Word: calnek
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Book and Lyrics by Anthony Calnek...
Fortuitously, a shipful of Conquisatores show up, led by Captain Walter Wallcarpeting (Anthony Calnek), in search of the Island's unspeakably precious jewel, the William Sapphire. They inadvertently bring along an evil pseudo-cleric. Missionary Position (Jon Shapiro), whose dream is to bring the Island and then the world into his mind-control cult. ("It wouldn't take much for a Guyana little Kool-Aid to start a religion here," he muses.) He teams up with the witch, the innumerable romances start, a noted TV personality emerges from the fountain, the Queen falls in love, and so forth...
...writer/lyricists Calnek and Alison Taylor have infused some much-needed variety into these overwrought proceedings. For one thing, they've varied their targets of satire a little. There is not, for a wonder, a single and compulsive joke, even after Missionary Position and Witch Wayzup join forces. (You might still think twice about inviting your parents, though.) A certain eclecticism is apparent: Not only do the maidens pray "Boola boola, Eli Yale," but Wayzup laments, "Hath not a witch eyes...
MORE REFRESHING than all this is that the yuks betray an intelligent pattern or two. Taylor and Calnek aren't so dumb as to take themselves or the show seriously (a Battle of the Sexes satire in drag?), but they abandon the sterile money/sex/class warfare formula of recent years for some genuinely fresh jabs at popular culture. TV commercial references abound--"This is mutiny, men!" "Yeah, it'll take more than Bounty to clean up this mess." Missionary Position's Sun Myung Moon-esque paradise turns out to be McDonald's, with the preacher at his pulpit dispensing McNuggets...
...BLOOD in the humor department is matched by new blood on stage. A few towering, er, figures are familiar from previous years--Adam Isaacs as Maxine the Mermaid, Christopher Charron at the Queen's dimwitted spinster sister Auntie Emenem, Michael Allio as the belle Constance Lee Whining, and Calnek at the Captain. The years appear to have taught them some important skills how to project a falsetto voice past the first three rows, how to act during a kickline when you're stuck in a mermaid's tail, and how to keep a straight face when your wig flies...