Jimmy Hogg, a Brit now living in Toronto, is more or less the king of the Fringe this year: In addition to hosting duties at the Boulder Fringe Festival’s opening-night party and helming the fest’s Daily C.R.A.B. late-night talk-show, he’s also a veteran Fringe performer who has a new one-man show, Like a Virgin. “It’s nice to be somewhere where you’ve got such lovely air,” he notes. “Everyone’s so much healthier than me here.”
Hogg, a frenetic speed-talker with a British accent, works as fast as he speaks. He writes quickly and thinks quickly, and once he’s up on stage, hold on to your seats, because you’re going to have to listen quickly. “I tend to be very physical on stage – pacing back and forth, interweaving several stories, taking off on tangents,” Hogg says. “It’s not so much about what I’m talking about, but how I’m telling the story.” And a storyteller he is: Lauded for his quick-cut style of following a basic (and mostly truthful) plot, he induces not only laughter, but universal understanding – which, after all, is the most any performer can hope to evoke. “The point isn’t so much about sex as it is about becoming an adult,” he says of Virgin, and that’s where everyman comes comfortably into the picture.
Virgin opens tonight at 8 p.m. at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, 15th Street and Broadway on the CU-Boulder campus, and runs through August 22; admission is $10 to $15. Go to www.boulderfringe.com for additional showtimes and tickets.
Fri., Aug. 14, 8 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 15, 6 p.m.; Sun., Aug. 16, 6 p.m.; Tue., Aug. 18, 6:30 p.m.; Wed., Aug. 19, 8 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 22, 6 p.m., 2009
