All The World's A Stage

My crazy theatre week began on Thursday the 6th and ended the following Friday the 14th.

THURSDAY
Show: Baby Universe: A Puppet Odyssey

This is a really hard show to explain.  I think the best way of describing it is a play about the apocalypse...with puppets.  Basically the sun is dying and taking out every other planet with it.  The heat is causing the earth to become a scorched shadow of what it was with barely any of the population surviving.  The few survivors are trying to grow these "baby universes" that they are hoping will hold a planet where they can move and be saved from the sun's wrath.  Here's a pretty good review of it from backstage.com: BACKSTAGE.  All in all, it was an oddly entertaining show.  The puppets were really interesting and the subject matter of the show had a lot of heart and you really felt for the characters.

It's a really dark picture but this is the robotic Stephen Hawking

One of the strange things about the show was before it started this robotic copy of Stephen Hawking drove out into the lobby and started talking to the audience.  It's eyes blinked and moved and it's mouth move.  Mostly it was really creepy.  There were two people controlling it from the side of the room, they would type in what he would say and then the robot would say it.  Like I said, it was pretty creepy but the funny thing is that the delay between the computer and the robot was substantial and so severely diminished the believability of the robot.

FRIDAY
Show: Imaginocean

This was a really fun kid's show that is currently playing Off Broadway.  It was really really cute.  The whole show is done in black light with puppets.  I've never seen a show that did as good of a job at hiding the puppeteers as this show.  Even when I was looking for them, I tended to forget they were there and focused on the puppets instead.  The main plot of the show is that three fish friends go on a musical adventure, following a map they found in order to find three medallions that will help them find the final treasure.  As I said, both the puppets and the story are really cute.  While it is definitely geared towards younger kids, there are a fair number of jokes geared towards the adults as well. The show was created by John Tartaglia who is one of the masterminds behind Avenue Q and also the TV show Johnny and the Sprites.

Show: You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up

 This was a workshop performance of a play based on a book written by Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn.  The premise is that the couple are in therapy after 14 years of marriage.  They discuss the ups and downs (mostly the downs) of their relationship.  Since it was a workshop performance it isn't a finished play...and it showed.  To be fair, the demographic I'm in is not the demographic this play is geared towards but I think I should have at least not been bored out of my mind.  There were a couple of laughs but mostly it needs a lot of editing.  It was interesting the way they went back and forth between the couple talking to "the therapist" aka the audience, which melts into sort of a flash back of the event they are discussing.  It was also, I think, unnecessarily vulgar as far as the language goes and if it were to go on tour, especially for the audience it is geared towards, that needs to change.

Show: The Flying Karamazov Brothers

 This was an incredible show.  I want to say it's kind of like if you took juggling plus comedy plus music and threw them into a pot.  The Flying Karamazov Brothers would be the result.  It was hysterical and the performers were amazingly talented.  Juggling is not always that exciting and I think with the amount of jugglers that appear on shows like America's Got Talent etc it's hard to find juggling that really captures your attention.  But this is the answer to that problem.  They use a lot of slapstick and wordplay comedy as well as involving music with everything from trumpets to a piano onstage.  If you have a chance to see this show, it's definitely a great evening.

SATURDAY
Show: Fred Garbo Inflatable Theater Company

  This is another kid's show.  The description I saw in an ad describes it as the following.  "Costumes, props, and set pieces expand, deflate and roll, in this funny, mesmerizing, and colorful theatrical event."  The props are all made out of nylon and so are tossed around, inflated, or sometimes deflated onstage.  The show is a lot of fun and the kids at the show seemed to really enjoy the antics of the two performers.  The interesting thing about this show for me is that I actually saw them perform in Colorado when I was little.  I want to say it was probably around 15 years ago that I saw them perform.   So...they've been around a while haha.  A lot of their act I even remember and I've always remembered their performance very fondly.  I think I might have his autograph somewhere even from back then.  Actually what amazed me is that this guy when he walks out onstage doesn't seem like the youngest performer...but the way he somersaults and jumps around the stage you'd think he was just as young and spry as he was 15 years ago!

Show: Rockapella

 Rockapella is an a capella group that made their fame mostly through doing television jingles.  You might recognize their work from the Folgers commercial ("the best part of waking up...") and also the theme song for Where In the World is Carmen Sandiego.  They were very good but unfortunately the tech of the show was terrible.  The lights and projection looked poorly controlled and the sound was so bad that it was hard to enjoy the music and not cringe and plug my ears anytime someone belted a note.  Also because of technical issues the show also started about 15 min late and they didn't let us into the building until about 10 min before the show was supposed to start....and it was cold outside!

Show: Chicago City Limits Improv

 I've never actually been to a show in a comedy club before so this was an interesting experience to say the least.  It was in a teeny tiny room with chairs crammed into every space possible.  I really enjoyed myself though.  The improv was funny and interspersed between the improvised scenes were little skits and musical bits that while not improvised were really funny to watch.  They even did a little song about the Spiderman musical which I found hilarious :)  Oh, food at a comedy club is really not that good.  Just a word of warning ^_^

SUNDAY
Show: Baby Wants Candy

  Baby Wants Candy is a another improv show but a little different than Chicago City Limits.  Instead of a lot of short skits, they do a musical!  The audience shouts out the title of a musical that has never been performed before and the cast takes the first suggestion they hear.  When I saw it the title was "Kirstie Alley Will Rise Again The Musical!"  The plot ended up being based that angry Cheers fans crucify Kirstie Alley when they find out that Cheers has been cancelled...20 years ago.  Apparently they weren't keeping up with the news.  Several Cheers actors made "appearances" in the show and then someone else was impersonating Kirstie Alley and then finally she came back and everyone was happy.  It was a strange show but the cool thing is that it is different everytime you go.  It plays at 10pm on Saturday nights at the Soho Playhouse.  Some of the past musicals they've performed (written in the playbill) are: The Department of Redundancy Department The Musical! Sarah Palin The Musical! Meat Loaf is My Best Friend The Musical! My Left Foot...Looks Like a Dinosaur The Musical! and Revenge of Thomas Jefferson The Musical!  Plus numerous others.  I would definitely like to go again and see how the show changes.

MONDAY
Show: OPUS 3 Showcase

Opus 3 is the name of an agency and they did a showcase of 5 different acts.  I saw Patti LuPone (the Broadway legend), SF JAZZ Collective (Good jazz music), The Step Crew (interesting combination tap and riverdance), Gabriela Montero (pianist), and Stuffed and Unstrung (Muppets behaving badly with improv).  The little snippets were all pretty interesting.  Hearing Patti LuPone was incredible.  She is definitely an amazing performer.  The other one I enjoyed was the puppets one, mostly because I got to see Brian Henson perform (Jim Henson's son who is now in charge of the whole Henson/Muppet company).  The show itself was alright but I didn't think it was amazing.  It might have been the setting though.

TUESDAY
No Shows...gasp!

WEDNESDAY
Show: The Addams Family

  This was a really fun show.  It's not one that I would have been super excited for if not for the two starring actors.  Starring as Gomez and Morticia Addams were Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth.  I've always wanted to see Nathan Lane in a show and he was every bit as amazing as I thought he would be.  The show was pretty cute and I was especially impressed with the actress that played Wednesday Addams.  There were a lot of cool special effects and they especially seemed to use a lot of puppet effects which were quite cool. 


Show: The 39 Steps

 This play was hysterical and I'm soo glad I was able to see it.  It is basically a parody of the Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name.  Only this is done by only 4 actors.  One guy plays the main character, the girl plays all of the romantic entanglement parts, and the last two guys play everything else...including some inanimate objects.  Because of all of the costume changes the play doesn't take itself very seriously and so on the whole is really really funny.  I honestly can't say enough good things about it.  The actors had amazing timing and the direction was awesome.  All in all a fantastic play.

THURSDAY
Show: Mary Poppins

  This was a really cute musical.  I was a little bit wary because I had heard that they changed up some of the classic songs from the movie and I wasn't sure I was okay with that.  The movie is amazing, why would they want to change it?  I ended up being pleasantly surprised.  Even where they changed the songs I found that I still liked them and they added quite a number of new songs.  The plot is not the same as the movie, which I think is better.  I don't think they would have been able to recreate the movie so I'm glad they didn't try.  There was some amazing special effects (it is Disney after all) like Bert tap dancing on the ceiling and Mary Poppins flying right out into the audience at the end of the show.

FRIDAY
Show: Colin Quinn's Long Story Short

 This one man play (well basically a monologue) was directed by Jerry Seinfeld and is basically a 75 minute look at the history of the world.  I thought it was really really funny but the humor definitely is not for everyone.  All in all it is basically a stand up routine, but a little bit better choreographed I guess.  Colin Quinn was pretty funny and the whole show was entertaining enough that it was never boring.  I'm not sure how else to describe this particular show, I think it is one of those you just have to see to know what it is about.


And that brings us to the end of my week of theatre and this is probably one of the longest blog posts I've ever written.  I'm sure there are more experiences I'm missing but this is about all I can do for one day :)