The Underpants

How do I start...
Well, ...back and forth, I guess:

Pro - The 80s music in pre, intermission, and post show...and scene changes...was awesome!!! And, they fit the show. In lyrics, most definitely! Props to Sound Designer Barbara Cole Uterhardt for her understanding of what needed to happen!

Con - Not really my kind of show. Humor-wise it was too much "in your face" like Benny Hill. Lots of sexual innuendo visually and verbally.

Pro - The audience, although small, loved it. It was funny, it was truly entertaining and it captured the audience's attention before the intermission.

Con - Versati, played by Antjuan Tobias Taylor, wore a suit that looked a wee bit big for him. The legs and the arms of the jacket made him look like a child wearing a "big man's suit."

Pro - Klinglehoff, played by David Klein, was the best thing in the play! From the time he popped in during Act I to the time he actually delivered lines to set his character, he was excellent. Very prompt, very straight-forward, very set and believable in all the chaos onstage. He was the "straight man" in all the tomfoolery.

Con - Usually, within the first, oh, 10-20 minutes of a show, you know the time period and the place and all the basic stuff. This time around, the setting was not quite clear. What time period was this? Where in the world were they? Only later on when one of the characters mentioned that it was Germany did the audience get that it was set in Germany. But when? 1800s? 1900s? The costumes didn't depict a lot, other than it might have been Victorian or later. And with a King instead of a Chancellor, that told us quite a bit. But that didn't happen until much later in the story.

Pro - The set was very, very believable and very well-proportioned. Many props to Set Designer Darrell Wofford (who also played Theo) for his work on reading and understanding the script and what was necessary to make the ease of movement on stage work for the actors.

Pro - Props to Costume Designer Toni Sunseri for the women's dresses. Very, very nicely done! Movement, color - everything!

Over-all, it was an entertaining show, but not sure if Steve Martin was trying to adapt something that would come off more Moliere than Benny Hill on stage. It would interesting to see what the original by Carl Sterheim would have looked like.