REVIEW: ComCo Presents: Chest Hairs Roasting On An Open Fire

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

Let me tell ya, folks, there is nothing like raunchy humor in improv comedy to really get you in the holiday spirit.

Before the show, instead of plum fairies or whatever on my mind, I thought only of finals and what the hell I was going to get my brother for Christmas. Afterwards, here I am in full St. Nick mode, my cheeks flushed, my voice jolly, my generousitity with baked goods at an all-time high. My mood has been lifted from its normal haunt (the gates of hell) up to the North Pole. I am only a little bit terrified of a future full evolution into that bearded chimney penetrator.

When I stepped into Angell Hall Auditorium A that evening I was shocked to find the crowd so large I couldn’t find a seat. Almost every event I review hosts a meager audience, sometimes no more than an infant’s handful of people showing up. It was refreshing to see so many people showing up to support the school’s longest-running comedy group.

The show was structured into several creative exercises they called games. There was I like my men like I like my _____, a chaptered story, another with characters who could only say the same two sentences, and others. While the scenes almost always slapped, the way they accepted suggestions from the audience wasn’t optimal. Often a repeated, audience-endorsed phrase would be ignored in favor of another they deemed usable. A true improv artist would never cherry-pick in this way. But regardless of this minor transgression, the group showed how deeply talented they are at coming up with often complex jokes and wordplay on the spot. I was most impressed with how long they kept up the full novel about the murderous reindeer, though they had to scrap a few chapters early on because they weren’t panning out well.

I’m sure it takes a lot of confidence to get on stage without a script and play a fool for a room of peers paying $2 a ticket. And I’m sure the power of making an entire audience dissolve into laughter from something you came up with a second ago is worth much more than most other pursuits. There are few opportunities like this that so fully improve the mood of everyone involved. It takes a certain kind of person to pull forward such powerful extroversion for a constructive use.

If you posess any rational thoughts at all, you will be wondering when the next Comco performance is. You’ll be able to attend another in mid-January after the semester begins, again in Angell Hall Auditorium A at 8pm.

 

 

REVIEW: A Christmas Story

Lucy Leave a comment

A Christmas Story centers around the story of a young boy looking to convince anyone and everyone that the best Christmas gift for him would be the Red Ryder BB gun, including his parents, Santa, and his teacher at school. As Christmas looms closer, he experiences all sorts of mishaps that would befall a kid in the 1980s, and we are swept along in the comedy and merriment of it all.

As a first time watcher of this classic movie, I feel like I have a more unique perspective, especially on some things that a young child watching this movie may not have picked up on. First, the subtle (and maybe not so subtle) sexism of the time period, shown in the “dictator father” and “housekeeping mother” stereotypes. Also, it was a terrible influence on children to regard a gun so highly! This influence probably gave many kids the idea that having a gun for themselves is a good idea and made them want one. However, despite its flaws, the movie was funny, heartwarming, silly, and a fun watch.

I really enjoyed that the movie was from Ralphie’s perspective, and that we got to hear his inner thoughts and daydreams. I think that there are not many movies today that are in this style, and it made for a very interesting and entertaining watch. When Ralphie imagined something as much more exaggerated than it was, like him being blind and his parents crying that they were sorry, it was a very realistic dream that a kid might have. And the fact that he thought his writing and ideas were amazing was also a funny addition that is certainly a trait all kids have. To hear everything from his perspective appealed to both a child, who could relate to his problems, as well as to an adult, who could laugh at the embellishment of it all.

The story was also humorous, in some ways that it was supposed to be, and some just because the time period was so different. It was intriguing to watch a movie from almost 40 years ago, as so much of what they considered normal would be so strange now. One example is that the children’s lifestyles were so different from what it is like today. The kids went places by themselves, even the little brother, and the teachers and parents let them roam around and play at such a young age. But it was also humorous because of the silly things that kids do, like dare each other to lick a cold lamppost, and believe very much in the power of Santa.

 

Also, just as a side note, I did not realize until watching this movie where that iconic leg lamp was from! I have seen it before, and I never knew its origins. I loved how much the dad loved the lamp, even though it was so ugly, and that Ralphie kept caressing it when they first received it.

Despite its flaws, I think this was a wonderful movie and a delightful story, that can be shared with a loved one or the whole family. Enjoy your holiday season!

PREVIEW: Honey Boy

Angela Gosselin Leave a comment

Honey Boy is a film about a coming of age amidst fame. As much as the phrase “coming of age” may cause one to recoil from the assumed avalanche of clichés to come, this movie’s screenplay is by Shia LaBeouf and is slightly autobiographical. I think that alone is enough to engage people critical of the tired structure it confronts due to LaBeouf’s uneven and highly publicized trajectory post-Disney. The high acclaim I’ve been seeing from critics both in the newspaper and in social media doesn’t hurt your reasons to go, either.

 

Honey Boy is showing at the State Theater, so grab an $8.50 student ticket and try to forget about the insanity of finals season!!

REVIEW: Greenie Night Live

Joseph Patrick Raney 1 Comment

This last Saturday, 58 Greene’s diverse ensemble delivered Greenie Night Live, an amateur yet earnest a cappella performance with a unique set list that ranged from R&B to Alternative Indie. To start off the night, University of Michigan dance group Encore performed a dynamic set of choreographed dances to some tastefully layered tracks. Seeing as how this event was held in a lecture room of East Hall, having the space of a larger stage would have perhaps served the quality of this dance performance well.

The MC’s of this event tried to fill in the show’s gaps with repartee that most certainly had potential to be funny, yet often fell flat from a seeming unpreparedness or lack of chemistry.

I go to all my events with hopes of being blown away. All things considered, while 58 Greene has some great sound and even greater potential, the unfortunate acoustics of the lecture hall accompanied by a muddled sound-mixing often made the lead vocals feel rather lost amidst the remaining back-up members. Alongside this, a number of arrangements often felt rather imbalanced. I was really excited to learn that Joji’s Slow Dancing in the Dark was being performed, and while there was a commendable presence of supporting voices in the ensemble, the leading soloist’s  painful belting and flat delivery made it rather difficult to sit through.

On an extremely positive note, however, I found myself blown away by the smooth and sultry timbre of leading vocalist Teddi Reynolds in an arrangement of Jazmine Sullivan’s 2008 hit, Bust Your Windows. This was undoubtably the highpoint of the event as a whole, due not only to the killer vocalist, but also the well-synchronized supporting ensemble. This piece demonstrated the absolute potential that 58 Greene has when a strong vocalist is leading, which many of the other pieces lacked.

Ultimately, my conclusion is that a great number of the talented female ensemble members were often let down by a lackluster male foundation, often noticeable in the bass parts, and most certainly self-evident in the outperformance of the male soloists by the quality female soloists. I’m willing to reason that Greenie Night Live may simply have been an off-night for certain members of 58 Greene; however, since this was a ticketed event, I can only afford so much generosity in my evaluation of this amateur ensemble’s quality. Considering the strengths and the definite potential of 58 Greene, raising the expected standard for greater vocal talent and proficiency in leading vocalists could really carry this ensemble far.

REVIEW: The Grapes of Wrath

Emma Rose Leave a comment

First thing I want to say: I haven’t read The Grapes of Wrath. My sense of the story now: sad upon sad upon sad. So many of the characters die or disappear out of hopelessness!

I think it’s hard to make an audience connect with characters in a story that’s pretty relentlessly sad. Acting out tragedy looks exhausting and, honestly, felt a little exhausting to watch. Not that I think tragedy isn’t important or wise. I think it’s both, a lot. I was just reminded, after watching this play, that absorbing it well is a pretty delicate process. I need breaks from tragic circumstances to make me, when those moments come, want to empathize.

It’s in these breaks that I felt the play really shined.

My favorite breaks were the funny ones. I realized that well-done humor was going to make all the difference in the show when the guitar, banjo, and fiddle trio made the revving sounds for the car starting up for the trip. One, two, three false starts. A few of the characters said something like, “Hey, now. Quit playing,” and the whole room changed dynamic. The audience giggled and relaxed. We saw the characters as a little more like us; there was less of a barrier in way of talking, since it was modern English, and the music distracted from the constant, strong Southern (?) accents.

Another very important reason I began to care about the tragic storyline was for the realistic, sensitive portrayal of the mother, or “Ma.” She was a complete joy to watch. She always seemed to mean exactly what she was saying in a way that wasn’t too enthusiastic to be believable, like I felt some of the others risked. She gave Ma a deep sense of poise that none of the others quite pulled off, which gave her character nice dignity and made her performance very easy to believe. Especially for a storyline that hurts a little to buy into, a sad one, her understatedness was a much-needed anchor for my interest. The rest of the actors did an earnest and enthusiastic job, to be sure, but I craved more quiet moments, less accent, and a little more subtlety in how they showed anger and hurt. It felt like a lot of yelling and a lot of face-contorting. Ma matched their seriousness but more naturally, and I felt like she was the most inviting entry for the audience to care about the story.

Thank you, Ma, and thank you, well-timed comedy. You had almost lost me, and even if you bummed me out for a few hours, I appreciate that you tried a play with such a troubled story.

REVIEW: The Room

Angela Gosselin Leave a comment

“You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!”

“Why, Lisa, why, why?!”

“Everyone betrayed me! I’m fed up with this world.”

“They betrayed me, they didn’t keep their promise, they tricked me, and I don’t care anymore.”

 

Tommy Wiseau’s cries of anguish in cult classic The Room never get old, at least not for the loyal crowd that came out last Thursday. I found this to be one of the best The Room experiences I’ve had, as the crowd was clearly full of long-time fans and therefore not participating at the deafening pitch of the full house of virgins at Rocky at the Michigan Theater. The excited shouts of “Water!!” when a stock shot of bodies of water in San Francisco appeared, the encouraging “Go, go, go!” when the panning shots never seemed to end, and other beloved call outs (now including the offhand, “Ok, Boomer,” when Lisa’s mother is giving her advice) made for a really interactive and chaotic experience.

 

The film itself honestly can’t really be summed up via text. I can tell you that it’s poorly written, produced, and acted and thus one of the best cultural works in recent history, but that doesn’t really capture the specific disjointed and slightly baffling nature of this film.

 

Finally, the spoons. I have to talk about the spoons. To spoil one tradition of this movie experience, there is a specific framed photo of a spoon on the set that gets the most screen time in the film. Every time one spots said photo, it’s necessary to shout “SPOONS!” and (plastic) spoons are thrown in the air in celebration. This viewing had so many spoons and enthusiasm that between sightings people would reach down and into the aisles to gather spoons to throw at any triumphant moment for Tommy in the movie. At the end, people jumped on stage to throw the immeasurable amount of utensils back at the audience. The spoon obsession is simply the oddest and most enjoyable part of seeing The Room.

 

All this being said, this movie is also an amazing look into unfiltered male ego, misogyny, and conservatism. The tone deaf nature of this film broadcasts this uncomfortable mindset, but in such a poorly executed way that it feels made to be ironically consumed. There’s no guilt in booing Lisa, the classic “woman as temptress” archetype, because she’s so cartoonishly evil that there’s no way to not be in on the joke.

 

Next time you see The Room making the rounds, whether that’s in Ann Arbor, Royal Oak, or elsewhere, grab an unsuspecting friend and enjoy bemoaning the betrayal of the pseudo-Christ himself, Tommy Wiseau (er, “Johnny”).