Burleigh Grime$

So here's a first. I may actually be posting this before the show I was at actually ends. Yup, that's right folks. We left at intermission. This is the first time I've ever done this. But we decided we'd rather be walking home in the rain than sitting in a comfortable theater watching this show. In fact, I'd rather be cutting my arm off with a rusty spoon than watching this show. Let's put this in context. I stayed through the entirety of "Good Vibrations." I turned to Lydia about 15 minutes in and said, "I think I liked 'I Love You Because' better..." About 30 minutes in a cell phone rang, and I turned to Lydia and said, "Oh, that helps." Yeah, it was bad. No, it was worse than bad. It was awful. Wait, wait - MIND-NUMBINGLY AWFUL. Good.

I don't even know where to begin. The writing was awful. And the staging. And the acting. Okay, so it was about this bad man on Wall Street who was in cahoots with a TV reporter. This heart-of-gold assistant wants to get to the bottom of the fraud. I don't know what happens next. I should have stayed. Ouch. My brain just hit me for thinking that.

So the jokes were really bad, they were just put in randomly, and they weren't funny. And lines that were supposed to be funny were delivered really badly, with really, awk, ward pause, s. Oh, and there was music! Music written by David Yazbek, who is a respectable Broadway composer. So in the middle of a scene, music would start, like they were supposed to sing, but they really didn't. Instead, they like spoke in rhythm, or spoke during breaks, or just seemed really awkward presenting bad dialogue with music in the background. It was like watching a puppy drown and not being able to help it. Of course, instead of singing, they would dance. And not like, oh cool, good theater dancing. No, like junior high dancing where the kid with really bad BO is trying to dance with the girl who's four inches taller than him, but they're trying to impress everyone by doing a spin, no, a turn. While they're talking about trading stocks or something.

There was this line in the description online that said, "partial nudity." Not even that could redeem it. It was this really awkward scene where this 40 year old stripper is dancing on a table in a bikini while three guys are talking about something which I don't recall but probably did not advance the plot or provide entertainment of any sort. It was awkward. By the way, the stripper also plays an assistant who dances with a coffee pot. That's one of those roles that don't gender profile and aren't demeaning at all. I think she had a line. Oh yeah, because she also played the bitchy, spoiled (unfunny) wife.

So if you don't know, the show is playing at New World Stages, formerly Dodger Stages, which is like a 5 theater complex of off-Broadway shows. One of them there is really good ("Altar Boyz"). Unfortunately, that show does not have an intermission so we couldn't hop into it. And Lydia says you can't hop into theater anyway. Psh.

It's times like this where I wish this blog had more than our three readers, all of whom are not based in New York City, because then I would feel like I am contributing to society by saying DO NOT WASTE YOUR LIFE OR MONEY BY SEEING THIS SHOW. Unless you overdosed on Prozac and you need something to bring you down.