Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

The Return of The Frantics!
Tonight I finally got to see The Frantics perform live – something I have wanted to do for a very, very long time.

Last Friday after work, I heard Rick Green and Peter Wildman perform a song and a skit live on the CBC, where they also happened to mention that the comedy troupe had reunited and that they were going to perform at the Tim Sim's venue next Tuesday.

I couldn't let this one go. After I finished teaching my PHP/MySQL class Saturday morning, I walked down to the theatre and bought a couple of tickets.

It was to be a mystery night-out for Erika, and I didn't let on as to who were going to see until they came on stage. A great excuse for a much-deserved evening on the town. The place wasn't crowded (it was Tuesday night after all) and we were able to snag a good seat over to stage left and just one row away from the stage. In the radio interview on Friday Rick Green mentioned that one of the reasons he was doing this was to show their kids what they were like, and there were a few people in the audience who looked similar to the performers. There were plenty of other people as well, including many who must have been fans from their radio days, and a number of students who were probably there for a comedy night-out. It was an incredible treat to see all four members confidently stroll onto the stage to perform their first piece together.

The show was just over an hour long, and contained a mix of old and new material, weighed heavily in favour of the new.

My memory is a bit sketchy in terms of the details, but this is what I remember:

• Dutch Cowboys – their opening number; an old song performed by all four members wearing silly hats. "We're cowboy and we're Dutch".
• Watering the Lawn – Dan Redican strolls onto stage wearing sunglasses and wielding a hose (I've been to previous solo shows of his and part of the initial tension was whether or not the hose might be turned on). He waves it slowly back and forth, humming something. Rick joins him, observes that Dan is watering his lawn: "it needs it". "Yup". Soon all four members are on-stage, all making the same pithy statements, all moving back and forth as Dan gently waves the hose, humming an increasingly recognizable "Hey Jude" together. A nice slice-of-life piece, capturing the mood of a lazy summer's day. The original radio skit had them move from humming Hey Jude to bursting into song, but they didn't in this case, and the skit was the better for it.
• Don't Judge Me – pretty much a typical Dan-solo piece, where he comes out and says "Don't judge me". Of course it's not as simple as that, and he manages to invert everything he says in the diatribe with his final line. A-typical Frantics material, but having seen a few of Dan's solo shows, it was the one piece that seemed to be most derived from them.
• Wheatnoon Wastebin: a classic monologue from Peter, doing his insanely-paced advertiser's voiceover of an incredible device for putting all of your junk and waste, including a multi-volume set of National Geographics and Macleans for those men who like to read why they use its facilities. What took your breath away was the frenetic pace of the monologue, which seemed to cram several page's worth of script into a skit that couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes long.
• Vampire vs Accountant – arguably one of the best skits of the night; it has Dan and Rick on a Go Train and Dan nonchalantly asks Rick "Can I suck your blood?" After the initial "no" Dan presses on, talking about how he's a vampire, and how he became a vampire, and shows off the prospectus on vampirism to Rick. Turns out that Rick is an accountant and that he can greatly improve on Dan-the-Vampire's tax situation. But it is Rick's stop, so he gives Dan his card and makes an appointment to get his blood sucked. Peter comes in and takes a seat. Dan pops the question and Peter very quickly says "no". Peter reads from the paper aloud: "Seems like Train 48 is running out of plot ideas".
• Dueling Baseball Spit – basically "dueling banjos", except it is two baseball players. Good physical comedy bit involving Paul and Peter.
• King of the Mole People – old material from the radio show days, and still an excellent monologue from Dan. Basically an ordinary guy discovers he's a superhero and with his teeth of steel burrowed to the center of the earth and meets Numneu the Mole Queen. Not a single change from the original skit, and it went over well.
• You Have Your Wish (I'm in Hell) – solo song piece from Peter, about being in hell. A funny piece that didn't seem to really go anywhere.
• Good Barber, Bad Barber – two barbers in a shop, where Paul's tweedy-voiced barber complains to his partner (Peter) that he never gets any customers. A new customer comes in off of the street, and he chooses Paul, and then is made to see the light by Peter. A piece that had a good premise and good characters, but somehow didn't work for me.
• Don't Hit Me – an excellent sight-gag piece where Peter and Dan are workers in adjacent cubicles, and then Peter comes out and whacks Dan on the head with a newspaper when he's not looking. And then later, when he's looking. And then other people join in. A good personality piece involving Dan's as a too-passive character and Peter as a gleefully masochistic character working his mojo out. On Dan. (This skit was followed up a bit later by a court-room case involving the same two characters, whose payoff is when you realize that Peter's prosecuting lawyer is the same character from the previous skit).
• Glazed Donuts – another old sight-gag skit, used on both the TV series and the radio show. It's about how donuts get glazed. You don't want to think about that too much. ;-) It is soon followed up by a second skit about crullers, which I think was new. Didn't work as well as the first one, probably because we knew where it was going before we go there.
• Menarche on the Go Train – this is definitely going to go down as another classic, and was the penultimate skit of the evening. It basically boils down to four guys getting on to a Go Train (a common theme over the evening) and one of them (Peter) gets a phone call, and it turns out that his daughter is experiencing her first period. The Father talks loudly on the phone and the other three passengers cringe and cringe and cringe. Marvelous stuff, and not the sort of thing that would have likely appeared on the old radio show – damn good stuff.
• You Scare the Shit Out of Me – A great way to end the show - Dan does a blood-curdling rendition of this classic song taken from their early days (it's on their first album) that for obvious reasons never made it to radio.

The show lasted about an hour, and just prior to the final piece Paul came on and announced that this was the first in a planned series of shows that will take place at the Ti Sim's Playhouse ever final Tuesday of the month – save for next month – as they try out new pieces for a Fall tour they are planning. He also mentioned that all of the money from these shows (the tickets were $10 apiece) goes straight to charity, which is classy of them.

After the show I treated Erika to a scotch and bought myself another Stella Artois, and we wandered back in to the theatre space, where all of the members of the Frantics were mingling with the people who were still there. I introduced Erika to Paul, mentioning the fact that he had fired Erika's father as a client. There followed a great story about "Vampirella", and that's all I'm going to say about that. ;-) Had a good chat with Paul, and the one main question I had for him was why had they gotten back together – they all have successful solo careers. He responded like I thought he would: that he was doing this strictly for himself, as were the others in the troupe. They enjoyed being back together, they didn't have to do it, and it was exactly what he and the others want to do right now. Damn straight – couldn't be a better reason for wanting to do this sort of thing.

I didn't get the chance to talk to the other members in the troupe, as we ended up monopolizing Paul's time, but we'll definitely be back for the following shows. There was one couple who had apparently flown in all the way from Winnipeg to attend the show, and they got a picture with everybody in the troupe as a souvenir. I actually had my camera with me (and I had actually asked beforehand if I could bring it), but was so mesmerized by the show that I plain forgot I had it with me in my pocket. Will definitely make up for that next show.

Their timing was spot on, the skits a bit edgier than they used to be, and I had a great time. So did Erika for that matter.

Strolled out with Erika happy to have seen the show.