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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 1973)
drama The Mad Show’ "The Mad Show," a pseudo satirical, semi-musical review based on Mad magazine, was given its first amateur performance anywhere by a North Eugene High School cast last weekend. The production fared about as well as most Mad material does when read: at its best, it gave rise to a few chuckles, smiles, and approving nods; at its worst, it compared less than favorably to the more raucous back numbers of Fortune and Field and Stream. And for the better part of its two hours, it lay somewhere in between, though this is not to fault the production of the NEHS drama department. Director Mike Snider assembled an engaging cast which performed with verve throughout the evening, and two or three of his principals (all of whom received equal billing, since the review has no stars) are strong comic talents who gave the material more, often, thap it deserved. Lighting, sound effects, and supplementary slides featuring Mad graffiti were without exception well coordinated, and the four piece ensemble which provided the show's incidental music, though over loud at a couple of points, generally acquitted itself well. My quarrel is with the material produced by those small-minded and by now rather smug sensibilities down at Mad magazine itself. The publication they produce today has, un fortunately, gone sickly with the advent of wealth and reputation. Today's Mad is an anemic little number indeed, compared to work done by its resident geniuses back in the 1950's and early 1960's Although the matchless drawings of Mort Drucker and the still-fertile imaginations of Sergio Aragones and Don Martin are mainstays, there's a heavy reliance now on sight gags, scripts which furnish ping pong repartee' as controlled and predictable as an exercise in logic, and pallid farce whose trivial nature precludes the introduction of risk or, more to the point, surprise The days of those ornate, raffish, boundlessly cynical takeoffs on TV ("Dragnet," "Peter Gunn," "Howdy Doody"), comic strips (the cheerful skewering of Hal Foster's "Prince Valiant") and films (the reduction of Disney characters to unshaven, bad mouthing low lifers like Mickey Rodent and Damold Duck) are too long gone, perhaps for good So one finds in "Mad Show" little more than a chastened, giggly tribute to the satirical possibilities which the creators of Mad have so consistently skirted There's a mild slap at A Professional Recording Studio SINGLES, ALBUMS, DEMOS. FILM SOUND RASPBERRY RECOROtxJG 16D OAKWAY MALL 687 2526 Scully IOC 8 channel recorder JBL 4320 Studio Monitors Neumann AKG. Shure microphones Giant Spectra Somes 1020 t mining console Full equalization Reverberation Maqnasync - Naqra U of O Crew Presents -A Spy Thriller “THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER” Fri, Nov. 2 7:0049:30 STARRING Frank Sinatra Kirk Douglas George C. Scott Tony Curtis Burt Lancaster 177 Lawrence $1.00 SKILOM Complete Skilom cross-country ski package: Skilom skis Bindings Boots and Poles it Complete set , BERG’S $69.95 11th and Mill 343-0013 S Photo by Cal Jones Nixon (and who could miss a target like that, these days?), a tairly amusing lampoon of TV pro football coverage (but once you've read It, who wants to hear it again?), and someon the beam shots at kiddie TV, commercial {ingles, and game shows There's a song called "Hate" (the only tuneful item in the show) which captivates with clever lyrics, much enhanced in this instance by North's boisterous, imaginative rendition But the remainder is characteristically puerile An ostensibly satirical look at folk singers is nothing more than a contrived series of minor sight gags, an Academy Awards presentation tor parents who exhibit exceptional skill at driving their kids nuts is hampered by its tired conceptions of family life, and "Yecchl," a song derived from Mad's rallying cry, provides more yicks than kicks in its preoccupation with snot, body odor, vomit, and other sure fire knee slappers North Eugene s cast is really very much above the material they performed on this particular go 'round, and that's saying a lot more than it seems. They'd be well advised to attempt to secure rights to "El Revue to de Coca Cola," or to National Lampoon's in lermiftently inspired review, when these vehicles become available to amateurs And they should take a cue from the off Broadway audiences of 1945, who left "Mad Show's" original production with no greater ciairp to fame than the presence of "Laugh in's" Joanne Worley among its cast members A dubious distinction at best, as some would argue—heh heh—which testifies to Mad's decline into domesticity. Chris Houglum l fertilize your garden * fertilize your mind jcyderecyclerecycle ^-*-—a _i. _j. -A, i A A_A_A_1__A_A. A A A A A A A A A W A A A a a a ¥*¥¥***¥¥ SACCO ■ VANZETTI The dramatic story of two Italian anarchists who were framed for a payroll robbery committed by the Mafia and executed by the state of Massachusetts after almost a decade of appeals and an historic world-wide struggle to save their lives—their only crimes: being immigrant radicals. Also Hopscotch, the struggle between police and youth are related to the activities on a hopscotch court. Fri. Nov. 2 $1.00 180 PLC 7&9:30D.m. N.U.C. All profits go to community and movement groups
