![]() McKellen recites a sonnet for us without the consonants (questionably funny to describe, extremely funny to listen to) Kennedy delivers an ardent oration on our audience’s inspiring ability, in the face of a tragically divided world, to come together by shouting the word “Woo!” Sinatra sings the ABCs. What is Ufomadu doing here? Well, among other things he’s a first-rate mimic, and along with his resting dialect of affable mid-century radio announcer, we also get impressions of Kennedy, Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Louis Armstrong, and Obama during the show - along with, from across the pond, Michael Caine and Ian McKellen. ![]() Amusements often feels like stand-up comedy or vaudevillian variety show, but the twinkle in its performer’s eye is just peculiar enough to keep us guessing. “We’d be at home.”īacked by a red curtain, with a stand mic and a drinks cart onstage, Ufomadu is nailing a tilted take on a kind of old-world American masculine charm: urbane, imperturbable, magnanimous, a little myopic. “I’ll tell you,” he says with a Johnny Carson smile. “Where would we be without shoes?!” he asks, impassioned, after going on for a good stretch about his own long-held status-and, indeed, all of ours-as a proud shoe-wearing individual. Ufomadu’s 75 minutes of weird, witty jokery is both delightful and, at this moment, almost unsettlingly kindly and innocuous. Now, the writer-comic’s plummy-voiced, tuxedo-sporting alter ego is hanging his fedora and overcoat upstairs at Playwrights, where he’s got a little more room to breathe and stretch. This past August in Edinburgh, I saw Ikechukwu Ufomadu’s dapper, off-kilter Amusements in a space that felt like something between a small cave and a bunker. Shows are usually short and scrappy, often odd or intense (and sometimes in tents), and the city that churns with them for a month makes the argument for quantity: More art! Just more, everywhere, all the time, affordably. It’s spicy and sweet and crunchy and chewy, sometimes overseasoned or underbaked (but hardly ever over-proofed!), and there’s boatloads of it, everywhere, at every hour of the day, in every backroom and ballroom and basement and bar. It’s still, after many years and a lot of change-to the festival, to the world much obviously for the worse, the rest arguably so-one of my favorite flavors. If you’ve never been to the Edinburgh Fringe, there’s a taste of its unmistakable flavor on offer right now at Playwrights Horizons, where three small-scale shows are running in repertory. Photo-Illustration: Vulture Photos: Chelcie Parry
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |