by ****1/2 (out of 5)
At the end of his first HBO Max special, Trash White, Moses Storm teased a cliffhanger about how he grew up in a doomsday cult.
So naturally, I was excited to see and hear that story. After all, I’d put Storm’s 2022 special on my Top 10 list last year.
But what he’s doing at Fringe is not that story, exactly. Because he doesn’t have a traditional cult story. Instead, young Moses and his siblings grew up homeschooled in a converted Greyhound bus traveling around Michigan and Florida, screaming at strangers as a small child as instructed by his parents to warn said strangers they were going to hell.
Only his family’s doomsday cult wasn’t quite as popular nor as sexy (literally or figuratively) as other cults you may have seen in a documentary. Which is why he’s never gotten his own doc. Which is one less way he can connect with others — or even with folks like Leah Remini, who has her mission now speaking out about Scientology. Which means Storm has come to Fringe not so much to process his own cult story in a three-act formal play comedically or dramedically, but rather give himself the cult in adulthood he never received as promised in childhood. This is wish fulfillment, to be sure.
The only reason I’m giving this 4.5 stars and not five? Because each night is wildly different so your experience will vary, and because I trust his finished product (presumably also for HBO) will be worth that perfect rating.
Moses Storm: Perfect Cult runs through Aug. 27 at Pleasance Courtyard Beneath
