by ****1/2 (out of 5)
Hearing John Williams music beforehand certainly enhances the vibe, preparing audience members in this converted classroom setting as they’re about to be taken to improv school.
Normally, this talk show is funny enough as it is, what with George Lucas (Connor Ratliff) presiding over the discussions with his celebrity guests, helped along by his sidekick Watto (Griffin Newman) while their producer, Patrick Cotnoir, sits alongside them to take their comedic abuse. But we’re not living in normal times. Watto (aka the junk dealer and slave owner of young Anakin Skywalker in the 1999 film, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace) hips us to this while warming up the crowd, informing us that because of the ongoing Hollywood strikes, they’re not going to promote any struck work! There are loopholes, however. “I’m not SAG. I’m not WGA. I am IP,” Watto declares. Watto also intriguingly enough has a comedic sensibility and delivery much like Andy Kindler. For what that’s worth! The constraints of the strike only seem to make Ratliff even funnier, as it allows him to show off his encyclopedic knowledge of Lucas’s life, including the famed filmmaker’s intriguing and troubling history with both the WGA and unions in general.
For their opening weekend show, they welcomed Eden Sher (I Was On A Sitcom) and Ed Gamble (Work In Progress), from whom we learned that Gamble thinks his own noontime WIP show features “a lot of W but not much P” (he’ll be back in Scotland touring the eventual show in the coming year, he promises), while Sher’s Friday night performance went all sorts of wrong during pivotal emotional moments near the end. One man fainted. Another shouted out in the final minute. Even Sher’s husband brought things to an awkward pause when he found himself clapping alone at one point.
No matter whom they welcome as guests these following Fridays, you’ll find yourself losing track of the much like they did because you’ll be having that much fun.
And if you’d like to see Ratliff and Newman perform as Lucas and Watto in a scripted play, they’re also mounting a Fringe production nightly called The Baron and the Junk Dealer.
The George Lucas Talk Show runs Friday nights (11, 18, 25) at Assembly George Square Studio Two
