IMFourPlay

Children Are Animals Too: Performance Number Fourteen

Another wacky evening of FourPlay with some great characters and odd storylines! Chase, Jay and Kate joined me on the stage for a night of fun, furry animals and floundering fathers...

Chase started the show as Tom, a zoo-keeper with an odd co-worker, Bertha, an odder apprentice, G-Funk, and a sadly overlooked daughter desperate for attention, Shnookums. Jay gave us Berry, a man forcefully pushed through life by his devout pastor, and torn between his brother Jerry, and the girl of his affections, Agatha. We then met Mary, a divorcee with a hankering for the navy boys down by the dock. While her grandmother supposed watched the kids, and her undervalued friend Joe held the camera, she set up a rendezvous with a salty sea-man who simply went by the name, The Admiral. Finally, I was Justin, a mountain bike maniac, who wanted to meet with his crush, Megan, on the mountainous slopes. There were lots of fun moments in the act, including some great dynamics with Chase and his family of characters, a joyful confessional number between Jay and I, a rollicking good jam with Kate in the lead as she bemoaned her dating situation, and another tricky parody offer from Jim for my closing solo - "There ain't no mountain high enough."

Much to Chase's surprise (he didn't hide it well at all!) we followed his Tom into the second act as his much neglected (and diabetic) daughter was swept away into G-Funk and The Admiral's evil plans to populate their ship before sailing into the sunset. Amongst the more disturbing lyrics of the night (and there were plenty), Chase crooned: "I'll eat your lice and pick your parasites because I love you." Jay and I did a fun Gilligan's Island number, with great support from Jim and Keith in the band as always. I also had a lot of fun in perhaps one of my most pathetic parodies for a while, as Chase's unnamed daughter, Snookums. While caged in The Admiral's ship, and coming down from diabetic shock, I sang, "There is a father on a cloud" to the soaring tunes of Les Mis. However, perhaps the oddest exchanges of the night came from the ever-surprising Jay as G-Funk: G-Funk-"It's a family ferret." Snookums-"If you stroke the ferret, you're a member of the family." Hmmmmmm... As Kate's kidnapped Mary joined the final family picture, we actually closed on one of our sweeter endings, with the whole family coming back together.

We got a little ballad-heavy in the second act: we need to always pursue the up-tempo numbers - this is something Charles Gray does so well and effortlessly. I also learnt the hard way that wrestling an imaginary puma in a wild offstage exit can very nearly cause a very real injury. I was limping a little as Snookums upon my re-entrance, but (fingers crossed) it doesn't look like there's any permanent damage. Jay and Chase did nice work really crafting a meaningful reveal and ending, and we had another show without any onstage deaths (if you don't count The Admiral being swept overboard!) While I'm always looking to raise the stakes in general, it was a strong show, and I really enjoyed playing alongside my fellow cast mates tonight. And we ultimately learnt an important lesson: that children deserve all the love and attention that animals get!

Thanks, as always, to Gina for jotting down a smattering of quotes for me to include here.

Your slightly-limping-but-brightly-smiling Director, David C.