Aah, the magic of off-off-Broadway!  Saturday afternoon I went to the matinee performance of Kaspar Hauser: A Foundling’s Opera at the Flea Theater.  It is always a roll of the dice when you go to off-off-Broadway theater.  I have been to my share of duds, but I have also seen some gems.  Knowing this, it is always best to go into it with rock-bottom expectations.  As such, Kaspar Hauser was better than expected!  What a surprise!

The play is based on the legend of a feral boy who wandered into Nuremburg over a century ago.  The details and the truth of the story are apparently somewhat murky, so the play is actually based on a book that is based on the legend.  Confused yet?  Anyhoo, the story is interesting enough that I did not feel compelled to turn my dart back on myself after hitting it.  However, the first 15 minutes of the first act set a rather dull precedent.  It appeared that this opera was going to be a play where the characters just sang out what they were doing at the moment, repeating Kaspar’s name, and otherwise being cheesy and out of cadence.  However, the story started picking up steam and the second of two acts was much more engaging.  Many of the musical numbers began making sense while still being entertaining.  Just enough intrigue was tossed into the mix to keep the audience engaged.  In the end you actually care about the kid.

The Flea Theater is a small venue, as you might imagine.  I counted just under 50 seats in the theater and the room was about as big as many reasonably priced lofts in New York.  This makes for quite an intimate setting, especially given that the cast and crew of the production amounted to more than half of the size of the audience!  Unfortunately, within the 25-odd cast, there were only a few who could hit the big notes when they sang, and some were downright dreadful.  Thankfully they were given smaller parts, likely in recognition of that fact.  Kaspar himself reminded me very much of Mr. Peepers, Chris Kattan’s character from Saturday Night Live… all the way down to the spitting and drooling.  I felt sorry for those in the front row.  The actor who played the Duke had an excellent voice and demeanor (wish I knew his name), while Kaspar’s mother always seemed to hit the big notes exceptionally well but sounded flat and uneven when just singing along.

Overall, I cannot say I did not enjoy the afternoon of theater.  My low expectations were exceeded by a wide margin and I was entertained for 80% of the show.  I’d call that a success for the producers.

Since I was unable to attend the burlesque show last Thursday (I’ll make it up to you), I did the next best thing… I went to see Jonathan Coulton play at Symphony Space on the upper west side. 

Looking around the audience at the show, one could not help wondering who was out there manning World of Warcraft.  There was easily enough programming knowledge in the room to take over the world and enslave everyone in it.  Thank god they are all too socially inept to make friends and get organized.  I can’t really talk, as I felt quite at home there.  There was zero pretentiousness, everyone was amped up and ready to have fun.  Nerds are by far the most fun people to hang out with on the planet.  At one point the opening band told the audience to get out their lighters for a slow song.  They then corrected themselves, asking the audience to fire up the app that made a flame.  Over half the audience did so.  I for one downloaded the Zippo app and did my part to rock out.

The opening band was velvet-clad self-professed nerdy duo Paul and Storm, who opened with a song called "We Are the Opening Band."  It only got better from there.  Their songs included a heartfelt tribute to the inventor of chicken McNuggets, an imagination of what an Ultimate Fighting match between nuns would sound like, and numerous super-short-form songs that each lasted one, maybe two lines.  While all of their songs were amusing, their dialogue and banter between songs was not to be missed.  Off the cuff remarks, doling out girl scout cookies to audience members, and shamelessly hawking their T-shirts were among their hijinks.  They also spent a good deal of time ribbing Coulton.  Their act culminated by getting the audience to start growling "Aarrrrr!" like Pirates and then singing a song called the "Captain’s Wife’s Lament"… I highly recommend going to their site and listening to it to truly appreciate it.

After Paul and Storm worked their nerdy magic, on came JoCo.  If you are not familiar with Coulton, give some of his music a listen.  On the surface they are all amusing songs that get your toe tapping.  Dig a little deeper and you will find an underlying sadness in each.  One of the songs in his setlist was "Shop Vac," an amusing ditty about suburban life.  Listen closer and it is a sad tale of losing one’s soul to routine.  Another song, one of my personal favorites, is called "Code Monkey."  Anyone who has ever written code for money will hear it’s truth ring.  At the show, Coulton did an interesting slowed down version accompanied by an online contest winner with a ukelele.  His classic song "Re: Your Brains" garnered a great deal of audience participation.  The highlights of the night were his soulful slowed-down ukelele-accompanied cover of Sir MixAlot’s "I Like Big Butts" and his performance of "Mr. Fancy Pants."  Coulton went through a period when he wrote a song each week, and Mr. Fancy Pants was an apparent product of burnout.  He stretched the song out to over six minutes with the aid of a device hanging from his neck.  This was an electronic soundboard that resembled a Simon on steroids.  It was preloaded with riffs, shouts, and even a rickroll!

If you get the chance to see Jonathan Coulton in concert, I highly recommend you go.  It has to be experienced to be believed.