Review: ACME Survival Kit
ACME Comedy Theatre
by Daniel Holmes
Falling somewhere between television’s ever-popular Carol Burnett Show and the current beating-a-dead-horse Saturday Night Live, sketch comedy has found a niche in our cut-to-the-chase, give-it-to-me-quick, drive-thru, culture-in-a-bag form of theatre. Like the dozens of comedy groups dotting the L.A. scene, ACME Comedy Theatre’s production of ACME Survival Kit exemplifies our current taste for while-u-wait satire. Unfortunately, like the Big Mac and Jumbo Jack, the consistent level of quality and taste is a catch as catch can.
In ACME Survival Kit, several sketches are funny, a few are even great, but the flat or failing pieces from the actor-writers detract from their better work. The ACME Players display exuberance and confidence in their talent, making the mildly funny pieces acceptable, and the truly good pieces hilarious. Where the group fails is in its small quantity of decent material.
Half a dozen of the eighteen sketches were tasty fun. Kate Donahue and Susie Geiser, as toothless, Cajun motel owners played their roles of mumbling hillbillies to a tee. Following this, Brett Baer comes to life with Dr. Marty, a manic, Jewish pediatrician and his ready-to-walk office assistant, played by Doug Jackson. Jackson, bedecked in a silly, court jester get-up, works the straight-man bit well. The two present an enjoyable piece of verbal slapstick, though Dr. Marty tended to slip into Woody Allen at times. Susie Geiser hits the mark with her uproarious portrayal of the knock-kneed, tooth-picking pubescent Chelsea Clinton, taking advantage of a Secret Service agent played by Baer.
The undisputed gem was Byrne Offutt’s “Ball Bearing,” a monologue by a super-buck-toothed simpleton telling us about a ball with a goofy face on it that resembles his own. The success of this piece comes from Offutt’s ability to portray this character as human. One can’t help but laugh at Offutt’s character, at first enthralled by having his face on a ball, then slowly realizing how it affords people the opportunity to laugh at him. What a delight to actually see a mind in the process of realization, a process rare in satire and sketch comedy, which often fails to show character development.
Other than a few pieces made bright by the competence of Brian Kerrigan, Marc Drotman, and Kate Donahue, the remainder of the sketches seemed flat, many of them surviving from the company’s last production, ACME Cheese Singles. A skit on pregnant cheerleaders lacked the biting humor needed to keep the audience from being offended. A commercial about a new musical sensationalizing the grunge-sound of L.A.’s spoiled teens missed the boat with poor parodies of current hit singles. Marc Drotman’s penile-protecting underwear commercial, “Protecto Pants 2000,” is the only skit that came close to good satire, i.e., using wit, derision, and irony to expose our human folly and stupidity.
“Surviving in L.A.,” the show’s finale, featured the ensemble’s overtold stories of what happened to them during the big quake. The one piece dealing with the current mind-set of shaken Valley-ites was as boring as the numbing tales we all had to endure from friends and neighbors. Redeeming the limping piece was a musical parody about L.A. sung to the tune of “Ain’t Nothin’ Like a Dame,” from South Pacific.
Technically, the show was smooth and sharp. Jonathan Green’s original music sets up each piece well. Unfortunately, Green’s synthetic drum, bass, and keyboard came out of only one speaker, muddying the sound quality. Under the acclaimed tutelage of M.D. Sweeney, the theatre’s founder, the cast does its best with what it has. Sweeney sets the mood and feeling of each premise perfectly, the audience is into the sketch from the get-go, but if the piece, due to poor writing or a weak concept, isn’t funny, why does Sweeney bother to show us?
Satire and sketch comedy on stage is here to stay. But until the gifted actor/writers of ACME Comedy Theatre and other groups can clue into the essence of satire and nail the characters around us that make our lives funny, L.A. is destined to finger through the lettuce and tomatoes of almost-humorous ideas, looking for the beef. ♦