Elisabeth Vincentelli

Elisabeth Vincentelli

Theater

A musical based on TV’s ‘Dexter’ and other promising shows at the Fringe

Every August, the FringeNYC Festival takes over downtown with an overwhelming number of shows — 200 of them this year — spread over a whopping 16 venues.

And while there’ve been literally thousands of shows in the last 18 years, only a handful, like 1999’s “Urinetown” and 2002’s “Matt & Ben,” have been truly successful. Clearly, it’s been a long time between drinks.

At least this year’s edition, running Friday through Aug. 30, has pulled back from the goofy spoofs that dominated past fests. Shows like “Granola! The Musical” or “Jersey Shoresical: A Frickin’ Rock Opera” are best forgotten. A few new entries even look promising — and $18 tickets make it easier to take a chance.

Here are our picks; for times and venues, go to fringenyc.org.

David Foster Wallace is trending: Jason Segel plays him in the new movie “The End of the Tour” and Christopher Duva’s solo “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” (Aug. 16-28) is based on Wallace’s hilarious essay about going on a luxury cruise.

You gotta have at least one old-school Fringe pop-culture fest. This year we noticed “Dex! A Killer Musical” (Aug. 16-23) which promises (threatens?) to tackle all eight seasons of “Dexter” in two hours. Sounds like a potential heir to the bona fide 2005 Fringe hit “Silence! The Musical.”

Lord Buckley’s “hip-semantic” proto-raps and finger-snapping jazz monologues were unlike anything else in the 1940s and ’50s. All the more reason to investigate the bio-play “Dig Infinity” (Aug. 20-27). Come on, the guy wore a tux and a pith helmet!

Bobby Goodrich as drag star Divine in “Divine Intervention.”Garrett Matthew

Who hid behind the late Divine? “Divine Intervention” (Aug. 16-29) offers a portrait of Glenn Milstead, the man whose heavily made-up drag alter ego was John Waters’ muse in trash classics like “Pink Flamingos” and “Polyester.”

Elaine Stritch may be gone, but she’s hardly forgotten: Jay Malsky tackles the late Broadway legend in his solo “Elaine Stritch: Still Here” (Aug. 15-29), set during the twilight of her life. There’s certainly enough material to be mined, as Stritch revealed much in her solo and cabaret shows.

And, Or Matias, the gifted pianist who played Rachmaninoff in Lincoln Center’s “Preludes,” makes us hopeful about Yasmine Lever’s “Land of Broken Toys” (Aug. 15-25) — he wrote the music for the show, which appears to be about romantic entanglements.

The Report” (Aug. 15-28) is the rare Fringe show to sport a big-ish cast and an ambitious subject, as Martin Casella — switching genres after his comically endearing “The Irish Curse” — revisits a catastrophe that killed 173 people in the London tube during WWII.

Local company the Amoralists has offered some hard-hitting shows, so it may bode well that the troupe’s co-founder, James Kautz, is directing Lisa Lewis’ “Schooled” (Aug. 15-27) — about love and rivalry in an academic setting.