What I liked
The show knew exactly what tone to strike, it was well-paced, and the Mee excerpts didn’t overstay their welcome. The world was established immediately and kept consistent throughout. I was reminded of a playwright whose work I have not seen (or thought about, honestly) since undergrad and saw some brilliant mise en scene in a very truncated space. The show was funny, the characters clear in their identities, the premise succinct. And the cowboy-hat reveal? To die for.
Shouts out Kyle Gass.
What I didn't like
This is in no way the fault of the players or the writer/director/player but this show more than any other I have seen at Fringe this year made me wonder, “Who is theatre for in 2024?”. I loved the lampooning of conservative-types who could feasibly rise to power after this Novemeber’s election and what they could do with this power but I can’t imagine any coming to see a Fringe theatre show, especially one putting them on blast.
Speaking of putting on blast: how dare you drag us all with that vocal warm-up medley? But I think that speaks to my point. While, yes, we applauded the lampooning of a bunch of adults playing make-em-ups, many of the inside baseball reference kept me wondering. Is theatre just for theatre people? Is every black box the belly of an ouroboros munching on its own self-reference?
My overall impression
Like ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, ‘1984’ and ‘Angry Birds’ before it, ‘What the Chuck?!’ is a dark satire set in an all-to0-easily forseeable future that still somehow manages to make me smile. Showing the danger of a authoritarian government agency riddles with bias determining whether or not anything crticizing it should be allowed to exist, the show is at once an absurd, prescient warning of what could be in store the future of American theatre and a love letter to one of its undersung greats. What’s more, it taught me a very important lesson: that Margot Robbie is from Australia.
