There Oughta Be a Law

There's a journalist in my town named Chris Satullo. An imposing fish in the little pond that is Shitadelphia, he's kind of a big deal around here. That's how he comes off on the radio when he speaks his piece on Mondays on WHYY 90.9-FM. He's pretty brash and opinionated and, for that to bother someone like me, you know he really must be over the top.

Anyway, he did a column recently called "There Oughta Be a Law" about his opinions about what ought to be outlawed and/or regulated around these here parts. It was two parts snark and one part sincerity, and the alternate ratio would have been more appreciated, I think.

In that spirit, however, there oughta be a law against

the phrase "sit back, relax, and enjoy our production of ______________" said by creepy-looking, unpaid assistant-stage-manager interns wearing black clothes and bulky headsets before theatre performances. Theatre companies that continue the "sit back, relax, and enjoy" announcement should be given one warning and, after further infractions, should be sentenced to 3-5 years of producing only Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. Sit back, relax, and enjoy that shit, motherfuckers.

Okay, here's where the audience participation part comes in: what do you think there ought to be a law against where you live?

(And please, don't say, "Jews." We all know there ought to be laws against Jews.)

Please Refrain from Farting on My Wife

In my Intro to Theatre class, held lo these many years ago, I learned a great many things that enhanced my already burgeoning love of live performance theatre:

I learned that a middle aged man wearing koala bear socks throwing himself into a wall, knocking down a podium and falling over a desk is funny.

I learned that the "Wizard of Oz" can be analyzed to actual, literal, real and pulseless death.

I learned that, in days of yore, affluent audience members ostensibly there to see an opera actually mostly used their opera glasses to spy on other affluent audience members and that people more often than not went to the theatre to be seen, and not to see a play.

I learned that Al Pacino is, in one way or another, always Looking for Richard, and that I could watch him looking for a misplaced sock and still be emotionally satisfied.

I learned that I still had a long way to go as far as becoming a playwright went. And went it did.

I learned the Dustin Hoffman/Laurence Olivier "Marathon Man" method acting "My boy, why don't you just act?" quip, which gawky theatre majors the world over tell to skinny brunette, emo theatre chicks with glo-tape on their Chuck Taylors at emo theatre parties in hopes of having awkward emo theatre sex.

(It doesn't work.)

What I never learned in my Intro to Theatre class, held lo those many years ago, was that, when going to the theatre, if you choose not to get up from your seat during intermission, you run the risk of being farted on by the theatre patrons standing up in the row behind you.

On Friday night, some jack farted on my wife's head.

We were downtown seeing "A Skull in Conemarra," a desperate, hilarious, drunken, feck-me-arse Irish play by Martin McDonagh. And, I've got to tell you-- it was excellent. But, I've also got to tell you: after working a full day, racing home, getting ready, shoveling dinner down, trotting off downtown, which is always a chore, especially in the snow and ice and muck-covered streets, to have my wife get her head farted on by some middle-aged prune-lips during intermission was just an injustice I was ill-equipped emotionally to deal with.

I almost snapped.

"Excuse me, would you like a cork or something placed up in there? I could arrange that for you," I wanted to say, but didn't.

"Pardon me-- but that is my wife's head, not your Herman Miller Aeron Chair (now available in Sit-for-Less True Black)," I thought I might quip, but didn't.

"The characters in the play are supposed to be disgusting-- we're supposed to be cultured," I thought of opining, but didn't.

Have you ever had a S/O farted on (by someone who wasn't you)? It's really demoralizing. If I were some thick-skulled brute from Northeast Philly, I probably would have dragged the guy outside by his pubes. Then again, were I some thick-skulled brute from Northeast Philly, I probably wouldn't have been in the audience of "A Skull in Conemarra," so there we are.

Nevertheless, I wanted to slap his face with a glove or something. Pistols at dawn. Let's have a fart-off if you're so keen on ass-blasting in my wife's general direction.

They say that live theatre's unpredictable, and, having been in more than my fair share of shows, I can rightfully state that it's true. John Reed, the recently deceased comic patter lead of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, once told a friend of mine that he took great pleasure in sidling up in front of the ladies' chorus and farting on them during productions. For those of you who think that theatre is for the hoity toity, think again.

To See the Stars

When I got the email, I admit that I got a little tingly in the trousers. And, no, it wasn't an email offering a way to get a "BIGGER PEN!S"

The e-mail touted half-price tickets to the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music.” It’s easily one of my favorite musicals, wedged somewhere in between “Into the Woods” and “Assassins,” also by Sondheim (no, I’m not gay) and Jason Robert Brown’s “Songs for a New World.” Now, if you’re saying to yourself, “Wait—- what about all that G&S shit,” honey—those are operettas, not musicals. Jesus Beezus, have I taught you nothing?

Anyway, the reason folks were being offered half-price tickets is because Catherine Zeta Jones, who was appearing in the run as Desiree Armfeldt, was unable to perform on said weekend, and so the theatre management resorted to slashing box office prices to fill the house in her absence.

And I thought to myself, “Well, she’s hot and everything—but I just want to see the show. I can ogle moving and/or still images of Catherine Zeta Jones online at any time and besides, at the Walter Kerr Theatre, I would have to keep my trousers on.

Now, I know I think too much about things that probably shouldn’t require such exertion of my admittedly limited brain power, but the notion of selling half-price tickets to a Broadway show just because the big, hot-shit actress is in Maui getting her nipples repinkified kind of rubbed me the wrong way—even though my wife and I were the beneficiaries of a wonderful show. Doesn’t it devalue the importance and significance of the rest of the cast by saying, “Well, you’re all not good enough to justify people shelling out the full coinage to see your sorry asses unless Catherine Zeta-Jones is present in all of her Welsh yet ambiguously Asian glory to behold”?

I mean, if I were the twitchy d-bag playing Henrik, I’d be kind of pissed. N’yah mean?

It speaks, I think, to one of the problems that I see with live theatre, at least in America. It has gotten to the point where producers and other affiliated shittynecks are saying to themselves, “Well, the only way we can get these stupid motherfucker Americans into a theatre to see a play is to cram as many A-list celebrities onto the stage as humanly possible because, if we don’t, why the hell would people come see a play?”

I mean, why not just stay at home and Netflix Catherine Zeta-Jones? Much cheaper than seeing a Broadway play, yes?

I don’t know what happened to seeing a play for the sake of the play—its story, its plot construction, the complexity of its characters, the wit and wisdom of the writing, the subtle nuances that you just don’t get in a film or a TV show. I don’t know why we have to get our tussies tickled by the notion that Jeff Goldblum and Mercedes Ruehl are in “Prisoner of Second Avenue.” Why can’t we just see it because it’s a Neil Simon play and because we’ll laugh our balls off (if we’re Jewish).

What’s funny is that there’s a totload of super talented performers out there who are professionally trained stage actors—that is what they do and that is all they do—and they are consistently beaten out for sexcellent roles by Hollywood fartstarts because they have big names (and pricetags) and the classically-trained stage actors are waiting tables, living in cardboard boxes, or sitting in waiting rooms reading “Good Housekeeping” in the background of Celebrex commercials.

Why can’t TV actors do fucking TV, film actors do fucking films, and stage actors do fucking plays? Believe me, I know that live theatre needs to be saved, but putting Helen Hunt in as the Stage Manager in “Our Town” isn’t going to get Broadway off its ventilator and breathing on its own.