The Midnight Train Crossing

I decided I wanted to see this show on a whim, and then it got good reviews in the paper, so I really wanted to see it. I'm really glad I did. The set was very colorful. The show takes place in a coffee house, so there was a piano and some tables and a very colorful tiled floor.

The premise of the show is that three entertainers meet at a coffee house called Triple Espresso. They've been trying to make it big for a long time, but always had one set back after another.
Hugh Butternut plays the piano and sings, Buzz Maxwell is a magician and Bobby Bean plays the guitar and does shadow puppets.
They went from minor success to disaster, to minor success, to huge disaster. So the three of them tell what happened, acting various scenes from their past out. And yes, there was audience participation.

This was one of the funniest things that I've seen in quite awhile.

All three actors did a wonderful job doing their specialties.
Paul Somers did a lot of singing and playing the piano. He did various songs, including a classical piece that he played blindfolded. And honestly, some of his wide-eyed almost terrified expressions reminded me so much of Glitch from Tin Man.
Patrick Albanese played the sarcastic magician. Some of his "tricks" went wrong, intentionally for comedic purposes, but he also did some real magic which was quite cool. He was the "straight man" of the trio and he did his job really well.
Brian Kelly played the guitar and led the audience in a very silly job, but he also made really impressive shadow puppets. He was very good at interacting with the audience too.

The whole show was hilarious. I'm going to list off my most memorable moments.

At several points in the show, they picked on people in the audience. Hugh was saying that he was glad that there were two special guests in the audience - his mother and father. And the spot light went to a random couple in the audience that happened to be sitting right in front of us. Another random guy in the audience was signaled out as Hugh's former scoutmaster. And the best one, a woman in the front row was told to stand up as Hugh proudly announced that they were engaged.

One of the running gags in the show was that Bobby would mispronounce words or get phrases wrong ("Remember, only the freedom will get you the truth") and Buzz, deadpan, would correct him. When just correcting him verbally didn't seem to work, he resorted to smacking him. "It was a good performance *smack* We had some minor setbacks *smack* It was a disaster"

First, they went through how they first met each other. Bobby was a folk singer - "little Bobby Bean" who sang at Buzz's college orientation. He got the audience to sing Home on the Range, and then coached us through a new song, The Montana Song. People had a hard time, so he made flash cards and drafted two guys from the audience to come up and page through the cards.

The song goes:

"My home's in Montana / I wear a bandanna / My spurs are of silver / My pony is gray
While out on the ranges / My luck never changes / With foot in the stirrup /I gallop away!"

We were supposed to sing this in counter-point to the other people singing Home on the Range, with Bobby trying to lead both groups. Well those songs don't remotely go together.

Next came Buzz's magic act. It was all sleight of hand magic, which is my favorite kind. He had some trouble with his tricks, which made it all the funnier.
He did a mind reading trick on one guy in the audience. First he asked if the guy knew what was on the back of the envelope. The guy said "No" and he turned the envelope around to reveal the word "No"
A volunteer from the audience came up next to do a card trick, where Buzz had him pick a card. This guy had to have been coached on what to do, because he announced that he'd forgotten the card. So Buzz took a different deck (giant cards), bent one of the cards, had it sticking out from the rest of the cards, and then held a stick of fire under the whole thing. He told the guy to pick a card. Then he stuck the over sized card into a normal deck of cards.
But he did do a real magic trick with ropes. He tied a knot in a white rope and made it jump to a red rope, then untied it to reveal that the red rope had a white part in the middle.

Later, he did another magic trick with balls and cups. I'd seen a similar routine before, it's pretty famous. Three cups, three small rubber balls, and the balls magically move from one cup to the other. That was real magic and it was awesome.

So finally they all teamed up. They went through various gigs of varying success. First was the performance at the rodeo during the worst dust storm in eighty-years.
Then came their bid at becoming stars of Zaire's cable television network, where Hugh sang the top hits of the 70s - that were in his repertoire in some sort of odd hybrid of Swahili(I assume), English and Gibberish, while the three of them danced around on the stage. Buzz had a triangle, which he would occasionally strike dramatically, and then grin at the audience.

Hugh entered a classical music competition and played a song that, according to the program, is called, "Butternut & The Beast, Apus No. 1 in C Minor" He took first place in West Allis and Hales Corners and second in Oconomowoc.
Except Bobby pronounced it wrong (as he pronounced many words wrong) and it took me a minute to realize what city he was actually talking about. (For those not in the know, those are real places nearby).
I mentioned before about him playing blindfolded. This was when he did that. Unfortunately, Bobby spoiled it for him by doing gorilla impressions while he was playing. Bobby always sort of spoiled everything.

Another really funny scene was when Hugh described a nightmare he had had. All three of the guys were moving in very slow motion. They were meant to be running a race and then Bobby and Buzz started punching and pushing Hugh around.
He woke up in a panic, and Buzz calmed him down. Bobby admitted that whenever Hugh had troubles, Buzz was there to help him out. Never Bobby.

That's what segwayed into the scene with the magic cups. Hugh was depressed, so Buzz came to try to help him snap out of it by performing.

Buzz and Hugh decided they made a good team and decided to take their show on the road. Bobby showed up and tagged along with them, doing his own shadow puppet show. And those were some impressive shadow puppets! He made a face, a rabbit, a dog, a gorilla, a camel and a deer.

Finally came their big break - a performance on a TV variety show. And all three agreed (which was rare) that it was the single most embarrassing moment ever broadcast on live national television.
Rather than do their normal routine, Bobby convinced them to try something new - a sort of burlesque fan-dance number performed in the nude.
Except it wasn't really in the nude. They were all fully dressed, holding yellow sheets of paper over themselves in strategic areas.
They danced around the stage sometimes covering themselves and sometimes each other. Until they lost one of the sheets of paper, then they fought over them until Bobby ripped his paper in half. Repeat several times.

Out of the three guys, I think I did like Buzz the best. He just had the greatest expressions and a very deadpan tone of voice that made him that much funnier. And he did magic tricks. That was just cool.

After the show, the three of them stood out in the lobby shaking hands with everyone and thanking them for coming. That was fun ^_^

Afterwards, I was exhausted. I laughed so very much.