I had the pleasure of attending three ‘Fringe Festival’ plays over the last two weeks and have to say (even though I know it’s a cliché), Hurrah for New York! This festival arrives during the summer doldrums to showcase dozens of valiant theatrical efforts brought in from all over the country—201 shows this year. It’s a crap shoot to know what to go to as there are very sketchy reviews, but I scored on all three.

The big Broadway shows can be amusing, but you often see overly packaged and deboned fare that results from a too-slavish ear for the latest fads burbling out of television. Singing and high kicks are nice, but spectacle wears thin if there’s no there there.

Fringe plays are set in funky little venues scattered around downtown, cultural centers or converted warehouse spaces with a few dozen seats, mostly bare stages and nothing but the inventiveness and skill of the actors turning the spotlight on themselves for 90 minutes. It conjures the old Manhattan (and Brooklyn for that matter) of the days of vaudeville and burlesque when mobs of immigrants and day laborers, gangsters and low-lifes occupied the streets at every waking hour because their dingy tenements were too oppressive for anything but sleep, if that.

They poured into the revues, dancehalls and dime museums for a few cheap laughs, titillation and sometimes a decent singing act, launching many of the stars of Hollywood’s golden age in the process. Television and the movies themselves killed off all that. And yet its spirit survives in these talented youngsters working for years for the chance to stand in front of 50 people with a musical instrument or a homegrown script and make magic. They’re terrific.