Wacky interactions between two people! A zany, wacky, female and a straight-man! With a quote from Groucho Marx in their show copy, Boy Meets Girl and Other Dilemmas sets the bar high for a sketch comedy show. I’m afraid that bar was at the top of the stairs up to the Bedroom and the XY Players all hit their heads on it.
The XY players claim that Marx says this about their show: “I can’t remember when I laughed so much. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be funny.” Through most of the show I was confused – maybe that’s the joke? That Groucho Marx was right? Because I definitely thought it was supposed to be funny, and there is no way they would actually say that their comedy show is not funny. There is no way that I would sit through eight sketches filled with jokes to have the actual joke be that the show is a joke.
In hindsight, I realize that is a pretty clever joke.
The program is also filled with more clever jokes: a biography of Frank Sinatra by Dan Barry, and Frank Sinatra also plays Daniel Riker. The synopsis of the show has summaries of each act, for example “Act V has been replaced by Act VII. Act VII is now Act III.”
[wpcol_1quarter]
Boy Meets Girl and Other Dilemmas
by Robert Kittredge
70 minutes
a Bedroom – Fort Fringe
612 L Street NW
Washington, DC 20001
Details and tickets[/wpcol_1quarter]In actuality, Act V sticks to the tried and true formula of self-awareness, Frank or Daniel walks onto the stage with a guitar to sing a love song to Jackie Madejski. Cute. Then the themes of miscommunication, confusion, and the classic hostility between males and females takes over. A fourth wall is broken explaining that the purpose of this show is to “Give something back to the theatre community.” Some fifth wall is shattered by the voice of Jackie responding, “With this stuff?”
Indeed, the actors do their very best with this stuff that is smart and funny in parts. I really liked the seventh act, the transfer of a Shakespearean character delivering quite beautiful compliments between the characters played by Daniel or Frank and Pamela shows the chops of two great actors. In the eighth act, a spooky phenomenon of prediction is embedded in the script, and time bends around when the often straight-man, Dan Barry, and Pamela begin reading their conversation aloud from the beginning of the sketch.
With lines like “Cathy, is that a K or a C” “S, a hard S, Casy” and a vampire explaining that his lack of shapeshifting skills means he is only able to get up to a “una moth, Boy Meets Girl and Other Dilemmas has some great writing and a talented cast, but on opening night they must have forgotten to duck.