NY Clown Festival 2010: HULA HELL IS MISS SATURN

ADAM’S TAKE

First off, let’s get a couple of things straight. I love Miss Saturn.  I think Miss Saturn is a very funny improvisor and a virtuosic level hula-hooper. I’ve worked with her at several venues, and seen several different pieces that she’s done, and I in general love most of what I’ve seen.  I was really looking forward to this show.

This was the first show of Hula Hell is Miss Saturn, and the show starts off with a very interesting question:  Miss Saturn, looking pretty and butch at the same time in a leather/spandex circus suit, a bright pink short wig, and her oh so many muscles,  makes a series of suggestive remarks ending up with this:

You may ask yourself why hoops, and not balls? I will tell you, but in song.

And she then sings a funny reworking of Gary Numan’s Here In My Car (but Here in my Hoop)

If she had spent the rest of the show answering this question, I think she would have had a very interesting and tightly wound theatrical show.

As it was, she did not.  Instead, she had a loosely bound, mostly funny variety show that relied on her immense charms as a comedic improvisor and her immense skills as a hula hooper.  The show was messy, funny at times, all over the place, and mostly worked.  By the 20th time she’s done this show, it will no doubt be much more skillfully performed, but it won’t have that extra little intellectual oomph that I would like to see.

The show relies on calling up a number of people to the stage, first to see if they can hula hoop, and then later to have a little hula hoop battle between two accomplished hula hoopers. Just my luck (or perfidious peril for enjoying sitting in the front row) I was called up to both hula hoop and then cheerlead for one of the battlers– and my team won! Sadly, my hula hoop skills and my feelings about hula hooping in public made me acutely aware exactly what the title of the show meant– perhaps I need to increase my ability to circle hoops around my body and I would feel differently.

If you’ve never seen Miss Saturn perform– I think you are at this point better served seeing her in a cabaret setting, where her 20 minute set is well-polished and funny and beautiful, just like Miss Saturn. Or if you enjoy watching a show in the process of being born, check out this show now and then again next year.

If this will be your only exposure to Miss Saturn, please believe me when I tell you that when properly rehearsed, her rings shine far brighter than this show currently lets on.

OFFICIAL INFORMATION

HULA HELL IS MISS SATURN

Miss Saturn

New York, NY

http://www.misssaturn.com/

Miss Saturn pulls out all the stops in a variety show featuring physical comedy, singing and dancing, small hoops, big hoops, invisible hoops, and various attempts at breaking records of different sorts.  60 min.

Saturday, September 11th @ 6pm
Thursday, September 16th @ 8:30pm
Friday, September 24th @ 9pm

=== If you like this post– consider  subscribing to the RSS Feed here. ===