The first Brain review is out - I don't actually know where it's from, somewhere in Orange County, I presume. But, here it is:
The Brain From Planet X
by James Scarborough, What The Butler Saw
May 5, 2008
I used to wonder whether intergalactic visitors would have libidos and the ability to make us laugh for hours on end.
And now, having seen David Wechter and Bruce Kimmel’s exquisite retro-futuristic sci-fi musical The Brain From Planet X, directed by Kimmel for The Chance Theater, I know.
They do and they can!
This show makes the solar system just a little bit smaller. We find that our visitors are just as goofy and hapless as the rest of us. They may think big, with grand plans to enthrall the Earth, but they prove that even aliens subscribe to Murphy’s Law: if things can go wrong, they will.
It’s 1958. Housewife Joyce (Allison Appleby), Engineer/Inventor husband Fred (Bob Simpson) and daughter Donna (Shannon Cudd), the composite of every do-good television family from the golden age of television, live that non-existent life invented by advertising executives and insurance actuaries.
Soon, though, they must fend off the attack of a trio of aliens: The Brain (Mark Rothman), Yoni (Emily Clark), and Zubrick (Daniel Berlin). They are aided, if that’s the right word, by – nice names! - careerist General Mills (Warren Draper) and factotum Private Parts (Dan Flapper).
A funnier script and premise you’ll never see. The songs rock, especially Yoni’s “I Need An Earthman” and “The Plan,” sung by The Brain, Yoni, and Zubrick, and the dancing, which also doubles as mass hysteria, is out of this world. The story takes place in the San Fernando Valley. Nice locale. Frank Zappa would have said that the invasion indeed did take place and the results continue to the present day, but that’s another story.
The production brims with the pitter-patter of puns, double entendres, and Boomer references (Rice-A-Roni, fake trips to the library so to watch submarine races...the only thing missing was Fred’s pocket protector and a slide rule). The show puts the complex back into military industrial.
You won’t find a better ensemble performance. Michael Irish’s Narrator notched up the hysteria like Joel Gray in Cabaret. Appleby’s Joyce put the tonic in catatonic. Clark’s Yoni begins with a Marge Simpson hairdo. Then she marvels at the terrestrial technology behind and the human statuary encased within zippers on men’s trousers. I kept expecting Rothman’s The Brain to pull out a cigar and start doing a Sands Hotel in Vegas stand-up routine.
Masako Tobaru’s set projections, and deb Millison’s costumes made me wonder if I was on the Set of "The Donna Reed Show" or "Lost in Space".
See this for the sheer visual lunacy, the non-stop laughs, and the buffet line of preposterous situations. See it because it’s live (and kicking), analog not digital. See it because you won’t believe how something so clever could come from the simple convocation of words on paper and people on stage.
Performances are 8PM, Friday & Saturday, 2PM, Saturday & Sunday. The show runs until June 8. Tickets are $27-30. The Theater is located at 5552 E. La Palma Avenue, Anaheim Hills. For more information call (714) 777-3033 or visit
www.chancetheater.com.
