Putting on a play is like coming up to people and saying, “Hey.
Hey. Pssst! I know you’re busy and we’ve never met, but I just
have to show you this thing I made. Seriously, come look at
it. COME OVER HERE AND LOOK AT IT!” If what you have to show people is,
like, a photocopy of some Celine Dion lyrics or two gumdrops stuck on a
toothpick or, oh, a turd (more common than you’d think), we’re going to
be unhappy with you. (Especially if you insist we look at it for
two hours.) But if it’s something like Here’s What
Happened—a metaphysical musical by local art-rock heroes
“Awesome”—we just might give you a hug.
I’d never seen “Awesome” before, so I had no high expectations to be
smashed or low expectations to be exceeded. My raw reaction: “Awesome”
is the kind of dynamic creative enterprise you dream of having in your
town. There are seven of them, which is not too many. They play
clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, drums, guitar, bass, mandolin, banjo,
typewriters, bullhorns, and other things that either are or aren’t
musical instruments. They all sing and remind you how little vocal
harmony there is in modern pop music. Their songs are funny, pretty,
and geeky. And oh—the accordion!
In Here’s What Happened, the seven scamper around, singing,
playing, talking, and swapping hats, instruments, and overhead
projector slides. The spectacle is exhilarating; the play entertains,
even with its slightly too thick icing of sugared sincerity.
A few reservations: Firstly, and most importantly, what the fuck are
you guys talking about? Here’s What Happened is confusing, and
I can’t imagine what it will do inside a child’s brain. The plot seems
like arbitrary scaffolding built around a series of fantastic,
preexisting, unconnected “Awesome” songs,
which—secondly!—is exactly what you guys happily proclaim
Here’s What Happened is. The gamble doesn’t pay off and I lose
interest in trying to decipher the story, though never in the songs,
which are great.
Here’s what happens: The play opens with Nancy Guppy as the
narrator, enjoying a delicious apple. (By the way, has anyone else
noticed that Guppy looks literally exactly the same as when 12-year-old
me was videotaping episodes of Almost Live!? In a molding
attic somewhere, her shrouded portrait morphs imperceptibly into that
desiccated ghoul from Tales from the Crypt. I am 98 percent
sure. Just saying.) “This is the story of the room and the mind and the
universe and a whale and seven explorers and you,” she begins.
A man named John is reclining in an apple orchard when the apples
turn dangerous. They fall, they bonk, they are immediately banned by
the vaguely menacing Board. John calls for a “fruivolution” (because
without fruit, “existence itself would be fruitless!”), and finds six
like-minded companions to help overthrow the Board. They meet a whale
who tells them, in tremulous burbles, that the situation is worse than
they think: With the Board’s constant redefining of reality (fruit is
now a “harmful foodlike substance with seeds that will asphyxiate and
in fact kill children”), everything thinkable is becoming confused or
forgotten—therefore, unthinkable—and the universe is
hurtling toward nonexistence. At least I think that’s what they are
saying.
All this talk of definitions and being and doing and unthinkables
and whales got me wondering what I used to know about Aristotle. I
found the following in my old laptop: “A frog can ‘be small,’ ‘be
afraid,’ or ‘be green,’ but none of those attributes accurately
describe what the frog ‘is.’ If someone points to the frog and says,
‘What is that?’ the answer is not ‘green,’ but ‘a frog,’ or, ideally,
‘Jerry the Frog.'”
This is a helpful way to think about “Awesome.” Evan and Basil and
David and John and John and Kirk and Rob can “be ‘Awesome,'” and
“Awesome” can “be funny guys in an awesome band,” but it doesn’t follow
that “Awesome” must “be funny guys in an awesome band that writes
awesome musicals.” In fact, if Aristotle pointed his dead Greek finger
at Here’s What Happened and asked, “What is that?” I
might say, “A little bit of a mess.” But I’m still thankful “Awesome”
is around. 
