Marcel Blanch-de Wilt (and friends) @ QA Bar (The Annex)
6:00pm, Mon 25 Feb 2008
Two minutes into this show, I came to the sudden realisation that every other show I’d seen so far this year had something in common – all of them, somehow, in some way, no matter how minor, contained something that resembled “quality”.
As opposed to this show, which most definitely did not.
The two lead male characters appear to have been selected on the basis of their physical likeness to the Dante / Randal duo from Clerks, and the script seems to very much reflect this, too. The thread between these two principals appears to have been “inspired” (and I use that word loosely, because “stolen” sounds so harsh) by Kevin Smith’s work; there are additional story threads in the piece, but they are largely unexplored and under-developed.
Dan / Dante is a hard-working chef, desperately trying to maintain his artistic girlfriend, his band, and his sanity at work. Ron / Randal is his slouch-about carefree mate whose lackadaisical nature throws Dan’s life into turmoil. There’s a bunch of other characters – Dan’s girlfriend Kay being the only one fleshed out to any degree – but by and large it’s pretty tepid stuff.
The first Act was almost cringingly bad – cheap dialog, wooden performances, and little else to inspire. Paul Stalenhoef is pretty much the only actor to stand tall, but that may only be because he was surrounded by thespian midgets. The second Act was much more warmly received – I don’t know whether it was actually better, or because the surprisingly large audience had been able to get another drink in – but that’s when the character of Randal… sorry, Ron actually gets his claws out and lets loose with some biting lines. The rest of the cast feed off this, and it’s played a bit more for laughs – but by that time some of the audience has left and they’re running long.
So – is there any positive takeaway from this? Well, the fact that the legend of Clerks will live on. And the idea of “Jihad – The Muslimcal” was pretty amusing (the first time). And the actress playing Kay reminded me of an ex-crush. And that I returned to the Queen’s Arms after about 10 years away to discover that it’s quite nice. $4 pints, too.