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| You're No Fun - Photo courtesy of Samantha Johns |
I hate musicals. So does Samantha Johns, director of You're No Fun, a new musical at the Bedlam Theatre. This makes for the best musical I have ever seen (excluding Spamalot, a favorite for personal, sentimental reasons.) Johns sharpened the end of the cane to poke musical conventions in the eye and give us a hilarious romp with some biting satire and real punch.
Playwright Savannah Reich puts together not so much a musical, but a play about a musical—a mysterious hobo returns to town to find that his jilted performance artist girlfriend has put together a musical about their whirlwind romance. Kat Wodtke, riding crop-cracking as the spurned Annabel admits in a fierce, hilarious monologue that she has done what should be reserved for "hacks, feminists and 16-year-old girls" by creating this piece as she was backed up by a doo-wop chorus. Johns orchestrates the absurdity of the scene to a fever pitch and throughout the play, balances the ludicrous nature of musical theatre against questions of how we love and why we make art.
Luc Parker is a wonderful piece of casting as the hobo Will; his shuffling feet, indignation at the event and spare honesty perfectly contrast the company of actors cast as a company of actors, who look like they are having a blast exploding theatre-world stereotypes with serious faces. There are, of course references to Fosse, Singing in the Rain and Chicago, and you can almost hear Johns maniacally laughing, "Bigger, Louder, Faster!"
It is laugh out loud funny, and, being the Bedlam, raucous, with audience members yelling out. On the night I went, as the weirdness built, there were simultaneous cries of "Oh No!" and "God Yes!" as everyone in the crowd gasped for breath. And I haven't even gotten to the dancing dinosaur costume. Get down there and find out for yourself why being absurdly funny is sometimes the best way to be totally serious.
You're No Fun runs April 25& 26 at 8pm, April 27 at 4pm.
Location Info:
Bedlam Theatre
Artist Info: Bedlam Theatre
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