The Tiki Bikini Beach Paradise Party A-Go-Go! was one of the buzz-worthy musicals at last year's Fringe. It's back for a longer run at Fringe's Next Stage week. Based on the beach movies of the 60s, Jeannette (Sarah Kuzio) and Freddie (Thomas Duplessie) and their gang of barely clad friends planned to have one final summer bash, if they can avoid run-ins with The Big Tuna (Evan Dowling) and his side-kick. The cast tried for that innocent "golly gee" mood but I doubt that even these fluff films had such hammy acting. Only Amelia Sirianni as dorky Widget and Nick Nasrallah as uber-nerd Slim Melvin added a touch of realism to their scenes.
The show also injected some ironic winks for other nostalgic memories including references to Scooby Doo and Gilligan's Islands. Some of it worked but others got old; attempts to play the modern meaning of "woody" against the old meaning of a "surfboard" ("Can I give you my woody?") got diminishing returns. By the way, a "woody" was a car not a surfboard. The difficulty of "acting dumb smartly" was most apparent as original beach tunes including "Hawaiiannette" and "I Think You Think" came off catchier and wittier than the 3 new songs.
Suffering from the same "it's hard to be bad" was The Sell-Out at the Comedy Bar for the New Format Festival. The premise of this stand-up is a group of has-been comics would embarrass themselves with inane and hackneyed jokes. The drunk emcee got semi-famous on a tired catch-phrase ("Kiss my apple-cheeks"), a lady comic with a predictable NBC sitcom "Am I right, ladies?" told lame gendered jokes ("Crimson Tide = my period"), an edgy comedian telling us why he made a family-friendly flick, and a Carrot-top-like prop comic whose every prop is actually a product endorsement. With a different audience and energy, it may have worked. But tonight, the jokes elicited only a few chuckles.
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