Three actors in pastel outfits and lab coats take the stage. Carter Rodriguez (tall, wild-haired, in yellow) begins explaining black holes and the origins of the universe in a broad, physics-class lecture. Sachie Mikawa (short, peppy, in pink) keeps hijacking the conversation toward a topic more to her likingโ€”cute bunny rabbits. As a gullible, easily excited moron (Ben Burris in blue, finding a mouth-breathing nondescript white-guy median between the two) listens, she explains the makeup of a “cuteness molecule”โ€”the four pads of a rabbit’s foot. Soon the whole lecture is derailed and the three are fighting over who gets sacrificed to a volcano god to save the universe.

The three actors, who perform under the name Le Frenchword, are playing in absurdist-comedy territoryโ€”Mikawa and Rodriguez’s former clown-school teacher, George Lewis, directs the showโ€”using mime to suggest a broad array of settings and props. One minute they are canoeing down a jungle river, the next they’re pirates spying on an island where monsters roam, the next they’re having awkward phone sex and giving birth to a Japanese teenage girl. They play types (the idiot, the straight man, the girly girl) and skillfully assume and abandon identities atop those types every few minutes. It’s like a well-acted Three Stooges routine, plumped up on pretension and massive amounts of processed sugar.

By the closing sketchโ€”involving something called the Last Lame Three-Legged Dying Cow of All Creationโ€”you realize you’ve seen maybe six different stories about the creation of the universe. Then the three players come back out and sing a song explaining why being below average isn’t the end of the world. Weird clown theater doesn’t get much more charming than this. recommended

One reply on “Charming Absurdism in Pastel”

Comments are closed.