Day 2 -- 7:00 p.m. Time Slot

Show: Oops!

Compay: Warsh Iut Productions

Venue: Minneapolis Theater Garage

Die Roll: 19


The sign of a really good show is that I leave having taken almost no notes. Luckily, this play's program was completely blank, so I was able to put all my thoughts down during the show.

At its advertised essence this show was supposed to be about the resulting situation of a gay white man and a straight black woman having accidentally conceived a child together. This does happen in the show, so... I guess that the advertisement was honored, in truth.

Where this play breaks down is that once you read the show description, your own mind leaps to all the possibilities. I mean, this is a show with all sorts of potential to address all sorts of things, to get into deep and serious topics and to play around with misconceptions and stereotypes for the sake of satire and comedy. It is a situation rife with potential.

The play I saw was not successful at tackling any of those imagined situations. Nor did it really try to do so. A few things became clear to me:

1. This was staged by someone who thought cheating out to the audience halfway through each line was good acting. This is the style of acting, if you want to call it that, that pervades junior high and high schools all over the USA. It saddens me, because I've seen both of these actors do better before. It's as if the director told them to say the set-up and then face the audience for the punchlines.

2. I'm going out on a limb and guessing that the playwright has never had a child. Probably a safe bet. I'm also going to go out on a limb that no one his is close to (with the exception of his parents) has had a child. The situations in this play were ones that seemed stereotypical at best, and wholly wrong at worst.

3. This play had to have been thought up when someone was drunk. Oddly enough how the conception of the child occurs in this play.

4. There was so much extraneous movement in this play that it became a show about who got to pick up a bench next, and where was it going to go.

5. even given its lack of meritorious content, the play would've improved by leaps and bounds if someone had just gotten the two actors to appear to talk directly to each other. For them to establish a relationship of some sort.

There was one high point that was a monologue performed by Jasmine Rush showing the kaleidoscope of emotions that a pregnant woman can go through all truncated down to about a minute and a half with shifts controlled by "The Clapper".

I guess I would just look at the title for reference on this one. Generally, if it has to do with theatre, and the word "Oops!" is in the name. That should be a hint to avoid.

The woman sitting next to me at the show said, "Well, it could've been worse." That's the only thing that saves it from my lowest ranking.

TEN WORD SUMMARY: Completely selfish dick impregnates best friend. Not funny. Potential unrealized.

RATING: d6 - "Has Some Merit"