Remaining Performances:
July 24th 10pm
July 26th 3:15pm

What they say: Arlo and Donovan kidnap a big record executive to force him to produce their band’s new concept album ‘Overwhelming Stimulus.’ Watch the album unfold on stage and experience your first robot ball and more musical chaos.

Matt’s take: Back in 1987, director Elaine May set out to chronicle the hapless adventures of  two songwriting  man-children who, unbeknownst to themselves, write laughably lousy jingles. The absurdity of their songs was a high point in what has since been denounced as one of the biggest cinematic disasters in history. The overgrown adolescents  in question  were played by Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. The film was Ishtar and, for the record, the first 30 minutes are kind of funny.

Since then, the oblivious songwriting duo has taken many forms but it’s always the same story. Two hopelessly delusional but tenacious dreamers fight for the fame and glory they believe is rightfully theirs. The audience knows better. It’s funny until it’s not.

The inherent ridiculousness of this mostly male-perpetuated rock-star fantasy is easily milked for quick laughs—its fantasy having arrested the development of a large cross-section of the population for over 50 years. But sustaining this kind of humor for over an hour is a Herculean feat—one which Open Drawer Theatre Company’s Please Listen: A Musical Chaos fails to bring off.

Please Listen follows the adventures of its two hapless “jammy” wearing leads Aaron Bliden and Mark Halpern who front Little Justice, an imaginary garage band with grandiose dreams of writing a rock opera about the perilous love between man and robot. In order to make their dream come true, they’ve decided to kidnap a record executive and force him to listen to their magnum opus. Cue the funny hats and silly falsetto!

Never mind that most musicians these days have more power than the brass at the record labels (a rap about winning a Grammy is painfully anachronistic—would anyone actually be happy to win one of those?). With Please Listen’s 80 minute running time,  it extends itself with lengthy stretches of intentionally B-grade play material which would be amusing if the audience didn’t have to sit there watching it.  In its efforts to “play the whole album,” the third act feels intolerably drawn out with filler about the satirical stock characters’ robo love story. Watching Guffman ham it up in the comfort of your couch can be fun, but sitting in a hot tent? It gets a little exhausting.

It’s clear that Bliden and Halpern have immense talent, and the rest of the cast gamely injects an incredible sense of professionalism into roles that only requires them to wink and nod. But as with Ishtar’s Rogers and Clarke, Please Listen’s strengths are bogged down by needless convention and predictable quirk.

See it if: You have a soft spot for boys playing guitars singing non-sequiturs

Skip it if: The second season of Flight of The Conchords left you sore

They Say: “Double Pleasure Double Fun: 2 2 shows in One! DISORDER — PakratPatty combats ‘Collector-itis’ & ‘Disposophobia’ in light-hearted look at OCD. Will Clutter Hoarding ==> Utter Chaos? Will PP vanquish compulsion Let Nothing Go? PLANT PSYCHIC — Twisted Photosynthesis. 2gether Nightly; Order Alternates.”

Matt’s Take: My ability to stand up against peer pressure has never been what it should be, but one trap to which I never succumbed was collegiate excursions to comedy clubs. The dank rooms, the two-drink minimums, the jokes about the subway and the dentist: even then it reeked of sadness and desperation. So you could imagine my surprise when PLANT PSYCHIC turned out to be little more than a stand-up routine featuring comedian David Coyne cracking jokes about a plastic plant named Barbara. In the forty minutes, Mr. Coyne magically transported me to an evening at the Ha Ha Hole I never knew I longed for with jokes about the audience “looking at his package” and “homofolliagesapiens being called pansies.” Wakka wakka! Perhaps PLANT PSYCHIC is intended meant as high-concept performance art in the key of Andy Kaufman. Or, more likely, Mr. Coyne used his Fringe spot as a means of trying out new material without the risk of getting the hook. At one point, using a pun he’s been hanging onto since middle school, Mr. Coyne said he was suffering from reptile dysfunction which was “sad and humiliating.” I couldn’t agree more.

Next was DISORDER, one woman’s rumination on the inability to let go of her stuff. Producer/Actress Hilary Kacser stuffs a lot of ideas into her OCD-riddled protagonist Pakrat Patty, showing how gradually ‘normal’ behavior can lead to an unhealthy obsession with accumulation. Billed as a workshop production, Kacser seems unsure about the piece’s tone. Not humorous nor tragic—either one a possibility with this material—Patty reads as devoid of personality, as Kacser concerns herself more with the exposition of a story (Patty reads from a book for large stretches) than with the emotional resonance of the show’s themes. Like Patty, Kacser herself could benefit from steadier footing.

See it if: You long for the days of rainbow suspender wearing comedians.

Skip it if: Schadenfreude at the Goethe Institute is not how you like to spend your evenings.