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Review: Abbreviated Enlightenment's
theatrical snippets add up to very big show
11:58 PM CST on Saturday, November 6,
2004
By TOM SIME / The Dallas Morning News
You
come into the Rosewood Center for Family Arts and someone at the box
office asks you a question: "What continent would you most like to live
on?" "What state are you from?" That's the first clue that Abbreviated
Enlightenment Productions' /ochen chotto schpiel/:"very little play"
is something completely different.
The
second is the program, which consists of a grid with titles – "Nana and
the Piano," "Biography Dance" – randomly paired with letters of the
alphabet of this or that language. At Saturday's show, it was Dutch.
This isn't a game show onstage, but a board game onstage – bingo, to be
specific. There's a winner in the audience every night, and quite a few
onstage in this revival of a show staged in Addison in July.
The
company, founded by Leslie and Brandon Fletcher of Chicago, has
assembled a cast of local and Chicago-based writer-performers. At each
show, they do about 26 short bits – depending on the alphabet chosen –
from poetry to dance to comedy. The order is determined by shouts from
the audience.
As
performer Holly Hickman said, "This is theater for people with small
bladders and small attention spans."
There's live improvised musical accompaniment throughout by musician
Daniel Lyons, who also participated in "The Weirdest Stepmother Game
Show" segment, which was both funny and scary as Mr. Lyons and Ms.
Hickman compared notes on whose stepmother was murdered in the most
macabre way.
The
format allows all sorts of odds and ends to emerge, as long as they're
short. In "Goodbye Average Joe," James Hargrave offers guidelines for
finding the perfect mate, and we do mean perfect. "Human Foosball" had
patrons from the audience pulling ropes attached to the performers'
ankles. "Telecom Throwdown" had Kevin Moore as an arrogant cellphone
user at a movie.
But
not all the pieces are for laughs. Carol Anne Gordon did a piece about
organ donation, Ms. Hickman broke down during "Death Becomes Her." Yes,
this one is different. Quick-hit laughs are one thing; improv
tearjerkers, now that's unusual.
E-mail
tsime@dallasnews.com
/ochen
chotto schpiel/:"very little play," presented by Abbreviated
Enlightenment at Rosewood Center for Family Arts, 5938 Skillman, at 8
and 10 p.m. Saturdays through Dec. 18. Tickets $9 in advance, $10 at
door. Runs 75 min. Call 1-877-590-4400, or go to
www.abbreviatedenlightenment.com.
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