If you’re a fan of the show where “everything’s made up and the points don’t matter,” then turn off your TV and come to this live event based completely off of audience suggestions. With classic games, scenes, and improv legends in front of your very eyes onstage, Ryan Stiles, Greg Proops, Jeff B. Davis, and Joel Murray present Whose Live Anyway? Catch their quickest wit and catchiest songs at the Michigan Theater on October 29 at 8 PM.
Author: Angela Lin
Angela is a senior studying English and the Environment. The only thing she loves more than writing and the arts are wombats.
REVIEW: Sweet Charity
The music by Cy Coleman burst out of the pit of the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater with grand flair and style. Dance hall hostess Charity made her way onto the stage, dancing her little dance with a sweet fashion that becomes characteristic of her personality throughout the 1960s musical appropriately named Sweet Charity.
Nevada Koenig portrayed that sweetness and purity in Charity beautifully with an unbridled and unlimited amount of excitement and belief in the greatness in people. With “big” dreams for her life, Charity’s aspirations can be viewed as naively sweet, which makes the heartbreak she experiences over and over that much more painful to watch.
Charity comes across film star Vittorio Vidal for a night to remember, and Blake Bojewski gave the audience a song to remember as his majestic voice floated through the air in his showstopping number, “Too Many Tomorrows.” As Charity laments about greatness and love, the fickle finger of fate finally falls in her favor during the hilarious elevator scene with Oscar, played by Lake Wilburn who captured the panic with excellent comedic acting and accurately showed Oscar’s personality as a timid guy stuck in his own head.
Sweet Charity is basically a romantic comedy musical with a small dance show in the middle of the first act. The dance number for “Rich Man’s Frug” was spectacular in every sense. It actually felt like a real dance show and I never wanted it to end. Again, the ensemble brought the energy to the stage as the Rhythm of Life Church, which indeed is a powerful beat.
While Charity may not have purity in the purest sense, she still possessed a purity that is rare in the world today: she believed in the best of people and in the best of the future, and that is a sweet purity that is hard to come by.
Overall, Sweet Charity was a wonderful production by the Department of Musical Theatre in every aspect, from the costumes to the pit orchestra to the set designs to the acting to the choreography to the singing. Though I am not a huge romcom fan, I enjoyed this musical and its message of pure bliss and hope greatly, particularly because of the phenomenal orchestra and cast that made Sweet Charity that much sweeter.
REVIEW: The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Let’s do the time warp again. And let’s do it with a drag moth.
Rocky Horror Picture Show’s cult following came through, as the Leather Medusas performed a sold-out show at the Michigan Theater over the weekend. With many fans dressed in wigs, there was massive excitement and anticipation for the annual Rocky Horror Picture Show. And then, a beautiful Moth emerged onstage and everyone lost it. With sass and pride on full display, the Moth got the show started in style.
As a Rocky Horror Virgin who knew very little about the show going in except for the fact that it was weird, I was a bit unprepared for what the next hour and a half had in store for me. Little will be said about the movie, since the 1975 film has become a cult classic that is either known in its entirety or known with very actual knowledge of the show (the latter of which I happened to fall in before myself). And for the other Rocky Horror Virgins out there, I won’t spoil the very first experience for you, because let me tell you — it is quite the experience indeed.
One of the things that makes the Rocky Horror Picture Show a true experience is the talking back to the screen, which is understandable because some things in that movie just make you want to scream — and with this movie, you actually get to. However, the audience participation was at times rather annoying since it was hard to understand what everyone was shouting, and since I had no idea what was happening to begin with, I wanted to understand what everyone was shouting. Granted, some preparation beforehand could’ve been done on my part to help fully prepare myself for this experience. But I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, so I didn’t know what I had to prepare for. Nonetheless, clever lines were shouted every now and then that made the callbacks bearable. Particularly because Rocky Horror is a known cult classic, all the shouting was part of the experience, so I embraced it through my waves of annoyance.
The Leather Medusas shadow cast put on a phenomenal and amusing show full of hypersexual dancing and well-timed acting that didn’t disappoint as they received a standing ovation at the end. With Demetrius Markel as the muscular Rocky, he showed off his cheerleading skills through impressive moves that got the crowd riled up. The entire cast with wondrous costumes was exceptional in performing this show that requires a lot.
Now that I have lost my Rocky Horror virginity, I await for next year’s show with sweet, sweet antici…pation.
PREVIEW: Luzinterruptus: “Literature vs. Traffic”
For lovers of words and free thought, books are brilliantly powerful objects that seemingly glow in their eyes. Now, thousands of glowing books are literally paving the Ann Arbor roads for one night and one night only. On Tuesday, October 23, Liberty Street is shutting down for “Literature vs. Traffic,” a project put on by the anonymous Spanish public art installation group Luzinterruptus. After a week of hard work by the volunteers who are attaching the lights to 100,000 discarded books, Liberty Street is turning into a powerful, illuminated pathway for passerbys to ponder on (and even take a few books home) from 5-11pm on October 23.
PREVIEW: The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Halloween is here, and what better way to celebrate the spooky season than with The Rocky Horror Picture Show? In the 10th hour of the night on October 20th, the Leather Medusas, a group of University of Michigan students, are bringing the cult classic show in the annual Ann Arbor showing. In a sing-along, shout-along, and dance-along fashion, come out to the Michigan Theater to do the Time Warp with the Leather Medusas this year.
REVIEW: The Moth GrandSLAM Championship
We all experience pain in our lives, and The Moth GrandSLAM transformed The Ark into an incredible stage where ten StorySLAM champions were able to tell the true stories of their Growing Pains live.
As host Amir Baghdadchi put it, The Moth GrandSLAM is the closest public radio gets to American Ninja Warrior. The Moth is magical. It creates a temple for regular human beings and the tales they have to tell. And, on September 26, 2018, The Ark became that temple.
Amir started us off with some amusing stories of his adventures through 5th grade and the wisdom of plagiarizing in someone’s authentic voice, passing on the message that the most important moral pains have to deal with one’s moral character. As we got ready for a night of storytelling, Violinist Natalie Frakes was the timekeeper, providing a friendly reminder with a graceful violin note when the five minute mark came around.
Growing pains deal with people; as a result, there were many stories about relationships, and specifically, with fathers. Jill Chenault told a heartwarming story about her will to be strong and independent and how her changing relationship with her father, who now has Alzheimer’s, has given her the opportunity to now support him. Jim Pinion also talked about his father, and how they built their relationship through building his first car together.
We also heard from the perspective of fathers. Maxie Jones provided a new take on fatherhood as he shared his struggles in leaving bachelorhood behind, but confirmed that he wouldn’t trade fatherhood for anything. Eddie Hejka, who has been the father of 18 kids through adoption and foster care, shared the time his black son was ticketed for curfew violation in Detroit. He noted that many people were caught in the court system, questioning whether the court was truly a system for justice and pointing out that it was time for the courts to go through some growing pains.
Romantic relationships are also a classic example of growing pains, whether that is internally or externally. Matthew Mansour charmingly details his struggle in accepting his sexuality and the threats he faced when he came out. Susan Ciotti bared her soul about her abusive and cheating husband and her ability to fight for herself and feel complete.
There were also personal stories told. Joanna Courteau narrated an amusing story about how she never grew up. With the existence of false cognates (which is kind of like fake news, Joanna says), she amused the audience with her take on the growing pains that never go away. Stephanie Holloway talked about the of financial freedom and the all-too-relatable pains of financial responsibility. Paul Walters recounted the time he wanted to save the day when cycling, as nothing is more characteristic of growing pains than being a Sufferlandrian. And Rob Osterman explained why the first song in Frozen makes him cry — it’s a blatant reminder of mortality.
In between storytellers, Amir read the stories of the audience through prompts on papers they filled out. From little tales of when people had to make headway the hard way, or when they took a rivalry too far, it was a night filled with personal anecdotes from everyone that connected everyone in the room through these stories.
Three teams of judges scored the storytellers. Susan left the night as a Moth GrandSLAM champion, but all ten storytellers were champions in their vulnerability and excellent storytelling. There was pure laughter and heartfelt silence and emotional tears as these stories were told.
Our stories are the “honest truths that make up who we are,” and at The Ark that night, we got to hear those honest truths in their full glory.
