Jay Johnson The Two And Only

[Corine2]

Posted: 10/4/06 at 11:42pm

Just wanted to post how much I loved his show.
It has heart. It is funny. It is touching.

If you love great puppetry skills you will really enjoy this gem of a show.
I adored all of the puppets and I am partial to the snake.
The squeaky number is touching and the best part of the show is Jay's incredible talent.
This show is perfect for children of all ages (7 and up)
There are a few curse words.
It was great seeing the show in the second row. The first time I saw it I was in the last row of the orchestra and it was not as strong as seeing all of Jay's expressions.
I loved every single second. I hope to see it again.



Updated On: 10/5/06 at 11:42 PM

[uncageg]

Posted: 10/4/06 at 11:52pm

I remember Jay Johnson from "Soap" and from all of the variety shows back in the 70's . (I am dating myself!). I really hope this show lasts until I get there in March. I really want to see it.

[Vespertine1228]

Posted: 10/5/06 at 12:11am

I got a chance to see the show last night, and was really impressed. After the horrible showing at Broadway on Broadway, I really wasn't expecting much of anything. I guess he was just nervous, or the venue was too large, but the show was fantastic. It was so funny and interesting and sweet.

Sure, there could've been darker or much interesting subtext for Jay's journey, but he doesn't strike me as they kind of guy. I really hope people go out and see this show. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it, and think that others will feel the same.

[Chitty]

Posted: 10/5/06 at 12:16am

Was there a tv show called "Soap"?

Funny!

[myManCape]

Posted: 10/5/06 at 12:16am

It truly is a remarkable show. At Broadway on Broadway he flat out sucked. But when I saw the show, even him repeating the same act it was so funny and touching. He gives one of the most heartfelt performances Ive seen in a while. Everyone should give the show a chance.

[Corine2]

Posted: 10/5/06 at 12:23am

I interviewed Darwin at Broadway on Broadway.
I wish I had seen the show before interviewing that monkey.
I would have touched his rear.

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 10/5/06 at 12:44am

A couple of years back when I went to Broadway on Broadway, Jay Johnson was a guest and he spent a bit of time promoting his show when it was going to open it off-Broadway. I saw the grosses this week for his show and felt bad because it seems like a very cute, intimate, and touching show.

[Corine2]

Posted: 10/5/06 at 10:51am

It is adorable!

[pacificnorthwest]

Posted: 10/5/06 at 2:43pm

I absolutely loved this show and so did the rest of the audience. But I must say you certainly got nicer responses to your posting than I did. I wrote about this show earlier in the week and was snarkily dismissed by someone on these boards as being "the only one who liked it."

This review in the Philadelphia Inquirer really echoed my thoughts about the show:

Wooden characters, and still a wonderful show
By Howard Shapiro
Inquirer Staff Writer
NEW YORK - You'll find plenty of dummies on Broadway these days, and for a change, they're not all in producers' offices. Many are actually on stage. They take over the Helen Hayes Theatre with such natural presence and impeccable timing, it's hard to tell who's real - them or their ventriloquist, Jay Johnson.

Johnson is a master at an art often relegated to kids' diversions, when it's noticed at all nowadays. In Jay Johnson: The Two and Only! he celebrates ventriloquism with such grace, enthusiasm and dazzling talent, only a real dummy could resist.

The Two and Only! opened Thursday with a following from its downtown run at the Atlantic Theater Company, where it was a stunner two years ago. As novelty acts go, it's not a novelty act. It has story lines, tensions, character development, and a whole lot of laughs.

One of Johnson's story lines - he also wrote the show - is a nicely presented history of ventriloquism, a running, glib account in which he even explains the properties of sound.

Johnson's dummies - "to be politically correct, they prefer wooden Americans" - are classic puppet misfits: the obstreperous monkey, the vulture who ogles you because maybe you'll die on his watch, the smarmy boy who threatens to get another ventriloquist if Johnson doesn't ramp up his work.

The phone rings, midshow. Johnson answers it, and we hear two voices, competing for his attention. He tells them he's on stage, it can wait. They insist. A resigned Johnson, source of all the voices in the show, apologizes to the audience: "This is Jackie and Gaga," he says, pointing to the phone's earpiece. "They're my imaginary playmates."

And so it goes. As a ventriloquist, Johnson is allowed to be everybody's bad boy, and never take the heat for it. And what of the real Jay Johnson? He's the long-suffering straight man, stuck with a bevy of reprobates.

It's thrilling, and a little weird, to watch him project all this tumult onto hewn wooden and heavy-cloth images, and even at one point onto a sheet of construction paper. Johnson's mouth never gives it away; his manipulations of fake heads and eyeballs and bodies are flawless.

Throughout, Johnson weaves a story about his lifelong love of convincing people that he can make anything appear to live. He has performed with puppets since preschool, and his big break came a generation ago, when ABC hired him to play the peculiar ventriloquist Chuck on its breakthrough comedy series, Soap.

But Soap's producers didn't want Johnson's main puppet, Sparky. In one of the Broadway show's several moving moments, Johnson breaks the news to his pal.

Johnson also tells of his relationship with Arthur Sieving, a puppeteer and puppet-maker more than a half-century his senior. How they enriched each other's lives is a sweet story, and it involves their inanimate charges.

Watching Johnson work can be disconcerting. He appropriates mystery and magic when he seems to breathe life (and English) into, say, a tennis ball. He must get a liberating kick out of making people believe in something that can't be real. That's not just ventriloquism. That's what good theater does.

Jay Johnson: The Two and Only!

Written and performed by Jay Johnson, directed by Murphy Cross and Paul Kreppel, scenery by Beowulf Boritt, lighting by Clifton Taylor, sound by David Gotwald.