BAM~the Glory of the World

Anyone see this at BAM or Humana Festival?

It's a very weird, fun, over-the-top piece that I think most theatergoers will highly enjoy.  17 characters appear on stage, in classy colorful outfits that look like they came from Banana Republic.  Men sunbathing, a rhinoceros walking across the stage, one of the most elaborately choreographed fight scenes I've ever seen (which goes on for a very long & entertaining time!), two men showering in their speedos, men dancing and eating birthday cake, a huge birthday present carried onto the stage, a drone/airplane being flown up high, men stripping to their tank tops to see who can make the biggest muscle, etc. Everyone around me looked like they were really enjoying themselves - one older gentleman was screaming/guffawing he was having such a good time.  It runs about 95 minutes with no intermission.  (The first and last 10 minutes have some philosophical sayings that are projected at a very slow pace, to really make you stop and think about what they're saying.)

Honestly this is one of the worst plays (and I use that term loosely) I've ever seen. It's excruciating to sit through. If you didn't like BIG LOVE then you're not going to like this even more. At least BIG LOVE had Rebecca Naomi Jones singing which automatically elevates the material. The only highlight of this was a lip sync of Future Islands' "Seasons" because at least I could listen to a good song.

The play opens and closes with an interminable silence where you're looking at the director (or Will Oldham after tomorrow) and reading pretentious quotes projected onto the walls. By the time it happens at the end I was beyond ready to have the torture end and be released from the previous 95 mins (which felt ten times as long). What happened in between was a collage of quotes and inane dialogue interspersed with some of the things stevenycguy listed although everything he said isn't completely accurate. 

The production values itself are the only redeeming quality but it's entirely too much. It's honestly everything but the kitchen sink. There might have actually been a kitchen sink in there buried underneath the mounds of other sh!t on stage. It's mind-boggling to me that Charles Mee plays keep getting produced. I could understand a crap play getting produced if it were cheap to put on but his plays look extremely expensive when you have a million actors, a pool table, a ping pong table, a ball pit and countless other props. 

I would recommend staying as far away from BAM as possible while this is playing unless you want to know what it's like to be tortured. The only positive I can say is that I'm willing to bet this is the worst thing I'll see in 2016 and thankfully I've gotten that out of the way early on.