M*A*S*H*; Jefferson High School; Bloomington

I am too young to truly appreciate all of the nuances of M*A*S*H*. When I happen to catch an episode on TV I can see the dichotomy of light-hearted tom-foolery and heavy war-time themes. But having not lived through the tense times of draft and conscientious objectors, the meaning is lost on me.

I'm 24.

Now imagine a gaggle of teenagers trying to play at grownup, and adult themes, and complex relationships based a good 20 years before they were born. I mean, come on. When "OMG, Brittany just broke up with Bobby" is the topic of the day, how are they supposed to make the audience feel anything of significance.

But I blame the horrible choice of show on the director, not the kids. Jefferson High School has a very talented group of young actors, most of which I see real talent in. The theatre itself has acoustics to die for, but that didn't mean that any of those kids were slackers when it came to projecting. This is a Herculean feat with anyone under the age of 20, much less two dozen under 20. Even the mumbling and throwing away of lines was minimal, and I am inclined to blame the director again for this bad habit that he had difficulty nipping in the bud. But who knows: maybe he had his hands full promoting the projection issue.

Judging from the 2 dozen nosy, annoying, overacheiving house-wife mothers in the audience, I would say they had a fair amount of "talent" to pull from to obtain their costumes, props and set pieces, which were so impressive, I am only noticing them in retrospect. The set was minimal and simple. The costumes were both age appropriate for high schoolers and for Vietnam american soldiers, nurses and doctors.

I wish I could remember the directors name, because I have a few more critiques for this guy. First, please, please, please oil that damn curtain. Second, please be aware of both your stage space and your audience space. Jefferson has an added advantage of having a double wide proscenium and a double wide house. Unfortunately this means that the "split stage" convention that is the standard when portraying a telephone conversation doesn't work, because the audience will get whiplash from bouncing back and forth between the two actors that are 1 mile apart. (Or they could do what I did and just watch their favorite actor and ignore the other one).

And by the way, our niece was FABULOUS. Of course. Even though she had only one line. And all bias aside, I wish the director had found more excuses to bring the vietnamese into the scenes. I think they added a lot in terms of environment. Especially when he had people randomly walk behind the tents. Brilliant touch. Perhaps his only brilliant touch. I wish he had taken advantage of those extra girls and given the atmosphere an extra oomph. Oh well.

Coming up:

The next few days should yield some fun reviews. My own play is tomorrow (back to back performances of The Actor's Nightmare and This Is A Test), which I'm hoping Jess will review on here. Did I say hoping? Maybe I meant dreading.

Then on Friday we're going to the State Theatre to see Stephen Lynch, one of my favorite comedians. I'm looking forward to hearing a live performance of such great classics as "Special Ed," "Love Song," "Craig," and "Lullabye." Totally stoked!

Finally, on Saturday we're going to Hamline University to see The Real Inspector Hound. I'm fairly excited for that one especially because Maggie Shields is in it. When I appeared in Godspell in 1997, she was my youngest disciple. I think she was only 12 at the time. Now she's all growed up. I didn't realize she was still acting until Jess and I went to see Romeo & Juliet at Hamline a couple of months ago. Suddenly I look up and see Romeo's mom and think to myself, "she looks SO familiar."

So, yeah. Look for more reviews coming soon.

We actually saw a play!

Sorta.

On Friday night, we (along with our favorite companion, "Spaniard") attended the opening of the new spring show at The Brave New Workshop:

HOW TO LOVE LIKE A MINNESOTAN:
SLEEPLESS IN SHAKOPEE

Now, I've been seeing shows at BNW for a while now. Come to think of it, I've seen every show in the last two years, with only one exception. Anyway, this was far and away the best show that I've seen there.

Since Jess actually worked there for just over a year, we are in a position of being uniquely qualified to speak to the particular performance of actors that we both know on a first-name basis, and who we've been vaguely social with on several occasions.

This show was about love. Fitting enough, as it opened the day before Valentine's day.

Mike Fotis was in top form, as were Ellie Hino and Lauren Anderson. Josh Eakright's shining moment was playing an elderly mother with an accent who would occasionally shout "I want a grand-baby!" at his/her erstwhile son and daughter-in-law. At least, I assumed he was playing the paternal grandmother. Bobby Gardner did an excellent job, slowly fleshing out his BNW skin, still relatively fresh and dewy compared to those of his co-stars. I did notice, however, that there were times when Bobby seemed slightly uncomfortable with waiting for the applause to die down, an essential skill for an actor. (Bobby either closed the first act or opened the second act with a beat poetry recitation that needed just a bit more panache. The scripting itself was excellent. I think he was probably just nervous about the long speech by himself.) Joe Bozic was... um... okay. I'm finishing this review several weeks later, and I can't really remember any great Joe moments. I also don't remember any crappy ones, however, so he couldn't have been that bad.

The highlight of the show was probably Lauren Anderson's role as the robotic embodiment of Match.com, engaged in a sing off against a Cupid (played by Eakright)who didn't stand a chance, musically (though the script ended the scene with Cupid's bow making Match.com fall in love with another website. The odd reason that Lauren really nailed the scene was her ability to do the robot (relatively) straightfaced with a colander on her head.

I wish I could remember more of the great Ellie moments. I would love to recount them here. Jess accuses me of having a crush on her. Whether or not that's true. I do recall thoroughly enjoying the entire performance. Good times to be had, and what all. It was also good to see Dudley Riggs in the audience for another opening night. It's always a pleasure to see him.

Farce of the Penguins -and- National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Reviewer: Mike

Jess recently signed herself up for a two week free trial of Netflix. Tonight we indulged in a couple instant streaming movies at home.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Though I've only seen the last half hour of the original film, it wasn't enough to stop me from watching the sequel. The plot a vaguely decent rehash of the original, but with a few quirky moments, like seeing Nicholas Cage adopt a crappy cockney dialect to insult a British security guard at Buckingham Palace. All in all, however, there was nothing really distinguishing about the film. The idea that the lost "City of Gold", always attributed to the great tribes of Central and South America, might have been in South Dakota is absolutely ludicrous. While Ed Harris made an oddly compelling antagonist, the movie in general played out more like National Treasure 1.2 rather than National Treasure 2.0. It was more of a remix than a sequel, a bad habit that Hollywood shows no indication of trying to shake. I did like, however, that there was a romantic sub-plot about Ben's parents falling in love again. I've realized over the last week or so that I'm a sucker for geriatric passion. I refuse to let that color my rating of the film, however.
SCORE: 2 of 4 stars

Farce of the Penguins

This was delightful. One hour and twenty minutes of a joke mocking "March of the Penguins" might seem excessive, but they somehow pulled it off without ever being boring. Lots of potty mouth, though. The baby penguin born at the end manages to have "Fuck!" as their first word. Some of us are just born with better vocabularies, I suppose. The musical numbers distracted more than added, but for me the two best things about the movie were Samuel L. Jackson's scintillating narration ("You can't handle the truth, Ruth" - referencing both "A Few Good Men" AND "Do The Right Thing" in a single breath) and the ending credits, where we get to realize who some of the more amusing voices were supplied by. Some were surprises, some weren't, and some were people I'd never heard of before. But here's my favorite: While Bob Saget obviously played Carl, the main penguin, the two "Global Warming" penguins were voiced by Uncle Joey and Uncle Jesse from full house! I nearly laughed my ass off.
SCORE 3.5 of 4 stars

Superbad

I nearly forgot to mention watching this last night. While the use of the F bomb was fairly excessive, there were some serious life lessons in this film. What plays out as a wild and raucous quest to get the elusive booze that will unlock the more elusive sex is actually a very touching "bro-mance," as Jess called it. I won't go into more detail, since I mentioned this movie only as an afterthought. I don't remember ever being quite this stupid or desperate in high school, however.
SCORE 3 of 4 stars

An introduction

For those of our friends who keep looking at this page and wondering, "What's the point?" we would like to offer a brief explanation.

Jess and I love watching live theatre. While our finances limit our ability, nothing pleases us more that going to see a live production, and then proceed to analyze it to within an inch of its life... or something to that effect. For that purpose, Jess started this blog so that we can share our musings with a great number of people who don't really care. We're just whistling in the wind.

However, I do hope we get to see some theatre soon. I hope we get to write about it, and I hope that somebody out there gives a crap.

Here's to the future of my profession...