CliffsNotes Theater

America is a melting pot, and so is The Complete History of America (Abridged), a zany stew of revue-style takeoffs and put-ons lampooning the politics, wars, society and (often low) culture of the U.S.A. In the new Boiler Room Theatre mounting, the script, concocted by comedians from the Reduced Shakespeare Company, is played out with ceaseless energy by a cast of three, with the actors certainly achieving the right spirit—something like Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals.

Mike Baum, Shane Bridges and Douglas Goodman (often in gleeful drag) have all the skills to pull this off, and frankly, it’s only their commitment to the task at hand that gets us successfully through the material. That’s not to suggest that the writing isn’t funny, but it groans with puns and self-consciously bad gags, and covers so much topical territory that the production seems longer than it really is.

It all starts with a comically off-kilter version of the “Star Spangled Banner,” which introduces us to the players and their beaming, eager faces. Then, within a generally witty narration, the country’s important persons (beginning with Amerigo Vespucci) and key eras are brought to life through many (many) scenes and individual antics, with coverage of Revolutionary times up through the 19th century, then skipping down to World War I and continuing through today. (The period from Reconstruction to about 1900 is avoided because, as we’re told, “Nothing happened then.”)

In the early going, we visit with the Founding Fathers, including a pot-smoking Thomas Jefferson (who grows “Monticello Gold” on his Virginia farm), meet flag maker Betsy Ross—and her sister, Diana (rimshot!)—and are treated to an extended Lewis and Clark scene in which the famous explorers go vaudeville. There are pointed jokes about rights vs. “wrongs,” barbs about slavery and the nation’s treatment of native Americans, a Civil War slideshow, plus a bizarre reenactment of Lincoln’s assassination.

Soon enough, we’re in the trenches on a European battlefield, and Baum, Bridges and Goodman literally (and liberally) douse the audience with rapid squirt-gun-fire. (With the BRT air-conditioning turned way up, this can be a bit uncomfortable, but it’s all in fun, and theatergoers earn their stripes.) Other Act 2 vignettes include a radio drama featuring input from FDR and Al Capone, a film noir spoof starring a gumshoe named Spade Diamond and his girlfriend, Lucy Ricardo (!), and zingers that take aim at McCarthyism, Spiro Agnew, the magic bullet theory and so forth. In a more improvisational vein, the cast extracts audience input for a game show whose object is to “name that famous American female,” and Baum assumes the role of Dubya fielding the kinds of questions he’d never get at a real press conference. (For example, “What about your cocaine use?”)

The music here mostly comprises a cappella shtick, including a brief tribute to the Andrews Sisters, a reference to the work of the singing Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, a humorous use of the Gilligan’s Island theme and a proposal for a new national anthem.

Clearly, the play’s “everything but the kitchen sink” approach relies on plain old slapstick and sight gags as often as it does the historically or politically cerebral. But director Laura Skaug lets her troops roam far and wide, and the genuine humor ultimately triumphs over the pure corn.

It’s diverting theater, certainly apropos for an election-year summer’s evening.

I am my own castMark Cabus’ one-man performance in Doug Wright’s Pulitzer-winning I Am My Own Wife both opened and closed last week with four performances at Belmont’s Black Box Theater. Those who availed themselves of this rare solo piece witnessed one of Nashville’s most accomplished thespians successfully enacting dozens of roles, utilizing sharply differentiated vocal styles and a keen sense of movement to keep the many dramatis personae remarkably discrete while also sensitively relating the unique story of the German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (1928-2002).

Von Mahlsdorf’s tale is based on the playwright’s firsthand research, with Wright emerging as almost equally central to the scenario. Events take us through the bulk of the 20th century, from von Mahlsdorf’s dark teenage years—she killed her Nazi father (with a rolling pin) and spent four years in a detention home—through World War II and the Cold War era, in which she avoided the persecutions that typically befell the sexually marginalized, became a noted art collector and curator of the Gründerzeit Museum (in which she also resided), won the German Medal of Honor, and controversially collaborated with the Stasi (East German secret police).

Under the direction of Kate Al-Shamma, Cabus enunciated his English dialogue with a thick yet credibly effective German accent, intimately re-creating von Mahlsdorf’s world and using every corner of the theater to interact directly with his audience, often engaging with them individually as if they were sympathetic friends. With key scenes enhanced by Rudi Aldridge’s moody lighting, Cabus balanced warmth with the appropriate eccentricity in etching out the show’s main role, while also seamlessly working his way through the many ancillary characters.