Written by Jason Fox Berger

The women of CatNip! devouring a male colleague

For many years the comedy troupe CatNip! has been a “No Boys Allowed” club; An all-female group known as much for its exclusivity as for its hilarious improvised antics. But Friday night, at Theatre 99, the thick walls of segregation that have long surrounded this clan came tumbling down.

Wielding the sledgehammers of equality were Frank Caeti, one half of the improv duo Frankenmatt, and Joe Canele, of Chicago’s Second City. These modern day Rosa Parks’ heroically went where no men had gone before: Onstage with CatNip!, sharing the spotlight with these very funny women and adding a large dose of X chromosomes to what had previously been a Y’s-only affair.

Read the rest of this entry »

Another delightful back-to-back comedy feast at Theatre 99. This is the last one for THIS 2009 17-day arts festival.

The good news: Charleston  improv comedy continues all year long.

Greg Tavares welcomed the sold out crowd Saturday night and proudly proclaimed his group The Have Nots has been active now for 14 years and the insanity will continue. Hooray!

(My blog  http://chuckography.blogspot.com has several pictures of this fun evening but, as usual, I have not conquered how to post photos HERE.)

The first 90-minute show was Upright Citizens Brigade. They announced they were the touring company as opposed to the real people I guess you would see if you caught the show up in Boston.

A sweet volunteer came onstage and they rifled her purse, wallet, her several id badges as well as her Weight Watchers diary to gather fodder for the first half of their show. They ran with it and a great exaggerated image emerged.

Shouted actions and places came from the audience for the comedy flashpoints the rest of the evening.

The next show - the finale - was almost three hours of hilarity. Many of the performers from the last two weeks came back for the reprise and all the stops were pulled out. Rude words were heard. Lewd actions were pantomimed. In short, a good time was had by all and only one couple seemed to have disappeared.

The troupe Cupid Has A Heart On waved a farewll to the standing, applauding audience.

My stint as an ersatz Spoleto reporter has ended for another year. I hope I’m invited to play again next year.

The Piccolo Fringe people outdid themselves last night at Theatre 99 when they paired The Cody Rivers Show at 8:30 and Frankenmatt at   10:00.

Check the schedule to catch either - or both acts - before the festival ends. If you’re lucky, they’ll be part of the fantastic finale.

We chatted with Greg Tavares, co-founder of The Have Nots and of Theatre 99 and he commented “this pairing is a great contrast in styles. The first is  is  synchronized visual comedy and the other is an Abbott & Costello fast verbal romp. Both are very high energy.”

A cell phone’s insistent ring tone froze Cody Rivers mid-sentence as an embarrassed lady fumbled frantically in her purse. The audience stilled, waiting for the response from the stage, and the intrusive chimes continued for 21 rings. The ad libs were fast and funny and they were back on track in seconds.

Sketch comedy is quite different from improv and the audience was NOT expected to contribute to the show.

Frankenmatt’s Frank Caeti and Matt Craig presented a road trip theme to - where else? - Charleston. Matt explained the empty Igloo cooler was filled “with dreams.”

The Polite City took a few hits as “thank you ….very much” was explored in depth and you should look forward to meeting Charlemagne LeRoy in a Mississippi courtroom.

Watching the clouds on the way there, it was relaxing to know you were headed to an indoor event.

As you no doubt read in today’s review by Carol Furtwangler of the College of Charleston’s production of “Quills” for Piccolo Spoleto, there’s more than an hour’s worth of full-frontal male nudity onstage there. That beats the blink-and-you-might-miss-it naked moment in the Big Festival’s production of “Don John,” although “Don John” has plenty of R-rated material. “Quills” is about the Marquis de Sade. “Don John” is about, you know, Don Juan. So … similar perversions abound.

So far, I’ve heard of no MORE  naked moments in Spoleto or Piccolo Spoleto productions. If you see one, quick, Tweet it to me. We were all a little disappointed  to find that the WOW! costume moment in the opera “Louise” was NOT a naked moment, but a costume made of (SPOLER ALERT!) lightbulbs.

Meanwhile, over at Chamber Music, cell phones have been going off … in quiet moments … in the middle of cello solos. Chamber maestro Charles Wadsworth  had to issue a reminder during one performance to turn off the jingle-jangler in your pocket. Only a few forgetful souls are to blame. This is probably not The End of Concert Etiquette As We Know It.

Overheard at King and Calhoun today: “It’s HOT here. Where’s that breeze that’s supposed to blow ALL the time?” Heat outside is one thing, but what is going on with the air-conditioning at Gaillard Auditorium? House air  is usually set to Arctic there, particularly in advance of a sellout crowd. It’s a well-worn Spoleto warning to wear a a jacket or take a pashmina to Gaillard Spoleto concerts; over the years, it’s been downright refrigerated. But this year I’ve heard several people say that all the performances of Alvin Ailey last weekend were uncomfortably hot and sticky.

Spoleto has said it ain’t them asking for the AC to be cut at Gaillard. But they might not 1) have a say or 2) know about it. Is the building trying to save energy and therefore money? Does it have anything today with today’s Page 1 story about the $105 million makeover that Gaillard needs? Spoletians are used to feeling like freshly sprayed spring vegetables in the cooler bins at the Piggly Wiggly. Is the lack of AC the city’s fault? Is this part of a Recessionista Conspiracy?

I’m just sayin’ …

PICCOLO SPOLETO

“Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead.” Comedy at The Footlight Players. It’s about Snoopy, and anything with the words “teenage” and “blockhead” in the title has to be funny.

“The Islands.” PURE Theatre. Setting not so funny, a prison cell on Robben Island, South Africa, during apartheid. But anything by Athol Fugard has to be good.

“The Gentleman Pirate.” PURE Theatre at the Powder Magazine, a truly eccentric offering since the Powder Magazine is arguably Charleston’s strangest building. It’s about Stede Bonnet, in case the title didn’t give that away.

Skinny White Comics. Back and whiter than ever.

One Man Star Wars Trilogy. Oh, come on, you know you want to check this out. Try? There is no try. Only do. Or do not.

Improv marathon. 3 improv shows for the price of one — 12 bucks.

Smoky Weiner & the Hot Links. At Bowen’s Island.!At sunset! Does it get any better? Well, yes, it probably does. The entire Blues & Jazz series at Piccolo looks strong.

Read the rest of this entry »

Apologies, because this should have appeared here on Monday - two days ago - but something called ‘real work‘ kept getting in the way.

We needed something to wrap up Spoleto ‘08 nicely, and what else but an acceptance to the Finale Picnic Judging competition. So Geoff, our intrepid ‘video guy’ gamely stepped up to the challenge, and mingled with the picnickers at Middleton Place on Sunday afternoon …

As this will probably be the last post for this year (sob!) we’d like to say ‘thanks’ to y’all for checking out the SpoletoToday.com blog for the past three or so weeks. Our stats tell us there’s a healthy number of you out there that have enjoyed the coverage, and we’ve certainly enjoyed putting it all up here for you.

We just hope that we’re still around to do it all again next year …

With Spoleto wrapped, I’m left with a blur of memories, impressions and observations on the festival. Here are just a few of them.

An audience member filming Harvard Sailing Team’s opening night with her cellphone, distracting the people sitting behind her (including me) as she emailed the hilarious sketches to her friends…

Oversized patrons at the Chapel Theatre, trying to squeeze into the small seats. Some of the grossest guests had to ride side saddle.

Rodney Lee Rogers sitting patiently behind a small curtain for 45 minutes, the audience gathering around him before The Tragedian.

Two old dears I met at the first performance of A Devil Inside who’d been to so many shows that they couldn’t remember what they’d seen the night before, and started arguing about it. The festival had been running for two days.

The miserable actors in This War is Live who were fed up with the show and its technical hiccups… one complained about his simplistic character, while another called the whole experience “torturous.” He should have counted himself fortunate – he wasn’t sitting in the audience…

Sitting next to two of the playwrights of Under the Lights: 10×10 – and trying to make mental review notes without making them feel uncomfortable…

Jay Clifford courageously performing at the American Theatre despite suffering from some debilitating lurgy. After the first night, he conked out in his truck… on the second night, his manager Vance McNabb picked up his bug. They put on a great show, they’re both feeling better now and they’re no longer contagious (I hope).

Watching rehearsals with Chen Shi-Zheng, director of Monkey: Journey to the West… and being invited to look at the aftermath of The Great War after Hotel Modern’s show was over. I witnessed chaos on a model train scale.

One of my favorite elements of the festival, though, was bumping into the various local and national theatre performers, artists and filmmakers who collaborate to help make the festival function. Without their hard work and the overwhelming enthusiasm of the audience, there’d be no festival… thanks to them all.

There’s two more videos from Geoff to come, here’s one of them - some quick clips from the Piccolo closing ceremony on Saturday.

The musical finale for Piccolo Spoleto Festival 2008 was in Hampton park Saturday evening but the big laughs were at Theatre 99 as improv ruled . Upright Citizens Brigade did their 7:30 show and contributed greatly when they provided zany merriment to the 2-hour Grand Finale at 9:30. The group, who has been learning to live on The Edge Of America at Folly Beach, opined that Charlestonians like their city and like to get drunk.

Mary Theresa Archbold, JAZZ HAND, reprised two skits and the stars of the Cody Rivers Show - both of them - joined the gang onstage as the audience relaxed with some cold brews and threw out suggestions.

Running gags kept on running all evening long, popping up unexpectedly, to the delight of the jam-packed room.

The show touched many, many bases and you would have had to have been there to understand the juxtaposition of hollow-boned birds, bearded predators and Girl Scout outings.

More Chucker on Spoleto at Chuckography.

Fringe is an exciting part of the annual Spoleto Festival and often provides some pleasant surprises.

JAZZ HAND, Tales Of A One Armed Woman, starring Mary Theresa Archbold and her husband Pat Shay, is a great example.

“Jazz Hands” is the name of a famous dance number from the Bob Fosse musical “All That Jazz.”

Mary Theresa - born without her left hand and forearm - provides many variations of events in her life relating to that missing limb.

Some are awkward, most are funny and ALL are inspiring by a lady who’s getting along with her life.

Here she is pictured, dancing with God, who answered her musical question “Why didn’t You Make All Of Me?”

She announced there are two more performances at the American Theatre. Do yourself a favor. Go see her.

Applaud with BOTH hands.

More Chucker on Spoleto at Chuckography.