alibi_shop (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alibi_shop) wrote2019-01-28 08:16 pm
alibi_shop) wrote2019-01-28 08:16 pm
Stage: Up All Night (by Nice Tan)
Up All Night by Nice Tan, seen on 1/27/19 at PianoFight for SF SketchFest
I pretty much expected this to go right over my head, for several reasons. It's a '90s nostalgia piece, by people who are probably about 15 years younger than me. It has a fair amount of African-American pop culture stuff that I barely know. And it's about middle-school girls having a sleepover, which isn't like anything I ever did unless you count a few times I played Dungeons & Dragons with some older kids. So this was never going to be the kind of personal delight for me that it was for a lot of the audience... but, whatever: Nice Tan is really good and this is a very funny show with a lot of heart.
Local comedian Carla Lee is the founder of the group and plays more or less the main character, the one who's hosting the sleepover. The script introduces her as a pretty standard awkward tween; it's only when her mother shows up that we find out just how strange her family is, as she lapses into compulsive extreme baby talk while her friends stare in horror—and then the moment passes and they pick up where they left off. The shock of learning that other people's families aren't necessarily from the same planet as your own is definitely something I can identify with. A big part of the show is all the personal weaknesses and weirdnesses that these kids are trying to gloss over, even though everyone knows: one has a hopeless crush, one has a problem with incontinence, one (the only boy) is probably gay but also can't stop dancing in his sleep. And puberty is hitting them all in very different ways, so for instance two of the girl characters are in drag. There are only a few areas of safe common ground, like watching TV, and trading very questionable information about sex.
The format is pretty loose, short scenes with blackouts that mostly feel like they could be in any order, which works for this story since the kids are just trying to make time pass. Each character gets a bathroom monologue. When they watch TV, there's a TV parody skit (I particularly appreciated the one about Miss Cleo, not just because it's the one I actually recognized, but also because it manages to make "Cleo" sympathetic by putting her up against someone even less authentic than herself). It ends kind of arbitrarily on a gross-out punchline, but again, it's about arbitrary moments so this works.
I couldn't find any of the cast's names except Lee. She stands out in terms of sheer energy and physical characterization (the boy's sleep-dancing is a great physical comedy bit too), but I like them all and I hope they all keep working together.
I pretty much expected this to go right over my head, for several reasons. It's a '90s nostalgia piece, by people who are probably about 15 years younger than me. It has a fair amount of African-American pop culture stuff that I barely know. And it's about middle-school girls having a sleepover, which isn't like anything I ever did unless you count a few times I played Dungeons & Dragons with some older kids. So this was never going to be the kind of personal delight for me that it was for a lot of the audience... but, whatever: Nice Tan is really good and this is a very funny show with a lot of heart.
Local comedian Carla Lee is the founder of the group and plays more or less the main character, the one who's hosting the sleepover. The script introduces her as a pretty standard awkward tween; it's only when her mother shows up that we find out just how strange her family is, as she lapses into compulsive extreme baby talk while her friends stare in horror—and then the moment passes and they pick up where they left off. The shock of learning that other people's families aren't necessarily from the same planet as your own is definitely something I can identify with. A big part of the show is all the personal weaknesses and weirdnesses that these kids are trying to gloss over, even though everyone knows: one has a hopeless crush, one has a problem with incontinence, one (the only boy) is probably gay but also can't stop dancing in his sleep. And puberty is hitting them all in very different ways, so for instance two of the girl characters are in drag. There are only a few areas of safe common ground, like watching TV, and trading very questionable information about sex.
The format is pretty loose, short scenes with blackouts that mostly feel like they could be in any order, which works for this story since the kids are just trying to make time pass. Each character gets a bathroom monologue. When they watch TV, there's a TV parody skit (I particularly appreciated the one about Miss Cleo, not just because it's the one I actually recognized, but also because it manages to make "Cleo" sympathetic by putting her up against someone even less authentic than herself). It ends kind of arbitrarily on a gross-out punchline, but again, it's about arbitrary moments so this works.
I couldn't find any of the cast's names except Lee. She stands out in terms of sheer energy and physical characterization (the boy's sleep-dancing is a great physical comedy bit too), but I like them all and I hope they all keep working together.