Menllenium Saves the World

Hollywood has taught us well: when something works once, make it pay off twice with a sequel. Go Comedy! welcomes the return of its resident fictitious, flirtatious, flagrant boy band in Menllenium Saves the World (written by the cast, director Tommy LeRoy, and assistant director Michelle LeRoy). An indulgent retread with a detective twist, this Thursday/Friday primetime offering is a winking spoof on the pitfalls and artificiality of the sequel format, hitting as many snags in the execution as it does high notes.

Returning viewers are reminded, and new ones caught up, by a opening number reintroducing the main players and their chief personality traits: egotist Kevin (Andrew Seiler), rebel Jayson (Micah Caldwell), sensitive imbecile Marcus (Tommy Simon), resident pervert J.D. (Clint Lohman), and fallible manager/handler Sarge (Ryan Parmenter). Having spent the first installment developing the characters and making discoveries about the relationships, the sequel requires the band to do something; naturally, they are summoned to the Vatican to solve a murder. Borrowing from 70s-era cartoons such as Scooby-Doo and the Harlem Globetrotters series, the fellas are drawn into a topical mystery full of religious overtones, murderous Mayans, and the end of the world. Joined by their new church-official friends Daphne (Christa Coulter) and Father Oftlen (Dan Brittain), they warble and thrust their way to the case’s resolution.

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Montag and Marbles

From inspired improvisation premise to impeccable scripting to superb team performance, Brian Papandrea and Josh Campos are Montag and Marbles, in every respect. Their brainchild, now occupying the late-night Thursday time slot at Go Comedy!, casts the pair in static roles as the two halves of a ventriloquist act — or, as the show poster succinctly quips, “a dummy and his puppet.” With keen leadership by director Pete Jacokes, this clever creative stricture bears ample fruit in a blazingly funny one-act production that wrings possibility from every angle.

Presented as a retrospective, the show chronicles the few triumphs and many tribulations of a near-forgotten comedy team: Montag the Magnificent (Campos) and Mr. Marbles (Papandrea). The framework takes the form of a satiric Tyme Lyfe infomercial, the kind of hokey low-budget sales pitch for complete DVD collections generally only seen at desperate post-midnight hours through bloodshot, sleep-deprived eyes. Crucially, the device eases pressure on the story while still retaining a clear narrative, a welcome packaging that plays to the strength of vignette. With the back story and characters established, it’s up to the finely polished script to develop and evolve a decades-long partnership, which it does with carefully plotted tie-ins, repetition of key material in the act, and one wacky montage of perfecting mad voice-throwing skills.

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White Buffalo

One man’s lighter-side news footnote is another’s religious phenomenon. Playwright Don Zolidis tasks one Midwestern family with comprehending, appreciating, and protecting another culture’s miracle in his redolent drama White Buffalo. Under the direction of Guy Sanville, the world-premiere production at Purple Rose Theatre Company uses mystic inquiries and Native American traditions to enhance its contemporary story of wayward characters looking for guidance.

Inspired by a real-life occurrence, the events of the play are launched by a single event: the birth of a pure white buffalo calf on a small Wisconsin farm. Single mother Carol Gelling (Michelle Mountain) and her teenaged daughter, Abby (Stacie Hadgikosti), recognize the remarkable beauty and rarity of the occurrence, but little do they know its portentous significance. The appearance of John Two Rivers (Michael Brian Ogden) briefly prepares them for an ensuing onslaught of publicity and visitors; as John explains, according to Sioux legend, the white buffalo signifies the return of an ancient savior. As the curious and the fervent descend on the farm by the thousands, the Gelling women must contend with the ways, good and bad, in which this miracle is altering their present — and how it can shape their future.

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Dead and Buried

Director Harry Wetzel takes an intriguing fractured approach to playwright James McLindon’s Dead and Buried. Now in its world premiere at Detroit Repertory Theatre, this story of a team of graveyard caretakers pushes its tones to the brink. Yes, that’s tones, plural: Wetzel gambles on the strength of the show’s disparate scenes, rather than aiming for a single mood unfocused enough to unify them. Sure enough, by making each interaction the best it can be, the unorthodox approach pays off in a show that is as hysterically funny as it is weightily dramatic as it is spookily supernatural.

The story begins with seventeen-year-old Perdue (Lulu Dahl), a solitary newcomer to a New England town who pursues the first available job she finds: gravedigger. As the scowling young upstart, Dahl resonates with world-weary independence and spits daggers of cynicism, bitterly resisting the best efforts of employer Bid (Charlotte Leisinger) and coworker Robbie (Benjamin J. Williams) to befriend and earn trust. Yet these are long hours to pass in the respectful company of the dead, and McLindon gently uses instruction as a byway to interaction in Perdue’s workplace scenes. Indeed, Wetzel’s set design includes a large expanse of cemetery, a wonderful hilly abstraction that gives the illusion of size and slope. The place becomes different things at different times: sometimes a quiet refuge for reflection and comfort, sometimes a piece of land to be cultivated, and sometimes (in concert with overstated lighting and sound design by Thomas Schraeder and Burr Huntington, respectively) a macabre emptiness of shivering fear.

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The Usual: A Musical Love Story

The boy-meets-girl story is as old as the guy-walks-into-a-bar joke; to keep the listener’s attention, either one had better deliver an unexpected wallop. Enter The Usual: A Musical Love Story, a modern boy-walks-into-a-bar-meets-girl caper with book and lyrics by Alan Gordon and music by Mark Sutton-Smith. In the world-premiere production at Williamston Theatre, director Tony Caselli takes the most shopworn chestnut in the world and plunges into two acts of off-the-wall digression celebrating the latest trends in romance, technology, recreation, and other curios of human behavior.

The scene is a drastically underpopulated watering hole, the perfect place for self-proclaimed nerd king Kip (Joseph Zettelmaier) and frustrated serial Internet dater Valerie (Emily Sutton-Smith) to meet cute. Under the knowing gaze of textbook proprietor-bartender Sam (Leslie Hull), the two hurtle straight into the friend zone, despite showing compatibility that may be visible from space. For this pair, it’s less a matter of whether they will get together than when and how; thus, with self-imposed arbitrary obstacles firmly in place, the plot is free to veer and wind into strange and amazing territory while the realtionship, shall we say, ferments.

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