Show Response: The Dastardly Thornes v. The Town of Goldhaven
by Allyson Dwyer
My adorable father doesn't understand streaming, can't really share YouTube videos, but he loves to DVR stuff for me. Recently he recorded a program about Shakespearean times narrated by Leonard Nemoy and the experience of being a groundling. Despite the medieval filth and heckling, I found myself so curious about a world where entertainment, "media," aka our little treats were still a novelty, and thus its occasion demanded not just your attention but your entire being.
In Ben Holbrook & Nate Weida's hysterical, transformative musical The Dastardly Thornes v. The Town of Goldhaven, the lines between stage and spectator are blurred beyond recognition. For a few hours, I may have very well been a groundling of Goldhaven, Arizona, where the entertainment was the spectacle of justice. Amped up by a very justice-loving Mayor Baron Goldenteef (Leon Schwendener, who made me laugh til I cried), this is a kangaroo court blown up 500% to the point that you're observing every crack, every thorny bizarre bug, in the facade of American Exceptionalism.
Benjamin Viertel's direction is that of someone who has created a curtain without there ever being a proscenium. Like a frog in a slow boiling pot, you begin to understand. I'm not just observing, I'm melting into this story. The actors (a stunning brilliant ensemble of animated characters) are not acting for me, in fact, I think they're stuck between me and the town. These people live in this space, and they'll be cracking jokes and singing these songs long after I've left. The most brilliant device that ties this all together is the inclusion of Steakhouse (Gio Naarendorp, the gem at the center of an already stacked cast), a self-made man gone corporate with his string of Steakhouses and canned baked beans. Steakhouse takes not so much a seat as a throne with the audience, and from there heckles the performance, I mean trial. His voice becomes ours, as we are all the almighty consumer, ready to dole out judgements as needed, second by second. This is a beer-in-hand show. Justice will be served.
I will always laugh at a fart joke, I will always laugh at the word beans. But don't be fooled, the humor is both high-brow and low-brow. Every ingredient, all eleven herbs and spices, are mixed in and out Ben Holbrook's intricate script for maximum brain massaging. Total sublimation, and a demand from the viewer that they be engaged in a way that cannot happen anywhere else but in that room. Go, go with friends, go with the need for a (beautiful, harmonic) country folk song in your heart. Go and be a groundling, phoneless and ready to howl and laugh with those around you, in real time, like a very good dream.
The Dastardly Thornes v. The Town of Goldhaven is running at The Brick Theater until August 12th.
Photo credit: Ben Holbrook