Brothers Charlie and Jeff LaGreca spent years working on the secret recipe for “Minimum Wage: Blue Code Ringo” and it shows. The audience is given a program and a “job application” when they enter. As the lights dim, we learn that we are here to be educated in the ways of a monolithic McDonald’s-like corporation, aptly named “Happy Burger”. Both true to and larger than life, multi-layered surreal characters reveal their strange connection to a cappella competitions, mistaken ideas about the great state and mythical, Narnia-like land of Connecticut, physical love with hot grills, the Pesky French Fry (a creature of dark lore), and the various ingredients comprising the fully functioning Happy Burger chain.
The show’s conceit is that we, the audience, must be assimilated into the Happy Burger culture. Yet the same indoctrinating cogs in the machine come to learn, in the very process of teaching us to be like them, that they want to escape to the real world, and take us with them.
Whether Charlie LaGreca’s comical, Tokyo-crushing, mechanized monster beatboxing, Jeff LaGreca’s wistful love song to the childhood memory of his mother (also a Happy Burger employee), Amanda Herel’s pseudo-soulful and slightly psycho “Shake Your Booty With Danger”, William Caleo’s pure tenor on the too-hot love song, “G-R-I-L-L”, or Tony Daussat’s too-short, but hysterical “My Solo” – this is a cast that can sing.
But despite their vocal chops, it’s their multi-layered, fast-paced, surreal characters that stick with you when you leave. Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flashbacks and rich one liners gives us momentary glimpses into the causes and effects of their oddities. Strange as they are, you come to care for them in the midst of all the laughter. And with spot-on direction by Jeff LaGreca, and clever music and lyrics by Sean Altman, the combination is a winner. Check www.burgerboys.com to find out when these talented performers will be in your neck of the woods.
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“Perfect Harmony” turns the spotlight more directly on the a cappella experience itself, specifically the high school experience. Andrew Grosso and various members of a cappella group, “The Essentials”, have written a theatrical mockumentary. To get a sense of the style, imagine a Christopher Guest movie like “Best In Show” or “This Is Spinal Tap”. Through a series of silly scenes, silly monologues and so-dead-serious-they’re-funny songs, we are welcomed to the “high stakes” world of private prep school a cappella.
The school’s psychologist Dr. Larry Mergh sets the mood early: “A cappella is a cult of pressure and perfection. A hungry beast, and now it’s claiming its victims.” The school’s two groups, the “Acafellas” and the “Ladies in Red” know it all too well as they grapple with these questions:
Lassiter A. Jayson III: “You have 200 people who you are singing to and, you have to ask yourself, what do you want them to take away from the experience?”
Melody: “If God didn’t want us to dance then why did God put [the a cappella] Nationals on MTV2, the very network that started The Grind?” “
Goran Dhiardeaubovic “You can have many instrument easy- for why you no use them, stupid?”
Meghan: “How are you ever gonna let the audience at Nationals watch you if you can’t have Christ watch you?”
Philip: “Be totally honest: who likes the songs better when we sing them normally, without the bullwhip and trash can and cantaloupe”
If questions like these don’t hook you into the show, try the allure of zany foreigners, the meaning of art, Jesus’ helpful suggestions on winning the big competition, when to take drugs or join a boyband, how to accommodate family feuds and lockjaw into competitive a cappella – questions I think we all need answered.
One more quote sums up why a cappella makes for such compelling subject matter:
Simon: “Music is how we express the love we have inside when just words or hugs or backrubs won’t cut the mustard”
Ain’t that the truth?
"Perfect Harmony" will run as part of the Fringe NYC Encore Series, September 21-24. More info here: http://www.fringenyc.org/
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