Diane Goldstein, Spencer
♦ Have you ever had a friend who tells jokes loudly with no timing and who starts laughing well before the punch line? Have you ever gone to a fringe production purporting to be comedy where the amateur cast is talentless and only rehearsed once right before the show? And have you seen such an ensemble play to a sparse house where the laughs came infrequently? Welcome to Laugh Tracks at Spoken Space Theater.
There’s nothing quite like “comedy” where the performers stare into the black box theater audience and wait for laughs. Perhaps if one was a stoner they may have found light amusement in this empty juvenile knockoff of this Three Stooges meets Saturday Night Live.
The so-called skits seemed like something Ruppert Pupkin, the mentally ill wannabe comedian in “The King of Comedy”, might deliver when off his meds. The initial sketch was a vapid and predictable: “Salisbury Home Shopping”. It had me asking my date: “Maybe we should go?”
“It can’t get worse. Give it a chance.”
It DID get worse. Then came an ill considered Jerry Springer takeoff that brought on unwarranted audience participation: “Jurry! Jurry! Jurry!” Seriously.
I was getting a headache. Much later they did a careless rehash of something called Rowan Hillbillies. Basically the stereotypes some in Salisbury have of persons living in the county.
A few minutes later out in the parking lot, my date apologized. “I owe you,” he said.
