Best of Best of This Week This Week
Reviewed by Martίn Hernández
Open Fist Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre
Through April 2
RECOMMENDED
Following in the satirical footsteps of Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, this Open Fist Company production takes the past year’s cream of the crop of its Thursday night comedy sketch show, This Week This Week, and skewers our calamitous society with mostly hilarious results. Creator and director Ron West and his exuberant ensemble, writers, and a special guest artist deliver a cornucopia of skits revealing that just because one possesses a high position does not mean one possesses a high intellect. In fact, mediocrity just may win one the job.
“Workshop,” written by West, decimates corporate culture as a facilitator (guest star Rebecca Metz from FX’s Better Things at this performance) leads a seminar where cooperation is essential, but the screwball office workers attending only prove that, yes, there is an “I” in team. Ash (Ash Sanford), overflowing with White culture, goofily answers test questions from her “sistah” Mary (Mary Valena Broussard) to determine how Black she is to regain her “Black Card,” written by April Barnett. The hilarious “Civil War Next Door (Murder House),” by Amanda Weier, mixes Ken Burns’s PBS documentary oeuvre with Nextdoor.com comments from wealthy L.A. environs, delivered in exaggerated Southern accents by the cast. All of this highlights the exclusive inclinations of such patrician enclaves on a website that supposedly celebrates diversity and community — accompanied by that insufferable fiddle music from the original series.
With Russia desperate for new recruits for its invasion of Ukraine, Putin resorts to an outrageous scam, tricking Hollywood actors into thinking they’re auditioning for a fake war movie in Rob Janas’s over-the top “Oh, Say, Can You Stanislavski?” A conceited Guy Travis (Brendan Mulally) gets the role, but can the Meisner Technique save him and his new comrades from a Ukrainian onslaught? The show’s take on North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un (Saunders) in “North Korean Rocket Show” by David Doman, however, falls flat from predictability. Also, as in reality, Donald Trump’s (Mulally) presence as the whipping boy in a number of pieces gets tiresome.
“Anchorman” George Caleodis pops in between skits with uproarious and up-to-date news reports lambasting SpaceX, Amazon, hypocritical politicians, right-to-lifers, bank failures (“Who told 2008 it could return?”), and Duke University’s March Madness rankings. While his jabs are mostly aimed at conservatives, liberals are not immune. Caleodis describes former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s parents spending $90,000 to lobby for his ambassadorship to India as “the most expensive study abroad program ever” and President Biden also gets rightfully slammed for opening Alaska to oil companies, defaulting on his campaign promise of “no more drilling.”
While the final piece “Best Day Ever” by Alaina Warren Zachary portrays a hysterical lovefest between Biden (Eric Carthen) and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Lou Saliba) — to the tune of “We Go Together” from Grease — the fact that the USA has appropriated $115 billion of tax money for Ukraine while this country goes to hell in a handbasket, there may be extra grist for more bipartisan parodies.
Open Fist Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre, 3629 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through Apr. 2. www.openfist.org. Approximate running time: 80 minutes with no intermission.
