Funny Bones
Last night I went to see Funny Bones, 4 New Comedies about Death at 6th at Penn Theatre in Hillcrest. It is four short comedies about death. It is apparently part of their Challenge Theatre series where they get playrights to agree to write a short play, without telling them what it must be about. Jude is acting in one of the shorts, so we went to check it out. As a bonus, one of the shorts was written by Dallas McLaughlin, Jude and I went to see a reading of a play he wrote in the fall and it was really funny.
The first short, the one written by Dallas McLaughlin was pretty funny. Death was a flamboyant lounge singer,there wasn’t a lot to it, but it had its funny moments. The next was strange, I didn’t get it at all. (Jude later explained it to me and I realized I guess I sort of did get it, there just wasn’t much to get). So as the third short started I was a spacing out a little.
This one was about some baboons at the zoo talking about life and death and throwing poo at the audience (right at me!). There wasn’t much going on, just some dialogue that wasn’t bad but wasn’t terribly funny, and wasn’t really holding my attention. Since the two actors on stage were playing baboons they were hunched over and low to the ground. The male actor said something along the lines of “I’m sorry ladies and gentlemen” and walked/crawled off stage. But he didn’t break character and said it just as if it were his next line. The female actor said “this is real” and followed him. But the theme of the night was comedies about death, so everyone in the audience just sat there expecting a punch line. We probably sat there for about a minute until the guy that had been selling tickets walked on stage and asked if someone could call 911. Someone in the audience already had. They turned the lights on and cancelled the rest of the performance. It was still very surreal, it felt like at any minute the actors were going to come out and finish the performance as we were walking outside or waiting in the parking lot.
We found Jude as the ambulance pulled up. Apparently the actor has had some health problems in the past and was feeling hot and started to faint. He didn’t leave in the ambulance so he must have been doing at least ok. It was really very strange.
So I didn’t get to see Jude’s performance. The last night of the show is Sunday, but Sunday is Mother’s Day, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it back.
