Monday, July 30, 2012

Serif Punglasses - Raven Timberlake

"Our version of cuddling, sitting on opposite ends of the couch."

Carol Burnett goes down the modern comedic rabbit hole. This duo troupe uses theatrical storytelling, sketches and simple wordplay for a variety hour that makes you wonder which screen you're viewing through.

This is the first preview at Fringe-For-All that caught me by surprise. The fact that the title's impenetrable and thus I knew nothing about the show made surprising me a little easier. Sometimes comedy about gay stereotypes can be lame or offensive or both. But the two performers were so likable and their attitude so winning that I found them hard to resist. And let's face it, we're all looking for reasons *not* to see a show to narrow down our impossible list of choices, right? Well, this preview would not allow me to write them off. In fact, it may have me writing them in after they started out not even being on my radar. Now that's an effective preview. Riffing on the whole "Pray Away The Gay" ex-gay ministry thing (yes, there was a Marcus Bachmann joke), they had a product with which you could spray away the gay, new Gay B Gone. It even had jokes like "Is your favorite color 'sparkle'?" and "Lesbi-honest" and I still couldn't help giggling. The stereotypical behavior examples still not resolved by Gay B Gone were piled so high that each time they said, "Can you believe we used to be gay?" I was more amused. Bonus points for spraying so much of that stuff in the air that when our host Robin reappeared she had to retreat because the anti-gay mist was still settling. I have no idea whether the rest of the show is as effective as the preview, but based on Fringe-For-All, I'm really tempted to find out.

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