It was a high-school fantasy come true: Jake—the star quarterback, the most popular guy in school, the vicious, preening bully—slouched, humiliated, on a street corner in Pioneer Square, his hands on a police cruiser, assuming the position of imminent arrest, while his best friend and biggest fan, a defensive lineman called Hulk, was busy negotiating with the cops on Jake's behalf. It was a delicious reversal of fortunes. The twist: Jake was a character, played by an actor. The cops were real.
The cast of Rewind 1987, an interactive dinner-theater "experience" that reproduces a 1987 homecoming dance, stood watching nearby: the cute nerdy girl, the tipsy biology teacher, the pack of snotty cheerleaders, the sad punk, and the rest of the gang. (Long Duk Dong was conspicuously absent.) One snotty cheerleader, dressed in pink, turned to another snotty cheerleader dressed in pink and muttered through a forced smile and clenched, gleaming teeth, "He's not really going to get arrested, is he?" Minutes before, Jake had been fighting noisily with his girlfriend, the head snotty cheerleader. He was shouting, she was shouting, Hulk was holding them apart. Then the cops pulled up.
Hulk, half in character, half out, and all nervous, mumbled something. "No, you're not respecting me," the cop said sternly. "You're disrespecting me!" Two other police cruisers pulled up. A bouncer was summoned, then a manager, then the director. Another cop, a muscular woman, calmly snapped on baby-blue rubber gloves with the flat expression of someone preparing to do a cavity search. Jake kept his hands on the cruiser, peeking nervously over his shoulder.
"This is Pioneer Square," the lead officer told Joel Thielke, the director, whose brother Rob is locally famous for his television commercials for Vern Fonk insurance, where he plays a frighteningly manic and cheesy insurance pitchman. "We get fights out here—shootings, stabbings. You can't create an altercation on the sidewalk. Or, if you do, at least give us a call. Let us know."
The police told Jake to get his hands off the cruiser, took down some names, and we all shuffled inside the Last Supper Club to eat salmon, drink beer, watch the 1980s high-school caricatures caper, be cajoled to dance, and, finally, dance to "Rock the Casbah," "My Sharona," and, of course, "Walk Like an Egyptian." The Rewind "experience" is half onstage, half on the dance floor, where individual audience members chat and flirt with individual characters. The audience has to get out of its seats and onto the floor if it wants to experience the "experience." That's a dicey proposition for Seattle audiences, famous—even at rock shows—for folding their arms, staying aloof, and generally failing to rock. Rewind 1987, which began in Los Angeles, has the potential to become another long-running Late Nite Catechism if it finds its target audience: bachelorette parties, sorority outings, and other herds of young, drunk women who want to dance to radio hits from their elementary-school days.
