View: Mary and Margo’s Halloween Sideshow of Madness

thom8261

11 hours ago

5 min read

A fun and brisk narrative revue that promises to fill the mid-week Void.

A Halloween Scene Los Angeles view

Imagine it’s a crisp, late Halloween night, probably around midnight, and you’re stuck out of town at a hotel, let’s say it’s in Salem, Massachusetts, or even Transylvania, Romania. There’s not a lot to do except pop into the lounge for a drink and see what the scary-season entertainment option might be. This would have been the perfect place to catch those two wacky, wild, and mischievous Mary and Margo ladies if they hadn’t died in that horrific theatre accident years ago. Well, let’s see – wait, what? They are performing tonight! Live. Well, okay not actually, fully alive, but live enough that they’re somehow back onstage right here with their cabaret act. Sure, they might be on temporary, code-yellow, life support, but they’re still determined to entertain through song, jokes, and audience participation moments, and it’s Halloween, when anything’s possible, even piercing the veil between life and death, so let’s roll with that.

Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre, known more for its annual and quite edgy Halloween shockfest on October weekends, offers a completely different kind of seasonal spice with Mary and Margo’s Halloween Sideshow of Madness running on Wednesdays and Thursdays throughout the month. We all know there are ample Halloween and immersive options come Friday, but it’s great to know that a light, spooky-ish, (emphasis on the ish) and quite often funny one-hour revue is available on what is normally a slow night of the week. It’s a PG-rated (Perfectly Glorious, by the Halloween Rating Board) almost hour of frothy entertainment for any and all.

It’s also the perfect show to take along friends who aren’t looking to be terrorized at Halloween: it’s big laughs over jump scares, comedy schtick over blood and guts, and straight-up, up-close sketch-style entertainment over the kinds of in-your-face visuals that might crawl into your psyche long after you’ve gone home from other ZJU productions.

Not that the singing, joking, and engaging twosome aren’t willing to try and scare you; it’s just that underneath it all they really want nothing more than to entertain their audience with good vibes. Okay, that and to be alive more than just one “Code Yellow” night a year. So while they might at first appear as threatening entities, it isn't long before they reveal their better sides: two lovable Halloween devotees with a guitar, a shared dream, and just this one night to show you a great time.

*Less spooky but still holding a skull....*

Since it’s Halloween, and they’ve been permitted to pierce the veil and venture out of the Void for their annual post-life set, the tandem will give it their all, and maybe, just maybe, be able to stick around the land of the living beyond October 31st this year. But to do so, they’ll need to be perfect, or they’ll be hell to pay with Linda.

Okay, we’ll get to Linda in a minute.

You’ve already been primed to laugh from the minute you entered the theatre, courtesy of a robed and masked guest host who greets you, seats you, then comes and goes, mostly just to remind you to use the bathroom. Soon he raises the ghoulish gals from purgatory with a séance chant and some timely audience help. Poof! Mary and Margo materialize, wearing matching white wigs and skeletal costumes and standing happily centerstage like a full-sized candy bar come trick-or-treating night…okay, two full-sized candy bars. Whatever. They’re back!

They’ll tell jokes, sing songs, invite you to join along from your seats, or maybe even cavort with them onstage if you’re a brave volunteering soul, and if there’s a sacrifice along the way, so be it. It’s a small price to pay for watching these two post-life Energizer Bunnies jolt the small theatre to life.

Let’s just hope that Linda likes what the team has been practicing all year back in the Void. Okay, we can’t avoid the topic any longer. She's the oppressive overseer from the Void frequently chiming in through a spectral speakerphone and sounding uncannily similar to Howard’s off-screen mother on The Big Bang Theory If not, the entertainers might find themselves banished to another realm that’s even worse than the one they came from.

It’s Halloween, girls, and we believe in you! But just to be safe, let’s ratchet it up to a mild low-R rating (that’s R for Rowdy by HRB standards) with an F-bomb themed singalong. Void oppressors secretly love that stuff. So does the audience, come join-in chorus time.

Katie Oliver and Kristen Hansen, as Mary and Margo respectively, I think (in costume and makeup they’re basically indistinguishable), deliver a fast, fun, and quirky little package in this breezy and broad offering. It’s an extended version of something you can easily imagine could having existed as a seasonal SNL bit or a popular Groundlings offering. In reality, it’s another inventive iteration of the comedy team’s Mary and Margo series, recently seen as The Mary and Margo Art Experience at Hollywood Fringe.

This entertaining Halloween iteration offering flies by, albeit a very short trip at just 45 minutes or so, because its two talented stars, often speaking in perfect sync with each other, or almost seamlessly finishing off the other’s schtick, are committed to putting and keeping a smile on your face. The writing is easy to swallow and the performers are plenty engaging to make the evening a fun night out.

The highlights for HSLA were a surprisingly bouncy song about the benefits of death - no taxes to pay and you can haunt old boyfriends, are just two - and the hilarious sacrifice ritual that just goes wrong. The comediennes even manage to slip in a witty and quite satisfying rejoinder about the over-commodification of Halloween. The traffic cone line is payoff heaven. Or hell, depending on your opinion of Spirit Halloween. Both actresses shine throughout the show, and Will McFadden as the crusty but all-in-for-the-adventure guest host at our performance gives an amusing turn.

ZJU’s spooky lobby and eerie music set the mood, and when you step into the darkened theatre beyond, there’s a bit of video playing from Mary and Margo’s last living show. After you’ve had your third or fourth comical bathroom reminder, the lights dim, the Void opens and you’re pretty much just putty in Mary and Margo’s comedic hands. You’ll like the shape they leave you in.

So who needs Massachusetts or Romania when you can catch this haunted lounge act right here in North Hollywood? They’ll even send you off with a catchy camp song to close the evening. And after the show, the comedy duo will Pied Piper you out into the lobby for photos. When’s the last time a witch or a vampire ever offered you that? I’ll take the skeleton twins.