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King of Kong: A Musical Parody
Reviewed by Lyle Zimskind
Lillian Theatre / Theatre Asylum
Through June 27
RECOMMENDED:
It’s nothing new at this point for a Hollywood movie to provide the source material for some putatively “original” big commercial theater venture. The 2007 sleeper hit documentary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, though, is no Hollywood movie, and the certainly unauthorized King of Kong: A Musical Parody based on that film is no big commercial theater venture. But it really is an amazingly funny — and highly original — tribute to the pop culture classic that inspired it and the two unlikely popular folk hero and villain figures that the movie introduced to the world.
Lauren Van Kurin, who co-wrote the book and lyrics with Amber Ruffin, plays Steve Wiebe, diminutive and self-deprecating challenger to the impossibly cocky and condescending beard-and-mulleted, American flag-necktied video game champion Billy Mitchell, played by Brendan Hunt, who also directed this show. Both performers also take on additional roles as various family members of the two contenders, as well as Walter Day, the slightly ridiculous video game record keeper in a striped referee shirt.
16 musical numbers in 50 minutes, all composed by David Schmoll, cover a range of historical song and dance styles, and the best of them keep returning to the contrast between our two main protagonists. On the one hand there’s Billy’s mock-anthemic “I am America! I piss red, white and blue. I am America! Who the fuck are you?” On the other, we get the best words of paternal encouragement that non-achiever Steve can muster to his son: “Never give up! Until your set of circumstances forces you to give up.”
Lillian Theatre / Theatre Asylum, 1076 Lillian Way
https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/2308?tab=details
Merely Players
Reviewed by Lyle Zimskind
Lounge Theatre
Through June 28
In the world of the Color and Light Theatre Ensemble’s new Fringe show, Merely Players, an undistinguished local community theater company is casting and starting rehearsals for its own mediocre new musical theater adaptation of William Inge’s play Bus Stop. The essential production device at the heart of Merely Players is that audience members at each performance have a chance to audition for, get cast in, rehearse and appear in this Bus Stop musical. Willing participants fill out cards asking if they have any musical or theater experience and choose a basic children’s song to audition with.
On the night of the performance reviewed here, three audience members got selected to try out and two got cast in moderately substantial parts. (As these things go in the small Fringe world, one of the drafted actors for that performance happened to be the star of another Fringe show, who ended up making a strong contribution to this one. But they’ll be different every time.) Most of Merely Players concerns the community theater company’s bumpy road to opening night of Bus Stop, which we are given to understand is a disaster in the making.
Without much more going on here than “Look how bad this show is shaping up!” and “Look how ridiculous these amateur theater folk are!” Merely Players would grow stale well before its 80 minutes are done. However, there is some fun and tension seeing what the unprepared cast members make of the scenes and choreographed musical numbers they’re thrown into. Or maybe, if you’re adventurous and lucky, the fun and tension of getting up there and trying it yourself.
Lounge Theatre, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood
https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/2167?tab=details
