While You're At It...
 
...Or Shows In A Similar Vein

Singing along to...
Philosophy: The Music of Ben Folds?

Try
EAT! A Generous Buffet of Karen Carpenter's Songbook
Gaydar Productions
Loring Playhouse

or
Try
Tequila
Teatro del Pueblo
Howard Conn Fine Arts Center

If Mama Cass and Karen Carpenter had only shared that sandwich, they'd both still be alive today.

There, I got it out of my system. (You can blame my old friend Joe for that joke. Though we don't see each other much anymore, I still remember his jokes that made me gasp)

Anyway, the Carpenters are a guilty pleasure I to which I gladly cop. Perky or depressed, they always fit my mood (and, as with Ben Folds, "Lord, the voice on that poor woman." Just astonishing.)

Tequila snuck up on me but they also get my nod because they got me through six hours in the emergency room recently. Every time I saw the title, I remembered that goofy tune (which is now stuck in your head, sorry). That tune is also associated in my head both with Pee Wee Herman dancing atop a table in a motorcycle bar, and with Bert Parks singing the refrain in that bizarre lizard movie "The Freshman" starring the eternally boyish Matthew Broderick and the late Marlon Brando (move over, Mama Cass). It all made me smile right when I needed it most, so I'm glad I'd scribbled the title in the notes I'd brought with me that day.

But of course their show has nothing to do with any of that. It's from local Latino company Teatro del Pueblo (one of a collection of artists of color this year saving us from a lily white Fringe). Laughter, love, lust, three scorned women and a homosexual bartender (Patrick's Cabaret regular Paulino Brener), guitar, trumpet, song, dance and illusion. I'm getting a Gabriel Garcia Marquez vibe (though it was written by Latina playwright Silvia Pontaza) and all of that is more than enough to sell me.

While You're At It - other shows that, if you like any of the other top ten/sure thing shows I mentioned, should also be of interest to you:

The Valets (for the Plants and Animals crowd)
Punk Rock Awesome (for the In Defense of Sin crowd)
Delaware, And Other Lies (for the Kevin Kling crowd)
Osama Kincaid, Painter of Terror (for the Death Penalty Puppetry crowd)
Pipes (for the Origin of Consciousness Crowd)
Lokasenna (for the Metamorphoses Crowd)

(For more of my writing - plays, past blog entries and more - visit www.matthewaeverett.com)