Fringe Review

The 2026 KC Fringe festival has begun with the first annual kick off show this past Friday July 10th at the Fuego Cantina in the Kansas City West Bottoms.  KC Fringe invited longtime Fringe producer and performer Kater Tot to launch the festivities of Fringe with her production of “Villainy & Vaudeville”.

The show promises a campy cabaret inspired by vaudeville and Fuego Cantina provided the perfect venue.  As golden hour approached, guests to the event entered up a staircase from the street door and through heavy black curtains into a space wrapped in cozy darkness. The team at  Fuego Cantina has transformed the west bottom’s warehouse into an intimate bar and event space.  Dappled in twinkling lights and golden framed mirrors, the art deco styling of the space suited the mood of the sold out house that assembled for the show.

A small simple stage hugged the far wall of the space, backed by the original brick walls of the building.  The massive wooden columns of the structure assumed prominent places  in the audience and stretched up to the exposed beams of the high ceilings.  The space, the crowd, the anticipation of the event all contributed to a speak-easy style buzz that maintained throughout the evening.

Kater Tot Productions is known for thematic burlesque performances that combine traditional burlesque styles with pop culture fandom and cosplay to create joyful and nostalgic performances. In “Villiany & Vaudeville”, the show follows the path of our heroine Kater Tot as she turns to the darkside to become Darth Kater.  Guided by a pair of clowny crones, the Wicked Witches of the West Bottoms, the audience travels on a journey through a series of performances as Kater Tot slowly takes on her new villain persona to be fully revealed in a finale style burlesque number.

Along this cabaret journey, the performance was filled with delightful characters.  The assembled cast of burlesque performers created unique solo and group performances celebrating famous villains in our collective memories.  Each piece is its own work of performance art.  The cast presented universally inspired cosplay with tasty tidbits of storytelling in each villain’s story.  Each element of the production showed that this was finely crafted with joy and humor.

I was particularly delighted by the absurdity of the masked serial killers from Scream, Halloween, and Friday the 13th discovering their inner sequins together and the nostalgia of Captain Hook and his two pirate besties as they are outdone by capering crocodile in green sequin leotard.   In one number,  The Red Queen’s servants revealed white lingerie under their playing cards while they fanned her highness with red feathered heart shaped fans and in another Gaston and his bestie explore their queerer side with a campy rendition of the cartoon Gaston’s iconic theme song.

The show is woven together with a mix of edited musical cues for the dance numbers and some live singing and dialogue to move the journey along.  There were some technical difficulties with the sound, but this did not damper the mood of the show as performers faced the technical bumps with humor and grace while the audience was gamefully along for the ride.

Kater Tot Productions once again provided what it has come to be known for, a finely curated and crafted show filled with quirky humor, creativity, and joy.  Kater Tot Productions provide a fun evening diversion each time they come around, and this production “Villiany & Vaudeville” was a colorful and joyful way to kick off KC Fringe 2026.