As I was sitting closest to Ross I can perhaps best address this. Upon entering the theater, we were given a bell which we were told to ring if the jokes became too "risqué" -- this as a signal to the actors that the line betwixt salt and sin was being crossed and the audience felt the icy grip of impending moral denouement. Within the first few minutes one of the characters, dressed as a large, pink, hot dog, uttered a line with the word "buttocks" in it. Shocked into a state of intense action, Ross immediately clutched for the bell, but in the dark missed by inches and knocked it to the floor where it rolled under a chair across the isle from us -- far from reach. Unfortunately, in rapid succession the same actor uttered the word "bosoms" and the phrase "clean as a whistle", which was used in a manner I'd never imagined before but the salaciousness of which could not be disputed. Ross clutched his chest, gasping a faint but well rehearsed Mennonite oath to ward off evil, and his eyes rolled back into his head. He quickly collapsed into his seat, at which time I espied a phial of what I took to be smelling salts in his breast pocket. I broke it open and waved it under his nose in a puissant dose. Later we discovered that this ampule in fact contained Amyl nitrite, a fierce and powerful drug which Dr. Bender had apparently been self-administering already in somewhat ill-advised amounts. He quickly revived, but I fear he witnessed the rest of the play in a chemical fueled frenzy for which I feel partly (if not wholly) responsible. He seemed at times to have been transported back through the years to a production of Heidi he had seen in his youth and began to weep at the scene where Peter pushes Clara's wheelchair over the cliff. This pageant seemed to replay several times in his fevered mind, as Ross would stand at intervals, waving a penny loafer in the air and shouting "No Peter! No Peter!" -- which only stirred the actors on stage into bouts of further lasciviousness, thinking they were being egged on in the manner of the bawdy audiences they had come to expect, the theater being so close to such a number of Fraternity Houses. By the end of the evening, Ross was sweat drenched and raving -- the actors said, to a man, that they had never seen a more animated patron and plied him with coupons beseeching him to return to tomorrow nights performance to pepper them once again with the non sequitors which are the very life-blood of this particular show.
There were others there from the list who can probably fill in any small details I may have missed. kc -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Ross Bender Sent: Fri 5/25/2007 10:33 PM To: Univcity; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [UC] The Green Bird Well! I finally went to see The Green Bird at Curio Theater (on its penultimate DING DING DING night), and frankly, I can't see what all the fuss is about. The jokes, if you can call them jokes, went right over my head although I admit it was slightly amusing to hear young Chelsea Bulack screaming "Douchebags!" at all the actors and ranting about the pterodactyl in her tummy. Otherwise, I guess you have to had put in your time suffering through at least six previous shows to catch all the nuances, if you can call them nuances. There was lots of stuff about high school prom dancing which was utterly beyond me, since, as an Orthodox Mennonite, I never learned to dance, certainly not the sort of dirty dancing which was on shameful display right smack in the space where we Mennos meet to worship Sunday mornings at 9:00 am. (The Deacons have told me that it's a real pain in the ass to have to come in extra early to exorcise and disinfect the sanctuary.) Seriously, the only thing vaguely "cultural" about the evening was a few bars of "Tristan und Isolde" when the Princess and the King were doing a sort of slo-mo love scene, if you can call it a love scene. That and the Disney Animatronix slapstick number, which I could totally relate to, and which sort of brought things up to the level of a Mack Sennett comedy or maybe the Three Stooges. At any rate, word on the street is that Cassidy is smitten by one of the members of the cast, and may apparently be "doing it" with her. My guess is that it's the Queen Mother, or the Mother Queen -- the one with the pendant DING DING DING bosoms. But perhaps next season will be better. Starting in October they're presenting (I kid you not): "Breasts and the Maiden" "The Buttocks Did It" "Penis Envy" and "The Nutcracker". Things can only go up DING DING DING from here. -- Ross Bender http://rossbender.org
