Tag: Comedy

REVIEW: Clown Show

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Each year a class through the SMTD Department of Theater teaches clown, a form of theatrical physical comedy. This course is taught by Professor Malcolm Tulip and comprises of many senior theater majors. Their final performance of the semester was performed in the Arthur Miller Theater on December 11th in a room of rambunctious peers and overlooked members of the community. My expectations for a clown show were previously unclear, but I have found a newfound respect for the art form from this fanciful, erratic performance.

Our modern perception of clowns is strongly associated with “circus clowns”, but the jesters have taken many forms throughout history. Clowns can be dated as far back as 2400 BC in Egypt. The art form has modified itself over centuries and existed uniquely in many cultures such as Early Roman and Greek jesters, Chinese jesters (most notably in the Han dynasty), Europe in the early 1800s (with the famous Joseph Grimaldi), and the 19th Century North American circus clowns. More about clowns is linked below.

At the top of the clown show, each clown introduced themselves with a small routine. Then,` they paired up to offer small vignettes starring their established characters. The vignettes included themes like, “Grocery Store”, “Treasure Hunt”, or “How We First Met”. Each routine was situationally unique, yet maintained the clown’s persona introduced at the beginning. They performed while pantomiming most “props and set pieces”, sometimes speaking to each other, sometimes silent.

These actors were effortlessly hysterical, and the audience remained responsive. They were fearless and remained intensely committed to their choices. Each student cultivated a genuine extension of themselves through a whimsical and highly physicalized filter. The clowns wore costumes reflective of their character with, of course, the beaming red nose. No two were alike in the slightest, each offering selective mannerisms. The troupe created a fanciful and utterly unique theatrical space within Arthur Miller, destigmatizing the often misunderstood art of clowns. 

 

More on Clowns Here: 

Clown and Theater 

Clowns: History and Mythology

 

Image taken during the 12/11/23 Clown Show.

REVIEW: Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch

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I loved Dr. Seuss’s books growing up but never watched the movies, so to celebrate the end of the semester and the coming of Christmas, I watched The Grinch at the Michigan Theater on Sunday, December 10th. I haven’t watched any of the previous adaptations, but they seem pretty different. The first version, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, came out in 1966 as a cartoon that’s 30 minutes long. The second version, also titled How the Grinch Stole Christmas, came out in 2000 as a live-action that’s 1 hour and 55 minutes long. The most recent one is what played at the theater: the 2018 animation that’s 1 hour and 30 minutes long, which is simply titled The Grinch.

This version is essentially the Grinch’s origin story and the audience gets to learn who the Grinch is as a person rather than a thief. The best part is we get to see his relationship with his dog Max, who is youthful and energetic in the film but old and weary in the book. Another character they redesigned was Cindy-Lou Who, the little girl who catches the Grinch in the middle of his act. In the book, she was less than two and only on a page or so; in the movie, she’s much older and one of the main characters.

The animation was fun and very fitting for a children’s Christmas movie. The palette was bright and the characters were cute, even the Grinch. I enjoyed hearing the narrator’s lines and rhymes because they added more of the book elements too. His voice surprised me though because he sounded relatively young when I was expecting an old man reminiscent of Santa, which I wish they went with instead. Because I knew the plot beforehand, it felt like a very long movie and some parts were dragging on, but I enjoyed it overall and would rewatch it again once it’s closer to Christmas.

REVIEW: She Loves Me

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This past weekend, I watched the musical She Loves Me (1963), a romantic comedy with a classic enemies-to-lovers trope set in 1934 Budapest, Hungary. The male lead is Georg Nowack, the hardworking manager of Maraczek’s Parfumerie. He’s always at odds with the female lead, Amalia Balash, an employee who’s not the best at her job and believes Georg always has it out for her. There’s a unique array of workers at the parfumerie. There’s the playboy Steven Kodály, the innocent delivery boy Arpad Lazslo, the sexy lady Ilona Ritter, and the cheerful father Ladislav Sipos.

It’s a frustratingly slow-burn romance; most of the first act is unraveling the main character’s mysterious love interests, their “dear friends,” and getting to know the other employees. In the second half, though, the romantic development quickly speeds up and She Loves Me plays, my favorite musical number. I enjoyed watching the usually serious Georg dancing around the stage and singing his heart out, giddy with love.

The show was completely run by the Golden Theatre Company (GTC), a student organization that strives to spread the joy of musical theatre and create opportunities for all students to be part of the production and performance process. When reading the program notes, I was fascinated that quite a few members were freshman or not musical theatre students; one was even a Mathematics and Computer Science major! Furthermore, everything was done well. The stage props for the parfumerie were adorable and intricate, the outfits were gorgeous and elegant, fitting for the era, and the microphones and music were clear.

As suggested by their name, the GTC only performs musicals from the Golden Age of musical theatre (roughly mid-1940s to late 1950s) or musicals sung in the classical style. I look forward to their next semester’s performance because I’m sure they’ll choose a wonderful musical to perform with the highest quality.

REVIEW: Accidental Death of an Anarchist

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November 16-18 was the showing of Mirit Skeen’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Each directing major is tasked with directing a full-length show during their senior year, and this play was chosen and directed by Mirit Skeen in fulfillment of the requirement. ADOAA is a political farce written by Dario Fo and translated into English by Ed Emory. First performed in 1970 in Italy, it’s a timely tale of the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing and the death of Giuseppe Pinelli while being interrogated by the police. 

As an admirer of Mirit Skeen’s directing work, this was no disappointment. This piece is not for the faint of heart, and a huge work to tackle in just a few weeks. There are moments when I come across performances at SMTD that remind me of the incredibly high level of art we are surrounded by. This was one of those moments. Hailing from one of the best music and theater schools in the country, it is a gift to see peers and colleagues at work creating inventive works of art. 

The cast consisted of 6 actors including Nathan Goldberg (BFA 24′), Lenin Izquierdo (BFA 24′), Jalen Steudle (BFA 24′), Jack Weaver (BFA 24′), Hannah Gansert (BFA 25′), Casey Wilcox (BFA 24′). With a seasoned troupe of actors, each character was thoughtfully produced and executed. Some moments indulged absolute clownery—and those were the audience favorites. The energy brought by the actors was reciprocated by the 11 pm audience. 

Historically, it was unknown if Pinelli’s death was a suicide or a framed murder. The police claimed the death was a result of suicide or an unconscious fall. The judge ruled it as an “accidental death”. However, evidence later supported the event to be a cover-up aimed to avoid investigation and obscure complacency with the guilty neofascist groups. These groups were working to impede the spread of communism, labor, rights, and political decent. Four of the characters in the play are police officers aiming to close and cover up the case (all with unique personalities and intentions). The character of the Maniac (Weaver) infiltrates the inner workings of the corrupt system, using an archetypal clown-like persona to critique the flawed investigation. This included the Maniac breaking the fourth wall, revealing the innate relevance of the piece to the audience.

There was a note from the dramaturgy team (Naomi Parr and Ty Amsterdam) that particularly spoke to me moments after seeing the show: “Perhaps there’s a comfort to be found in 2023 that we are not alone in grappling with staggering polarization, rampant disinformation, and the complexities of responding to terror. Even while democracy dies in darkness and the truth is more important now than ever, perhaps we can turn back to the court jesters to speak truth to power. Or if nothing else, at least we can revel in a Maniac in public office whose term limits start at lights up and end at curtain call.” I appreciated this brilliant inscription from the team, and it encapsulates precisely the message transmitted through Mirit’s direction. 

Next from the SMTD Department of Theater is Imogen Says Nothing, a hilarious feminist hijacking of Shakespeare. This Aditi Kapil play will be performed at the Power Center from November 30th-December 3rd.

 

 

Image thanks to Mirit Skeen on Instagram.

REVIEW: Orpheus in the Underworld

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8:00pm • Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023 • Power Center

SMTD’s production of Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers) this past weekend was campy and aesthetically chaotic. The opera was originally written in 1858 by librettists Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy and composer Jacques Offenbach, and is a humorous, irreverent take on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In this rendition, directed by Mo Zhou, SMTD chose to extend the opera’s original political critique of capitalist power structures into the 1950s, on the cusp of the Kennedy presidential campaign. The result is a complex amalgam of messages and meanings which I will discuss below. 

The notes provided in the program for this performance were essential in interpreting the many points the creative directors wanted to get across. First, the “About the Authors” section conveyed the point that each of the authors drew inspiration from the politics of their time. Mo Zhou elaborated upon that point in her director’s note, drawing from Offenbach’s “turbulent relationship with personal finance” to develop the opera as a statement on the privileged elite and capitalism. Further, the dramaturgical team focuses on how including Public Opinion as an archetypal character frames and translates the plot for the audience. Finally, the dramaturgs suggest that Offenbach wrote feminist meanings into the opera and subverted power structures by making Public Opinion a female character and focusing on Eurydice’s romantic self-determination.

I would not necessarily have read all of these themes into the opera without the program to point them out. In terms of the political and labor meanings of the production, the set did much of the heavy lifting. Larger-than-life vintage advertisements framed the stage, literally presenting each scene through a lens of consumerism. In the scene where the gods revolt against Jupiter’s rule, they carry signs parodying the labor movement with slogans like “Give Me Generational Wealth or Give Me Debt.” 

Despite the dramaturgical efforts to read feminism and liberation into Orpheus in the Underworld, my perception of the gender relations in this story was more cynical. While the role of Public Opinion as a female character was meant to give “the voice of the collective Greek chorus … to someone who historically was not given a voice,” her comparatively minor role in the story didn’t allow a full development of that voice. Personally, Offenbach’s treatment of Public Opinion as a female character felt more mocking of women as arbiters of social control.

All of that said, this performance was a lot of fun to experience, with all of its wacky, unexpected pop-culture references (Elvis as Bacchus?). There was so much going on that I don’t know if my confusion is a critique or a sign of some complex theatrical genius on the side of the production’s creative team. The set and costumes were beautifully and thoughtfully designed, and the cast performed splendidly. Orpheus in the Underworld was both entertaining and intellectually stimulating, and I thoroughly enjoyed picking apart the creative choices which pulled this performance together.

REVIEW: Orpheus in the Underworld

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Unlike what the title suggests, Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers) didn’t focus much on Orpheus being in the Underworld nor did it remain true to the romantic and sorrowful story told in Greek myths. Instead, what SMTD brought to life was a goofy comedy contrasted with powerful French opera, and they described it as “a cheeky twist” on the famous love story between Orpheus and his wife, Eurydice.

In mythology, Orpheus and Eurydice were deeply in love, so when Eurydice met her untimely death, he played the lyre (an instrument similar to the harp) and used his musical genius to charm his way into the Underworld and bring her back to the world of the living. 

In this version, the two shared a terrible marriage and were both cheating on each other. They portrayed Orpheus as a lackluster violinist, which was one of the many things that drove his wife crazy. Eurydice constantly asked for a divorce, but Orpheus always refused with sweet words. He had a different plan in mind to get rid of her. When Eurydice died, he jumped with joy; however, his happiness was short-lived when soon after he was threatened by Public Opinion to save his wife and thus dragged to the Underworld. 

Operas place a greater importance on music than storytelling, so although the dialogue was in English, the majority of the show was in French. Orpheus in the Underworld was performed at The Power Center for the Performing Arts, and they provided screens with English subtitles for the audience to follow along. Some technical difficulties threw off the timing of the words, but I wasn’t that disappointed since the students’ acting and singing were so captivating it felt like a waste to take my eyes off them.

The story took place in the late 1950s, so all of the backdrops, from the farm to Olympus and the Underworld, were all unique. I also loved the wardrobe, especially the outfits of the gods. They were totally different from the traditional white robes I normally associate with Greek mythology. My favorite costume was when Jupiter, also known as Zeus, transformed into what was supposed to be a seductive fly.

Overall, I had fun! It was my first time watching an opera, and it combined humor with musical prowess. I’ve really enjoyed each of SMTD’s productions and look forward to watching more.