Orlando Fringe 2024 review: 'Miss. Adventure'

Texas-based writer/director Rachel Pallante stars alongside multiple versions of herself in “Miss. Adventure,” a wild Wizard of Oz -esque musical quest into her inner self for the fabled Nuvaring. This meshuga multimedia acid trip combines show-tune standards (rewritten with loopy new lyrics) with hyperactively edited original video footage featuring Pallante as an entire SNL season full of cartoonish characters.

During this genre-hopping journey through a Dora the Explorer parody, demolition derby video games and lycanthropic bestiality, Pallante demonstrates her Broadway-quality belt on favorites from Phantom , Hamilton and Beauty and the Beast — while also tossing in a talking puppet mailbox and some meta-commentary about women’s reproductive health for good measure.

Pallante is an appealing, multi-talented performer, but her increasingly surreal story starts to veer off the tracks around midway through the show, and the promised “choose your own adventure” interactivity turns out to be a humbug. All that was before her momentum was entirely derailed by multiple major technical issues during the performance I attended. Pallante recovered and continued like a trouper, but in the end I was left agreeing with the Méliès-inspired Man-in-the-Moon character, who at one point wonders, “What the hell is this?”

Orlando Fringe Festival: Tickets and times for "Miss. Adventure"
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