.Stop Shitting in the Sink

Fifth installment of Piano Fight's S.H.I.T. Show hits Off-Market Theater.

Sex, beer, and a puerile fascination with poop accounts for about 80
percent of the material you’ll see in an average PianoFight sketch
comedy production. Hence the title of PianoFight’s ongoing series,
S.H.I.T. Show, now in its fifth iteration at San Francisco’s
Off-Market Theater (S.H.I.T. stands for “Stop Hating Imagination
Time”). Comprising ten sketches which clock in at roughly an hour
total, S.H.I.T. Show V: A Laugh and a Half kicks off with a
video skit (“The Kitchen Sink”) about the consummate bad roommate
— a guy who shits in the kitchen sink and leaves a polite note
promising to come back in four days and clean it up. It ends,
appropriately, with fresh, brown, gloppy shit flying everywhere.

Some might see that as an appetizing preview to coming attractions,
while others might see it as an artist’s statement of sorts. After all,
S.H.I.T. Show panders to an audience of twenty- to
thirty-year-old dudes who would otherwise be watching Seth Rogen make
an ass of himself at the local movie theater. It’s written, produced,
and directed by a group of young dudes, for an audience of their peers.
And for the most part, the sketches deal with issues that concern young
dudes: sex, bass players, bad roommates, phallic metaphors, laser tag,
beer, homoeroticism, fecal matter, and female masturbation. It’s about
as dude-centric as you get, in the realm of small independent theater
companies. With that in mind, let the shit fall where it may.

Actually, shit plays a minor role in comparison to other bodily
fluids, since sketch #9 (called “Not in the Rectory, Pope!”) involves
buckets of piss and vomit being sloshed about, while sketch #4 (“Jane
O”) fixates on female ejaculation to a degree that seems almost
pathological. Of course, the gross-out humor approach works better in
some skits than others. “Not in the Rectory, Pope!” is hilarious, not
because the script is particularly brilliant, but because there’s
something wonderful about watching a bunch of drunken frat boys totter
around in monks’ cowls, waving their sodden bibles and cursing at the
Pope. In contrast, “Jane O” seems unnecessarily lascivious. The setup
is great: a book club with four aggressive society women, all squaring
off to see who has the smartest, wordiest, most passionate
interpretation of Jane Austen’s Emma. It’s a terrific idea
that’s undermined by the obligatory orgasm references — no book
club member can adequately critique a passage without declaring how
much it turned her on or got her off. Like, yeah, we get it
already.

In fact, the smartest S.H.I.T. Show sketches are also the
least scatological. “Bass in the Key of Bass” brings to life a very
unusual blind-date situation. The principals: two bass players —
both lonely, both socially inept, both obsessed with their instruments.
The scene: a solo concert by the renowned Ricardo Bustamonte, a bassist
known for playing sequentially lower notes (as in, Guinness World
Records low), and going lower to the ground with each note he plays. As
the girl Fantasia (Derricka Smith) puts it, “I heard he once played a
note so low that it actually put a glass back together that had been
shattered by a high note.” Though it ends abruptly, the skit is
patently absurd in a way that recalls early Saturday Night Live.
By far the funniest sketch in S.H.I.T. Show is “Laser Force,”
about a corporate merger between two laser-gun manufacturers.
Naturally, a board room negotiation devolves into the Venusian Dance of
Cthulu. One of the brokers tries to argue a point by quoting from
Biggie Smalls’ “Gimme the Loot.” It’s a riot.

S.H.I.T. Show V features all the PianoFight regulars, most of
who vary in talent. Rob Ready, Eric Reid, Duncan Wold, and Evan
Winchester all have amazing command on stage. They know how to pace the
material, trigger humor through facial expressions, and create rhythm
and buildup toward a punch line. Other actors seem a little more green.
Christy Crowley has about two emotional states: glacial, barely
contained anger and bursting, hysterical anger, and she rocks back and
forth when going from one state to the other. (Excess body movement is
a sure indicator of an actor’s discomfort on stage.) Ray Hobbs is
fabulous with sneers and grimaces, but his range seems limited.

In sum, it’s a fast, entertaining, revolting show by a group of
writer-directors with a lot of promise. The challenge for S.H.I.T.
Show VI
is to trade the poop humor for something a little more
imaginative, (as in, stop hating imagination, you guys). That’s not an
easy feat when poop constitutes the bulk of your ammo — but it
doesn’t have to be that way. S.H.I.T. Show succeeds most when
its writers trust the intelligence of their audience, privilege
absurdity over crassness, and take risks with their material. “Laser
Force” is a lot funnier than “The Kitchen Sink,” and it would be cool
to see PianoFight go more in that direction. They just have to realize
that S.H.I.T. need not always be shitty.

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