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entertaining u newspaper: your monthly guide to entertainment
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Dearly Departed
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Dick Kerekes
Do you watch reality TV? If you do, you will want to consider a trip to Gainesville’s Hippodrome Theatre to see their first play of 2008, The Dead Guy. The show runs through February 3 at 23 SE 2nd Place in the downtown area.
If you were offered one million dollars to allow a TV camera man to follow you around and film you for 24 hours a day, to create a show about your life, would you do it? Oh, there is a catch. At the end of the week you have to agree to DIE in the manner selected by the viewing audience.
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The leading character, Eldon Phelps of Leadville, Colorado, is a total loser. He can’t keep a job, a woman, an apartment and has no skills. He is approached by a reality TV producer with that offer. She has selected him carefully, she needs a real LOSER. He accepts and signs a contract to accept the money and to die.
He gets his money, buys three red trucks for his mother, ex-girl friend and his brother and begins his week of temporary wealth and pleasure. He takes two prostitutes to Disneyland in California for a day of drinking and fun. Mid week he has second thoughts and decides if he becomes a good guy and does charitable things, maybe the audience will like him and choose to let him live. That is enough of the plot and I leave the dramatic and surprise ending for you to discover.
This is as play you are not apt to see anytime soon at your local community theatre. It is very technically demanding and requires five television screens and the ability to show what is being filmed as it happens. You are sitting there watching the play and seeing the action on the screens, just as the home audiences are watching. The audience votes nightly on his manner of death, with the grand totals to be posted at the final show on Sunday night when Eldon will die. Will it be A) a quiet death, B) run over by a bus, C) shot by a gun with a venom coated bullet, or D) cut up by a chain saw? Viewers also have E) make your own suggestion.
Tim Altmeyer is brilliant as Eldon. You will initially dislike this example of poor white trash, but he grows on you as he cleans up his act. You may even find yourself liking him and wishing you had a vote on his fate.
Jessica Ires Morris smartly and believably plays the TV producer, Gina Yaweth. Yaweth is also a Hebrew word for God, and she is playing a God of sorts.
The show is basically done on a bare stage with furniture that is moved to portray the different scene locations. As an audience member, I was mesmerized going back and forth from the screens to the action stage. The two act, almost two hour show is very fast paced under the direction of Lauren Caldwell. It is has humor and interesting characters. It is a spoof of reality TV. It is the ultimate reality show, since death is final. It is also thought-provoking since television brings everything right into our living rooms with large screens and high definition clarity. War, sex, and food never seemed so real.
I hope your New Year’s resolution was to expand your theatre experience and you will take advantage of the excellent work that the Hippodrome continues to bring to the North Florida area, and it is only 75 miles away. For reservations call (352) 375-HIPP or visit thehipp.org.
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