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Birthing Cletis: Performance Number Twenty

Some really fun work tonight! The cast was Mark, Darren, Kate and myself. The mood was angry. The results were predictably unpredictable. It was a little long in duration, but equally long in laughs and energy. A great start to the weekend.

Act one introduced us to Mark as David (this is going to get confusing!), a 50-year-old illiterate bellhop who had led Marcel, his 20-year-old girlfriend, to believe that he was the owner of the hotel where he worked. His earnest brother, Golf (?!), gave a helping hand with the bags, while Mrs. Higgenbottom offered a helping hand of a different sort. Mark gave a typically random and delightful solo that centered on a robin's egg as a metaphor (as well as a tendency to eat embryoes!) Then we met Darren as Carlos, a lonely guy with a Woodstock-type mother, overlooked friend, Scott, and a "fabulous" acquaintance and philanthropist Edith, who made a point of reminding Carlos just how mediocre his life was. Kate portrayed Corey, a young woman who delighted in living in a co-ed dorm. There, she encountered the towel-wearing and lustful Justin, her oddly-suited roommate Hank, and a former cheer-leading highschool friend, Ruth. Kate rocked the house with a great bluesy solo with the boys as backup. Finally, I was Josh, a young man who had a soft spot for sunsets on the beach, but whose favorite spot had been polluted by Mrs. Peterson's lost uranium, and the antics of his current "scarecrowish" girlfriend Mary Sue and slightly "off" exgirlfriend Agatha. Jim joined me on the keyboards for a parody of "Sunrise Sunset" as I mourned the fate of my favorite beach. I think that might actually be the second time we've used that song, but this time felt particularly strong.

Mark's David took the vote and we followed the travails of his character as he searched for knowledge and love. His younger girlfriend, Marcel, hid her pregnancy from her lover, and when she discovered him with a series of other women (Mrs. Higgenbottom, then Corey...), she plotted revenge with her sister, Mary Sue. Mark gave a strong opening solo, and Darren and I had great fun with a villainous patter duet where he noted down Marcel's fast-paced letter of last resort to David. (Little did she know that he was unable to read it and therefore unable to win her back!) I enjoyed, after a particularly fast verse, asking somewhat deviously for Darren's character to read/sing it back! Darren, in fact, had quite a busy and strong act, and did a great job providing a break-neck series of characters one after another as the story progressed.

I confused Mark a little with a slightly odd offer as the act neared its end, launching him into a duet with Kate about beaches. They both did a great job, regardless of my unintentional plot detour, and this became one of my favorite musical numbers of the night. One of my personal high (low?) lights of the run was my show stopping number tonight, where my towel-wearing Justin sang about the endless possibilities for love if you keep an open mind. Keith and Jim were particularly vampy in the pit, and the number climaxed with Darren catching my thrown costume towel. Finally, Mark's David and my Marcel squared off in the final duet, leveling charges at each other, until his illiteracy and her pregnancy were finally revealed (I believe Mark actually noticed an extra pair of feet emerging under my skirt if I'm not mistaken.) We had one of our most fun ending songs of the run, with the birth of their child, complete with cord cutting and baby naming (Cletis), and David declaring that he would not eat this particular fetus... You had to be there!!

The content was a little playfully dicey in places, but this was a really explosive show, with a particularly strong top and bottom of the second act. Mark really stepped up his game as the star and made some great helpful choices that set us all up for a successful act. In addition to his usual comedic finesse in his solos, he also did particularly well tonight in providing lyrics that helped to clearly propel his sympathetic star. Kate did some really fun character work throughout--I particularly liked her uranium-hiding Mrs. Peterson that was quite an original offering. Darren was also on fire in terms of his wildly quick costume changes and great plot progressions. There was so much playfulness tonight. So while we ran a little long, the audience really seemed to leave on a high, as did the company. Some good work all around, and we managed to avoid some old traps and habits. I was a happy camper.

Some fun quotes from Gina, our omnipresent AD:

David: "I'm gonna stick to him like white sticks to artificial tan"
Mark: "Mediocrity is like a toothpick 'cause only nasty people have it."
Darren (singing while wearing a towel): "Some guys like to hang out, some guys don't."
David: "If you mean by 'cook up,' kill him, I agree."
Mark: "You've got little feet sticking out of your skirt."

And the countdown ticked to five...

Your is-this-really-coming-to-an-end Director, David C?