As a follow-up to the article on
The Screw You Review mystery, a friend pointed me to
a blog post of a patron who went to opening night of "The Blue Revue," Dewey Chaffee's new "Screw You Revue"-esque show playing at Sleuth's on I-Drive. This is only one person's opinion of course. If you saw the show and have a review, leave it as a comment on this post.
"...we had tickets to see the "Screw You Revue" at its newest home, Sleuth's. All I can say is, WOW, what a difference from past shows and WHAT a disappointment! First of all, except for the brief run at Xmas, after nearly a year of the same show (granted, some different ad libbing but same premise/theme), it was WONDERFUL to see a totally different show at Fringe '08.
Now don't get me wrong, I can deal with repetition just as well as the next person and have done so at the AdvClub for over 15 years...but that's not sit-down-and-quietly-watch-the-show-on-stage theatre (except in the Library, which we don't go into consistently, or the mini stage in the Main Salon, which is only in 10 minute increments). In fact, the only reason we were willing to go to the show at Sleuth's so soon after Fringe was because he was touting it as "entertainment history" and we figured it would be the "new" show.
Wrong. It was the same old show as always, albeit with one lame gag from the new version. On top of that, it was a different nurse and a different piano player and WOW, was there a difference in chemistry! Actually, strike that...there was NO chemistry between Sassy and the two new characters. There was very little humor either, to the point where, when there WAS finally a decent-sized laugh early on, Sassy said something to the effect of, "It took 15 minutes for them to finally laugh."
Well Christ, had there been anything to laugh ABOUT before then, we would have. But there wasn't. All they had was poor timing, performers who couldn't emote or ad lib, inappropriate audience choices, crossing the fine line from bigot-funny to "none of your business and not funny" and worst of all, no one who could dig Sassy out of the hole when he needed it.
With some exceptions here and there, the show just...sucked. We had gotten 1/2 price tickets so they were only $10...but honestly, I still don't think we got our money's worth."