TOSSING TOMATOES Poking fun at culture |
It’s kind of a gratifying switcheroo, to watch junior high students struggle earnestly to be heard over the snorts and penis jokes of their teachers. As the kids present posters of bats and jugular veins, these ne’er-do-wells fidget, make bad puns, and are most alert to the words “malt liquor.” Later, everyone inexplicably bursts into a song about working hard in school. This flip-side skit with extra fixings is a typical scene in Random Acts of Silly, a comedic can of mixed nuts written and directed by Steve Burnette at the Biddeford City Theater.First produced in Chicago and New York in the comedy shows Shtick People, One Nation Under Construction, and an earlier production of Random Acts of Silly, these scenes send up some of the American cultural phenomena that are really asking for it, including The People’s Court, Broadway musicals, breakfast cereal personalities, “intrusion” TV, and the Jerry Springer mode of televised confession.
In the service of satire, Burnette brings in some talented comics, particularly the versatile Kate Dyer, Jon Cofield, and Gwyneth Nicholson. All three have smart timing, create a distinct gravitational pull for each of their characters, and rarely resort to overkill hamming for their laughs. Dyer moves easily from a subtly hilarious androgyne in the marriage license office to a pleasantly bloodthirsty talk-show host, Cofield has an especially funny turn as Bozo the Clown, presiding judge of The Food Court, and Nicholson and her accents — yokel southern, French, indeterminate white-trash — are something else. The rest of the cast is capable and enthusiastic, a fun team with clear rapport.
On the script level, Random Acts of Silly seems a little too random, at times, in its aim at its target audience. It’s billed as part of five weeks of “Family Friendly Comedy” (next after Random comes The Complete Works of William Shakespeare . . . Abridged), but I’m not sure how much of it a kid would actually dig. Despite funny costumes (cereal mascots Sonny, Silly Rabbit, and the Lucky Charms leprechaun are particularly well-dressed), lots of sudden singing, and some dramatically over-the-top characterizations (Andrea Lopez as the loud and mentally-challenged younger sister in “Ashes to Ashes” is a cross between Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade and Gilda Radner after several freebasing sessions), much will go over a wee one’s head. Between erection references (when a bat’s wingspan is described as ranging from between two and fourteen inches, one teacher elbows another: “Sounds like someone else I know”) and a parody of Antiques Roadshow, the material tends to depend on a certain cultural age, if not exactly maturity. On the other hand, a TV news skit brings their anchors a way-too-small and then a way-too-big desk, in slapstick that goes over well with kids but less so with grown-ups.
I would just as soon have them take the full plunge into “adult” comedy, and swim around in there with both abandon and more pointed sex jokes.
Likewise do some of the scenes feel a bit too widely sketched; there’s simply too much going on, sometimes, and it clutters the comedy. “The Love News,” for example, features an improv group in place of correspondents, the Goldilocks desks, news-item skits within skits about Touch a Prisoner Day and the death of Mr. Potato Head, and a budded romance between the two anchors. That’s a lot of ingredients for a short scene.
