By Brian Pope
My day of seeing shows in the 2019 Pittsburgh Fringe Festival was indicative of the event’s change in locale. The proceedings gained a great deal of intimacy in their move from the North Side to Garfield. It followed that the three shows I saw made me and the rest of my fellow audience members lean in. They were small in scope but huge in impact. Personal stories and crafts combined to create a dynamic afternoon of theater going.
It’s not clear what to expect from a show written and performed by someone who describes himself as giving off a “bisexual Luigi vibe”. It turns out that Brett Johnson and his one-person show POLY-THEIST are the definitions of more-than-meets-the-eye.
The makeshift stage at the intimate LevelUp Studios is bare but for a single chair on which a bluetooth speaker sits. When Johnson enters through the audience and starts spinning his deceptively poignant yarn, you instantly get the feeling that you’re catching up with an old friend. In this case, you’re an old friend who hasn’t heard from Johnson since you attended Christian college together. You know about his strict Evangelical upbringing and the unhealthy relationship with sex that it fostered within him. He was taught that premarital sex is a sin. He was taught that marital sex is taboo. He was taught that the only way a person could have sex or even be in a relationship with more than one person in their lifetime is for that first person to die.
Somehow, with all of that looming over his conscience, he manages to meet, marry, and make out in a church (not in that order) with a girl named Audrey all by the age of 22. What I initially assumed would be a diatribe against the hypocrisy of religion and marriage ended up being a celebration of love. A few years into their marriage, Brett and Audrey decide to open their relationship. He dates other people. She dates other people. But they come home to each other as husband and wife. The twist here is that it works for them.
By maintaining open and honest communication with and respect for one another, they truly honored their vows even if not in the way they (or their parents) expected them too. Johnson is also very honest about the insecurity he felt along the way. He humorously recalls fretting about his wife’s boyfriend let’s say making his mark on Johnson’s pillow one day and evangelizing about the benefits of being in an open relationship with his girlfriend’s boyfriend another day. He argues that his love for Audrey was so strong because it endured many challenges. If the fun and humanity of his story doesn’t convince, then his boundless charm as a performer definitely will.
Said the Italian poet to the American musician, “Do you see what I hear?” Well, in his introduction to Do You See What I Hear?, James Wright Glasgow does not say whether Mario Moroni asked him that exact question when they met. It is clear though that the answer is yes.
A conversation is a give and take. Sometimes someone in the dialogue will interrupt. Another time someone will go off on a random tangent. In this piece, the discourse between the words and the music was equally passionate and thoughtful. Images from nature were reflected in the score. Crescendos filled in the white space between stanzas. During a piece called “Reflections”, a psychedelic video component is even introduced, another voice in the fray. Luckily, the audience is breathless so the music, poetry, and visuals are free to go at it.
It’s easy to turn on the television on any given day at any given time and string together an hour of “socially conscious” comedy. There are late night show segments, award show monologues, and comedy sketches abound. The possibilities are even more endless on streaming services like YouTube and Netflix. Still, there’s something special about getting in a room with a bunch of strangers and hearing it right from the comic’s mouth.
Krish Mohan provides a welcome reprieve from the celluloid black hole of political humor with his show Politely Angry: An Hour of Socially Conscious Comedy. He hits a variety of topics both big and small, global and personal. Most entertaining is the recap of his recent honeymoon. He and his white wife traveled to his home country of India and experienced a distinct kind of racism. This kind of observational humor can be the most effective because it’s the most relatable. Our experiences may not be universal but our ability to experience them and make the best or worst out of them is. When it comes to things like losing his wife’s flip flops, Mohan is clearly capable of spinning his experiences into comic gold.
For more information on the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival and these show, click here.
Brian Pope is a playwright and pop culture obsessive who has been writing for Pittsburgh in the Round since February of 2016. His plays have been produced by his own theatre company, Non-State Actors, as well as Yinz Like Plays?!, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company. He’s also served as dramaturg for City Theatre’s 2018 Young Playwrights Festival and as both stage manager and actor for Alarum Theatre. When he’s not making or reviewing theatre, he’s actively pursuing his other passions, listening to showtunes and watching television.
Categories: Archived Reviews