Archive for April, 2007

A sense of foreboding crept into my testicles as I stumbled into the Parkside Lounge ten minutes late to do this review and realized I was the only person there. By the time The Rob and Mark Show started there were about ten of us. Things looked grim, but then a showbiz miracle happened:

They went into their opening number, a book club review about a book neither of them had read, and it…was…Hilarious! The moment Mark sang about the shit fairy,”the shit fairy comes and replaces your poo” I was hooked.

A little ways into the show they told a horror tale of working a club where they had to follow a duo of tranny magicians. The big finish for the trannies was pulling a seemingly endless line of knotted scarves out of their post- op vagina/things and flatly announcing: “TaDa!” It was at that point I began to realize this show was gonna rock. And I was right.

To me, Rob was reminiscent of a young Lewis Black sans the maniacal anger. He kept things grounded and moving- even while breaking our hearts singing about his hetero man crush on Jack Bauer.

Mark reminded me of a mix between Dick Smothers and Tom Hanks’ character from the movie Volunteers. An awful movie, but I mean it as a compliment. At one point in the show he does an impersonation of Wilfred Brimley hawking muffins filled with his own leche de hombre- Now that’s just good clean fun.

They also had a couple of special guests. The first was Todd Womack. One thing he did was an impersonation of a monkey coordinating an elaborate theft of a shiny spoon. The bizarre thing is the voice he used for the monkey is exactly how I always imagined a monkey planning a heist to sound. Creepy huh?

Their second guest was Rusty Ward. He came up on stage to read us some mad libs he had filled out with his crazy Mother. Then he was interrupted by a call from his daughter. It didn’t take long for the scene to deteriorate into a domestic disaster between him and his ex wife, only you know- in a really balls out funny way.

The easy witty banter between all the guys was great and really showed that they genuinely enjoy each other and love comedy. Even when their jokes fell flat they were able to laugh at each other and themselves, or in Womack’s case, just blame the audience for being lame.

They stumbled, they had miscues, they talked over each other, but it all added to an air of camaraderie and gave the show an intimate raw feel that I find lacking in a lot of live performances. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t polished, but it was real and it was laugh out loud funny. I’d go to see them again in a heartbeat.

For future dates and venues check out the link to their website.

Also hear some of their songs on their myspace page.

Reverie Productions new play, “RearViewMirror”, now playing at 59E59 Theatres, is without a doubt one of the best new plays of the year. Three young actors sit on stools on an empty stage. They tell their intertwining stories, mainly in monologue form, rarely interacting directly with each other. Penn (the understated, perfectly cast Mark Alhadeff), is a guy who loves Orthodox Jewish women, His girlfriend, Agatha (played by astonishing actress Audrey Lynn Weston), is struggling with her own faith, and finding her identity in unikely places. Thrown into the mix is Inez (played by the very solid Sarah Nina Hayon), an Orthodox Jewish woman who has just left her husband and is also working to find herself.

The play is inspried by the classic Greek tragedy, “The Bacchae”, and explores similar themes by using its own, modern, distinct voice. Obsession, sexuality, faith, and self-awareness are all explored, abandoned, and revisited by these three compelling characters, and although there is no action on stage, the 80 minute play is not for a moment anything but thrilling.

Playright Eric Winick has captured something extraordinary here. His characters are complicated, sympathetic and intriguing, and the story they tell is beautiful, tragic and funny. The choppy ending sticks out in the midst of his clear, crisp story, but the three talented actors pull it off with real passion. Weston sticks out as a truly diverse and exceptional actress, finding humor in all the right places, and comitting to the dramatic moments, and the troubled character. Hayon and Alhadeff shine as well, and together thet are most certainly one of the best young casts around.

Director Carl Forsman has accomplished something phenomenal: three characters sitting in stools as one of the best productions in town today. His direction is seamless and committed, and his love of the script and the characters is elegantly apparent.

“RearViewMirror” is not only a good play, but most likely the must-see production of the Spring. Don’t miss it.

Tickets and Information available online.

Tuesday night at Smith’s Bar on West 44th and 8th ave is a fascinating slice of New York. But it’s more than just New York, it’s America. But of course, it’s more than just America: It’s the Whole Wide World.

Sabrina, the karaoke mistress has been rocking the mic and turntables at Smiths for nearly 4 years now, and has seen a little bit of everything. The locals, the tourists, the greenhorns who came to New York to make it on Broadway, or at Juliard, the drunken bums who stroll in off the street, heck, sometimes the occassional methadone-junkie from the Times Square of old.

8th avenue in the 40’s is a fascinating creature in the urban jungle. Evidenced by the DVD and Peep-Show shops, it still clings to the seediness of the Times Square of Travis Bickle and Ratso Rizzo directly to it’s East. (Now home to Disney and MTV)

Evidenced by the Irish Pubs and grills up and down the avenue, it still remembers the Hell’s Kitchen history of The Westies, the Irish gang that laid claim to the down and dirty ‘hood throughout the late 20th century.

Smith’s, who has been around since 1954 and I’m sure saw more than it’s share of The Kitchen’s stories its heyday still serves up greasy Irish Pub fare to go with it’s $5 pints and liquor bar, graciously keeping the boozy karaoke madness on one side of the establishment, and the dining quarters on the other.

On one random Tuesday night when Karaoke is really popping, I encountered a pack of Australians on an Ameircan walkabout who after enough Jagerbombs, treated us all to a horribly off-key rendition of Land Down Under.

A corporate automotive business team from L.A. decided to make Smith’s their location for a night in New York, and a very pretty blonde named Yvette finally worked up the gusto to treat us to her very personalized version of Shania Twain’s Feel Like a Woman.

The Smiths regulars are a jolly, friendly bunch who’ve turned their love of singing to pre-recorded music into friendships outside the karaoke joint. My own karaoke buddies Sarah and Drew, a preciously cute couple who work on various Broadway shows treated us to Nina Simone’s Feelin’ Good.

And I headed out right after some old timer I’ve seen once or twice before brought the real spirit of the night home with none other than Billy Joel’s ballad to Gotham: New York State of Mind (A Smith’s staple.) Thank God the drunk with stains on his jeans couldn’t read the number-code for Freebird in the song-book.

Though Sabrina could focus a little more on hosting the karaoke, and less time flirting with patrons and asking people to pose for pictures, if you want a slice of everything that Times Square once meant and what New York will always mean to the world; (a place to SHINE!0 then Smith’s is your destination to sing your heart out to the Greatest City in the World.

“Breaking In” is a new sitcom that will be playing on the internet this Spring and Summer. Last night, at the beautiful Off-Broadway Theatre, New World Stages, there was a screening of the pilot episode of this hilarious new show.

“Breaking In” is a theatre geek/ struggling artist’s dream sitcom. The show parodies all that is demeaning, depressing and silly about the off-off-off-off Broadway theatre scene, from the actors’ and producers’ perspectives. A “Waiting fo Guffman” set with twenty somethings in Manhattan, the pilot was about the opening night of a brand new Native American-themed muscial. A lead actor’s nose gets broken when he is making out backstage with one of the producers, the audience yawns and text messages during the show, a young actress gets hit on by her sleazy co-star moments before her entrance.

The writer, Joe Drymala, has a dry, hip, distinctly Manhattan sense of humor. His characters are quirky and the relationships are dead-on. The show is simply fun to watch– all the actors have excellent comedic timing and fanatastic character work. Director Ryan Davis has captured something special in thie brief, 20 minute pilot, and I, for one, will be tuning in for episode 2.

Episodes airing online, so keep checking in to see the newest “Breaking In”.

In case anyone was wondering, Danny Tanner is not gay. Bob Saget made this clear during a taping of his stand-up comedy show for HBO. Audience members lined up around the block at NYU on Friday night, gearing up for the free show. I thought you had to have friends in production or a super secret email contact to get in. Not so much. Turns out all you had to do was turn off your cell phone and flash photography and agree not to have to pee for nearly two hours, and you were good to giggle.

An audience coordinator made us clap like mad while a jib camera swept the crowd, for creative editing purposes. That was kind of funny in itself, everyone reacting like this guy was part of the British invasion. A comic named Mike Young warmed us up. His bits were brief but hilarious. He mused about relationships, then came to the conclusion that the “interesting” girls he pursues are actually “bipolar”. There’s something about the way girls confront guys, he said, that makes them lie even when there’s no need to. Case in point: “Where’d you go?!” “Just grabbed some McDonalds, honey.” “Then why are you holding a Burger King bag?!” “I don’t know! I don’t know why I even said that! I don’t even like food!”

Then Bob Saget made his entrance. My first thought was that he’s really skinny. My second observation was that he was wearing Chuck Taylors. Chuck Taylors are a huge factor in my personal Uncool gauge. Bonus points.

He’s raunchy in a way you can’t understand unless you’ve seen his shows, and I don’t mean the show with MK & Ashley and I don’t mean the home video show, either. He punctuated most sentences with curses and more than once he mentioned sleeping with Kimmy Gibler, “DJ”’s friend. He immediately singled out a guy in the front row and asked him if he shaves his balls. The shorn balls was a recurring theme throughout the show.

But instead of acting beyond the shows that made him famous, Saget incorporated them into his act, poking fun at America’s Funniest Home Videos, “complaining” about how many home made pornos people sent into the show, and making Dave Coulier and John Stamos the subjects of many of the jokes (because Stamos, unlike Saget, is pretty, and because Coulier, unlike the name Tanner, does rhyme with gay). He told a story about he and Stamos witnessing a car accident in which a woman suffered a short black out; when she opened her eyes, they were peering at her, and he joked that she must have thought she was in sitcom hell. Saget and Stamos have also been known to break into their old characters at awkward moments, say, in a men’s room with another guy using the urinal between them.

“I will f*ck you up,” Saget said intermittently, and pointed to the crowd, almost as a transition from one joke to the next. But eager to also be perceived as a family man, he laced his act with tidbits about his three daughters, their vapid cell phone conversations, their thongs the size of slingshots, which he happened to stumble upon in the laundry and, horrified already, found out belonged to his youngest daughter. He told a story of Hollywood humiliation: he approached Steven Spielberg with his daughter and said, “Honey, this is the man who directed your favorite movie,” only to have his daughter say she hated E.T. That little extra terrestrial was the butt of Saget’s jokes too; I think he likened him to a testicle.

Then he broke out the acoustic, and sang a song about oral sex to the tune of “Wonderful Tonight”. Saget concluded the evening with a song he calls “Danny Tanner’s Not Gay” to the tune of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way.” “I know that show wasn’t always funny/but f*ck you, it made me alot of money,” he crooned while the audience, an NYU and young professional crowd, cracked up.

So the next time you’re watching television and you’re looking for something saucier than old “Full House” reruns, you might be able to catch Bob Saget on HBO on Demand. But don’t say I didn’t warn you - it’s a whole other side of Danny Tanner!