Hi everyone! I’m a 25-year old arts professional, and I have complex relationship with GLEE. I want to get that out of the way up front–Ryan Murphy’s excellent new television show is at the same time a shout-out and a legacy to the perceptions of high school and growing up that John Hughes created a generation ago. And those same thoughts and feelings come rushing back in George Street Playhouse’s Calvin Berger, playing now through March 14. Barry Wyner’s new musical takes the classic Cyrano De Bergerac, spins it up, adds a character, and sets it down in a modern American high school.
Calvin Berger is about the challenges of fitting in; I definitely can relate to that experience, as I was not one of the popular kids in high school (although, in hindsight, who was?). In keeping with the theme, I brought my best friend from high school, Sonny, to the show and the Generation Next event following.
Polyester: The official F-ABBA-ric. Get it? Get it?
As a theater nerd through and through I kind of live for things like talk back sessions. On top of the fun of seeing a show, you get the opportunity to ask any question that pops into your head about said show (which always provides for some amusing moments.) So you can imagine my excitement when the Generation Next post-show event was a discussion with ABBA Mania creator and band member Mark Thomas!
Mark was so gracious in answering all of our questions from “What happens when a member of your group gets sick?” (they have an understudy on tour with them) to “Are there ABBA Mania groupies?” (they have an especially nice following in the U.K., but sorry ladies, he’s married!) And then there is my favorite factoid of the evening: in addition to performing the pop hits of ABBA, Mark is actually a trained jazz drummer! Very talented guy.
Before I sign off, friends in cyberspace, let me leave you with this nugget of knowledge: Generation Next events are some of the best deals in town. For a $25 ticket I saw a show, attended a post-show event, AND got a free drink (gentlemen take note, this is a brilliant date idea!). And, of course, where else can you meet a jazz drummer who also plays Bjorn of ABBA?
We came, we saw. We danced. It was a good night. Maddie’s post below covers most of the happenings; her next post will cover the post-performance discussion with ABBA Mania’s creator.
Meanwhile, in researching my previous post, I discovered a phenomenon that takes the subject of ABBA cover songs to the next level:
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: Bjorn Again, a group dedicated to covering the works of other pop stars in the sultry harmonic stylings of ABBA.
Click and be amazed:
Any show that features sparkly, silver, platform, knee-high boots, 70’s jumpsuits, and a man named Bjorn is something that I want to be a part of. Believe me, you would too! Granted I walked in the door an ABBA fan, but I promise not everyone there was a Swedish pop music aficionado… I’m pretty sure the guy a few rows in front of me was forced at gunpoint by his girlfriend to buy tickets… but that being said, even HE was on his feet by the end of the first act! So now…without further ado…
The Top 5 Greatest Moments of ABBA Mania!
5) The audience dancing in the aisles. There are very few theatrical events where I have actually been encouraged to get out of my seat and sing and dance along with the performers. Usually theatres HATE when you do that! Especially the Broadway houses (trust me…I know…)
4) The finger dance. Just what IS the finger dance, you ask? Point both your index fingers up in the air. Raise your right index finger. Lower is as you raise your left index finger. Reverse. Repeat. The audience was instructed to do this with the performers— I can’t explain it, but there is something SO cool about doing the same choreography as the performers… even if it is something as deceptively simple as the finger dance.
3) The terrible ABBA puns you make with friends at intermission (if you put enough ABBA fans in one room it’s bound to happen.) Examples: “I ABBAsolutely love this!” “This is FABBAlous!” “I Fernandon’t ever want to leave!” (Okay, that last one’s a stretch, but you get the picture.) *Challenge: What is YOUR best ABBA pun?
2) ABBA-maniacs. I thought wearing my 70s jumpsuit would be over the top, but let me tell you there are some serious ABBA fans out there. You will know them by their platform knee-high boots, blonde wigs, and sequins. They are super nice, very fun, and I’m pretty sure always smiling and dancing (at least from what I’ve seen.)
1) My favorite moment of the night: one of the singers begins a stirring rendition of the “The Winner Takes it All”. The last song had been upbeat so people were still a bit riled up and chatty when the volume was brought down for this slow song. Apparently someone towards the front was still whispering because an avid ABBA fan let out a huge, angry “SHHHHH!” which, no lie, I heard all the way in row X. ABBA fans are serious about their music!
We all have at least one disco jumpsuit in our closets...right?
Let me begin by saying there are few things in the world that I will miss Glee for on a Wednesday night… ABBA is one of them. I know what you’re thinking, “ABBA?! Even my MOM hates disco!” To you, friend, I pose this question: Have you ever sat down and seriously listened to the ABBA-Gold: Greatest Hits album? It is—no exaggeration here— the greatest thing ever. I too was a skeptic once until my college roommate (a total music snob—no offense, Katie!) came out to me as an ABBA-maniac. You can imagine my shock. Sure, I enjoyed Mamma Mia (who didn’t?!) but listening to ABBA on a day-to-day basis? I needed convincing…
Now I’m not so much a morning person as I am a person that sets 5 alarms and still hits the snooze button several times before rolling out of bed for coffee. One morning, when Katie was sick of hearing my alarm go off for the third or fourth time, she popped in her ABBA cd in an effort to rouse me from my slumber. True story, by the end of “Take a Chance on Me” I was on my feet with that disco rhythm running through me like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever! Was it magic you ask?
No. It was ABBA.
Mind you, I am not the only one that feels this way. ABBA is a lasting phenomenon. Those of my generation may remember the A*Teens (“Upside Down”) who originally started as a teen ABBA cover band and adopted the same sound as ABBA for their own music. Then, of course, there is the Broadway and movie megahit Mamma Mia with productions and tours all over the world. As an American Studies major in college we studied the impact of disco on popular culture. While many embraced disco music and the clothing, dance styles, and club culture that went with it, the well-known “Disco Sucks” backlash plays a large role in its history as well. The disco culture was viewed as, among many things, shallow and escapist. However, for all the things that can be and have been said about disco, I defy anyone to listen to a great disco group like ABBA and not at least bop their head to the beat. It is infectious!
So tomorrow night Katie and I are going to go see ABBA Mania in concert and suffice it to say we are VERY excited. Now I just have to decide between wearing the vintage disco dress and the full-out one piece jumpsuit…
This is ABBA, circa the late '70s. I wish I had the courage to wear white overalls in public...
I’m a 27 year-old man from New Jersey, and I have complicated feelings about ABBA.
That’s not to say complicated feelings are a bad thing, per se, they’re just, well, complicated. Good-complicated, like the components of a rich tomato sauce or the season finale of Mad Men.
I have vivid childhood memories of my parents and our neighbors hosting dinner parties, with ABBA Gold playing in the background (it seemed to be one of those records that every thirtysomething couple in the 1980s owned, as if it came with the stereo or was dropped off with the morning papers one Sunday morning). “Super Trouper” conjures up phantom tastes of a casserole our neighbors used to make, otherwise forgotten.
My sophomore year of high school, I fell in love with the weird, spectacular campiness of the 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert(soon to be a Broadway musical). This film (it’s great. Go rent it. Thank me later) features “Mamma Mia” prominently…and thus, the song was stuck in my head for three weeks following.
I also became a big fan of Muriel’s Wedding, which both features the music of ABBA and the amazing Toni Collette (also worth renting. Wow, three paragraphs in, and I’m already monopolizing your Netflix queue). I think this was my first real exposure to the whole ABBA experience; the weird and wonderful mix of relentless positivity, aura of disco-kitsch, and yes, more than a hint of booty-shaking groove. There’s something to be said for such unabashed, relentlessly optimistic fabulous-ity.
Other Abba-centric memories of mine include two upperclassmen in college who would begin (and sometimes end) most parties with a rousing dance-mime version of “Fernando,” and a terrifying summer theater production of Chess I once got roped into; that’s neither here nor there.
For those of us who came of age in the suburbs in the mid-to-late nineties, I think we were all caught in a weird echo-boom of nostalgia about ABBA; as our parents rediscovered the music of their youths, and the arts and entertainment contemporaries of their generation came into control of their industries, ABBA soaked its way in to a whole new generation’s ideas and ideals of pop culture. This, ultimately led to that grand-dame of all jukebox Broadway musicals, Mamma Mia, which, in turn, spawned the film of the same name. Mamma Mia will forever be remembered for reminding us that Meryl Streep can actually do anything, and Pierce Brosnan’s singing voice sounds like the dulcet tones of a braying water buffalo.
But, I digress.
The point here is that ABBA is this undeniable cultural touchstone, tied closely to rampant and unstoppable positive vibes. And all of us, being somewhat cynical children of the new millennium, have a slight resistance to that; it is, after all, a cynical world we live in.
You have to admit, there’s something cool in being able to neat those cynical impulses back with some soulful disco-pop sent our way from Sweden.
After the performance of MacHomer, the guests of JerseyArts were treated to a discussion with the sole performer of the show, Rick Miller. First, a little about the multi-talented actor himself. Miller is an actor, singer, and an architect who created the show while impersonating Simpsons characters while at a cast party after Macbeth. He has performed MacHomer all around the world in several languages, as well as several other award-winning shows his production company, WYRD Productions, has produced. As mentioned in my other posts, Miller impersonates over 50 characters from The Simpsons.
The discussion itself was both enlightening and entertaining. Miller was unafraid to answer any question posed and was kind and courteous to everyone. Some of the things he mentioned really stood out to me. A look at the “cast list” and one can see some odd pairings between Simpsons characters and the roles of Macbeth. Miller’s casting process was a combination of factors: obviously, Homer was the fit for Macbeth, but since Bart and Lisa are difficult for him to reproduce well and consistently, he has the Simpson children as much smaller roles. Clearly, Miller’s voice is a vital component to his success, and he must take great pains to preserve it. Also, his creativity in regards to his writing of the show was brought up when discussing several updates to the show over the past decade. Miller makes edits for two reasons primarily: to keep the show fresh in the audience’s mind (although a George W. Bush joke did seem oddly outdated) as well as in his own mind, considering he performs the show so often. In fact, Miller only performs the show a handful of months out of the year to avoid the risk of overdoing something as silly and outlandish (and exhausting) as MacHomer.
Rick Miller, while delving into short anecdotes and explaining various logistics behind his creation, also seemed to be a generally nice guy. He constantly made jokes, even at his own and the show’s expense. He was very aware that this concept probably couldn’t work on an epic scale, but he also appeared to be quite proud and pleased with the success it has had so far. And could you blame him? By a simple agreement with Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, Miller has been able to live his dream life by touring the world and entertaining over half a million people. And that is something I bet a majority of artists wish they could boast.
Bart's part is pretty much a cameo...but you can't deny he's photogenic...
Last Wednesday at the Crossroads Theatre in New Brunswick, a friend and I saw MacHomer, the one man spectacular mashing Shakespeare’s tragedy of Macbeth with over 50 impressions of characters from the TV series “The Simpsons”. Walking into the theatre was an interesting experience. The theme songs of familiar TV series played while we stared at a small set, simply a miniature TV set style podium backed by a large projector screen. From before the show even started, I could tell this was going to be something different.
And how little prepared I was for what took place that night. Rick Miller, the one and only star of the show, entered dressed in traditional Scottish garb, and began reciting the first lines of Macbeth as the Wyrd Sisters, but really as three side characters from The Simpsons: Captain McCallister, Moe Szyslak, and Principal Seymour Skinner. From the get go, we have surprising choices for characters (he referred to this later as “casting”) and there were many more similar cases of juxtaposition (such as Apu as one of the murderers). But remarkably, Miller stayed true to the script, keeping many of the lines (at least the ones I could remember) and lampooning several of them at the same time. He begins the MacHomer speech of “Is this a dagger I see before me” quite faithfully until the “dagger” manifests quickly into a slice of pepperoni pizza.
Chain-mail and a donut...it never stops being funny.
Overall, my impressions of the show were favorable. Miller is an incredibly talented performer, as nearly all of his impressions were spot on and his ability to command an audience with humorous asides was admirable. The show was well written, witty, and fast-paced; so fast-paced, in fact, that it was hard to know what was going on at times. I did enjoy the omission of an intermission (with the exception of a humorous 15-second break for Miller himself) as it made the show go faster and would be pointless as the show in its entirety is less than 90 minutes long. Omitting intermissions is one of my favorite trends in theatre over the last five to ten years. Finally of note, Miller’s use of a camera hidden behind the podium to project his face onto the gigantic projector screen was ingenious. While theatre purists hate any type of video media within a show, Miller’s invention was utilized so brilliantly and for comedic effect that it did nothing but add to the hilarity of the show. I have to say, MacHomer was one of my favorite theatre experiences in some time. More on Miller himself and some of the behind-the-scenes information in my next post.
Picture a guy in a doublet and tights at the end of this, and it's sort of MacHomer.
Twenty years ago, Matt Groening and the infant television station of FOX began broadcasting The Simpsons. Originally an animated short on The Tracy Ullman Show, the show quite simply exploded into the mainstream of the American public consciousness just a few short years later. Now there are college classes, books, documentaries, memorabilia and more devoted to Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie, and the hundreds of other minor characters created by the creative minds behind the TV behemoth. It’s hard to look at The Simpsons objectively, since its been on the air for so long and continues to do so, but there is no denying the remarkable impact that it continues to have. Just recently, the show passed Gunsmoke for the longest running American primetime TV series. The very fact that “D’oh!” is in the Oxford English Dictionary is a testament to creativity and ingenuity in writing, production, and thought.
Let’s take an abrupt turn in creative discussion. I promise this will all make sense in a paragraph or two. From the 20th century’s greatest TV series (take THAT, M*A*S*H), we focus on Shakespeare. What? Why? Hold on, hold on. Let me explain. According to 90s boy band LFO, “Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets”. Which is true, yet somewhat irrelevant. I’m focusing more on his plays, his tragedies. Think about what our world would be like without works like Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and King Lear. Any kind of semi-dramatic work would be nonexistent. Without Shakespeare, our characterizations, our conflicts, our settings, our structure and our language would be sorely lacking. It’s a world that is impossible to imagine, or at the very least, terrifying to do so.
Rick Miller in MacHomer
It is for that reason alone why it boggles my mind that so many of my peers despise Shakespeare. They say it’s boring, it’s hard to understand, it’s old (old?!?! Is that the best you can think of??), and it can’t be related to today’s tech-driven world. Give me a break. I’ve been in three Shakespeare productions as an actor and will freely admit that they are some of the most fun, interesting, and enlightening experiences I’ve had within the arts. An artist can do great things with Shakespeare’s text, whether it be creating their own world, exploring the meanings of emotion and wants, or adding the beloved gimmick of zombies or robots.
What the hell does this have to do with The Simpsons?? Hold on, I promised it would all work out. Rick Miller will be combining the beloved animated series with one of Shakespeare’s most admired tragedies, Macbeth, in a one-man spectacular entitled MacHomer. I will be seeing this show on Wednesday in New Brunswick. I can only say that I am equally fearful and delighted to experience a combination of seemingly unrelated works. But MacHomer will do more than juxtapose the two, but rather as I imagine, draw the incredible similarities that are present. Homer Simpson is something of a tragic figure, blinded by his stupidity and general oaf-ness, just as Macbeth is blinded by his sheer ambition. Miller will be portraying over 50 Simpsons characters with his voice, something which I anticipate will be employed to great hilarity. I truly look forward to seeing this show and how it exemplifies the relevancy of Shakespeare in a biased, Shakespeare-bashing world.
(Sorry this show is just so good; I really couldn’t edit this down!)
There are some genuinely tender moments in this show, especially Christine Marie Heath’s rendition of “I will be loved tonight” and Marc G. Dalio’s performance as an old man looking across the table to his wife of many years and singing “Shouldn’t I be less in love with you?”
Even though the ages in the theater seemed to range from 21 to 75, there wasn’t one member who laughed particularly louder at a comic scene or sighed at a touching moment. There really is something for everyone.
My moment would have to be the single woman trying to get off the phone with her anxious mother wanting to know if the man she went on a date with the other night has called yet. She chides her mother with “he said he’d call tonight so of course he won’t call tonight” line. Every single woman knows the x 3 rule when it comes to a guy. (Take the day he says he’ll call you and add three days and that’s the actual time you will hear from him. It’s as valid as the Pythagoras Theorem). So imagine the woman’s surprise, along with the audience’s, when the man actually calls her!
The stage erupts into a musical spectacular of “He Called Me,” complete with a dancing duo of Italian pizza delivery men. When the man calls her again, the spectacular abruptly ends as she turns to the audience with a sigh to say “He’s needy.” And alas, the relationship ends before it can even begin. I hate to admit it but I am guilty of such a judgment. So I guess after seeing the other side, I will have to respectfully retract my former statement that “boys are stupid” and merely conclude that it is not about finding that perfect person but finding a person who embraces your “baggage” and inner-weirdness.
Posted by colleenverbus 
