Out of Hand offers Help! before MEDS
September 18, 2008 at 4:40 pm by Curt Holman in A&E
Out of Hand Theater, one of Atlanta’s youngest, scrappiest theater companies, is offering remounts of two of the ensemble’s original productions, which offer puckish visions of the national health. First, Help! plays Sept. 18-21 and offers a pointed yet amusingly plausible spoof of a self-help seminar, with plenty of audience participation. If you’ve ever wanted to beat an actor like a pinata, Help! could offer you the chance. In my review of the company’s 2004 world premiere production, I mentioned:
Help! makes some serious satirical points. The “life coaches” often interrupt themselves to hawk ancillary merchandise infomercial style, illustrating the self-help industry’s predatory nature. The inclusion of Kool-Aid late in the play comments on the cultish quality of self-improvement groups, but the play doesn’t explore the paradox of the self-help movement, which can improve the lives of participants while exploiting them.
Then, Sep. 25-28, the revival of 2007’s MEDS offers a phantasmagorical take on the pharmaceutical industry, which presents drug company representatives as bouncy cheerleaders and a doctor as an old fashioned stage magician. Here’s hoping MEDS retains the waiting room “environmental effect” of last year’s world premiere. From my review of that show:
Part of the appeal of MEDS is simply seeing playful, politically conscious guerrilla theater that is not about the Iraq war or some aspect of the post-9/11 political landscape. Not that those issues aren’t worth exploring, but, like Michael Moore’s recent documentary Sicko, MEDS finds other ailments worth diagnosing in the body politic. MEDS uses creative comedy to attack the dark side of antidepressants and the medical industry, but at times the show proves a little too zany for its own good. Physical and mental health problems tend to be innately private experiences, and the impersonal nature of MEDS‘ humor can get in the way of some deeper emotions. Nevertheless, the comedy manages to be both disturbing and funny. Laughter is supposedly the best medicine – but try to tell that to your HMO.
Onstage Atlanta plays host to both shows, which feature infectious humor, exuberant theatricality and ideas that hit close to home.
Photo coutesy of Out of Hand Theater.
Leave a Reply