Pain, for instance.

Mr. Rolls is a powerful writer, his words poetically swim at us. He states that he has performed in more Fringe shows across the globe than anyone else this century. And that this is the first time he's performed this specific work in front of an audience. I feel honored to have seen it. That said, he had just flown into Tampa four hours earlier, and there were times when he seemed flustered with some of his lines or backtracked, almost stopping the flow, to get the exact phrasing. But we are so enamored of him and his tale that we forgive and just remain entranced in the words that he brings to life.

You have to listen closely because there is a lot of information coming our way, from holy pilgrimage sights to Lord Shiva and the great Ganesha with an elephant head. Mr. Rolls tells of the goodness of so many souls and even passes on a guide for living: "A laptop, bank card, and passport...that's all you need in life."

After the show, I was shocked to learn that an entire hour had flown by; I thought it had just been a half hour or less. But that's proof that we're under the spell of a master storyteller.

MAXIMUM CRUSOE is Maximum Entertainment. It has two more performances: Saturday night (May 13th) at 10:20 PM and Sunday (May 14th) at 6:15 PM at the HCC location. Namaste!