Right before the lights went down at “Powerhouse,” a portrait of the visionary career and blinkered personal life of musical pioneer Raymond Scott, I leaned forward to the row in front of me to ask the longtime publicist of the Fringe Festival, Ron Lasko, if he had seen anything great that I should know about. “No!” he said in a refreshing break from tradition of the usual press agent puffery (Ron, God bless him, had also warned me to avoid the opening ceremonies at all costs, which is the kind of thing that can give a flack a reputation for honesty).
Eighty minutes later, the situation, I would suspect, had changed. “Powerhouse,” which somehow manages to pack very funny puppetry, exuberant dance numbers, fascinating historical tangents, a mountain of narrative and a vivid sense of period mood into one steam train of a drama, is the rare Fringe show that lives up to its title.
