Monday, October 10, 2011

Reviews From Elsewhere: Los Angeles Times on the Rude Mech's I've Never Been So Happy, October 10


Link tweeted by the Rude Mechs:


Los Angeles Times header



Theater review:

'I've Never Been So Happy' at the Kirk Douglas Theatre


I've Never Been So Happy Los Angeles Times Rude Mechs

by Charles McNulty October 10, 2011

Rude Mechs, the crazy-as-a-fox performance troupe from Austin, Texas, loves throwing audiences for a loop. So for the benefit of any Rodgers & Hammerstein innocents out there, let’s acknowledge upfront that “I’ve Never Been So Happy,” the company’s new musical at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, could potentially give “Oklahoma!” addicts a stroke with its cowpoke sendup of musical theater conventions.

This freewheeling carnival of a show, which opened Saturday under the zingy direction of Thomas Graves and Lana Lesley, adopts its air of insouciance with a deadpan mask. Why, our wacky friends from the Lone Star State, last seen at the Douglas just a few months ago during RADAR L.A. with the sprightly mockumentary “The Method Gun,” have returned to host a little shindig. What could be more normal than seeing wieners roasting in the theater’s men’s room and the lobby decked out like a country fair for our intermission pleasure?

Thankfully, audience participation isn’t a requirement of this DouglasPlus offering. Theatergoers, however, must be willing to go along with the joke or the mayhem may start to seem raucously dizzying. But for those on the same wacky wavelength as Rude Mechs — and this boldly experimental group has earned its cult following — “I’ve Never Been So Happy” will no doubt possess a cobweb-clearing comic force.


Read more at the LA Times on-line . . . .

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