What I liked
Everything. It was funny. It was sincere. It was moving. It was show stopping. I called my dad the next day just to tell him how great it was.
What I didn't like
No notes
My overall impression
I felt so many things in so many regions.
With most comedic productions, comics tend to obfuscate their true selves or reject sentimentality for a laugh. It can work, but it can also leave you cold. Sam Pozen and Frankie Alvarez Lora succeed because they allow their earnest love for each other and their work to radiate so brightly you can’t help but fall in love with their unflinching honesty. They ring jokes out of true fears and lampoon their ambitions but at the same time they manage to confess those things. They satirize their efforts but you never get the sense that you as an audience member shouldn’t care. I delighted in their exploration of the idea of effort and it all culminates into one fantastic strip show display that is at once admittedly silly and also sincerely impressive. In the last act, the laughs build into hollers and applause. You are bonded with your audience members in disbelief and exhilaration. By the end, they have proven themselves to not only commit to the bit but to enlist their lives over to it with a monastic discipline. To have their jokes be as idiosyncratic as their dramatic storytelling is a mesmerizing feat and can only be experienced by viewing it for yourself.
