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Photo by Don Kellogg

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Found

Just when you thought all the original ideas have dried up and creativity has gone the way of the Ford Packard, along comes Hunter Bell & Lee Overtree (Book) and Eli Bolin (Music and Lyrics) and a fantastic new work appropriately titled Found.  Yes, that's Mr. Bell from [Title of Show] fame.

Scraps of paper floating in the wind, discarded in the gutter, and left for dead.  Well, so we thought.  Mr. Bell and Overtree have constructed a musical entirely from real scraps of paper with musings, jottings, notes, and thoughts.  Literally thousands and thousands.   A virtual potpourri of material and endless shots entertaining and audience.  Indeed this is true.  What struck me most during this entire magnificent production was the sheer enormity of choices the writers had.  They built a basic love story for Generation X, Y, Z, millennials, or whatever we are calling the kids today and peppered it - strike that - iced it from tip to toe - with these little tid-bits.  Entire songs were written around some of the longer more meaningful scribbles - and virtually every 10 seconds or so another one was projected both aurally and visually to the audience.  

So that's what struck me most often - but dare I say - what struck me most deeply was the sheer modernity of the idea behind the musical itself.  It struck a chord of reality in our throw-away society.   In an age of digital our notes and musings often get relegated to post-its and scraps of paper.  Nobody writes longhand and at length anymore.

The always adorably handsome Nick Blaemire  (Davy) essentially helms the fun production and both he and his co-stars (a plethora of unique talent unto themselves) turn frowns from a busy day at the office into double-decker smiles by the time the evening is complete.

Featuring a a rocking on-stage band and racially and ethnically and culturally diverse Christina Anthony (Christina), the handsome and virtually dripping-with-sex Andrew Call, TV's funny man Danny Pudi (Danny), Betsy Morgan (Kate), and Cabaret diva Molly Pope (Molly), and Orville Mendiza (Orville),  I found myself leaving the theater thinking that I have never seen a show where the actors had so much fun entertaining me!