Generation NEXT at MacHomer 3: Meeting Rick Miller/The AfterParty.

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for two reasons primarily: to keep the show fresh in the audience’s mind (although a George W. Bush joke did seem oddly outdated) as well as in his own mind, considering he performs the show so often.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.

Generation NEXT at MacHomer 2: The Show!

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.

Generation NEXT at MacHomer 1: A Brief History of the Simpsons.

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 20^th 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.