How to Drive Yourself Crazy at Fallout Theater

Sev­er­al times dur­ing the musi­cal sketch com­e­dy show cre­at­ed, pro­duced, and per­formed by Hol­ly Hart and Mimi Meier, I thought to myself, is this the new gen­er­a­tion Tina Fey and Amy Poehler? This duo had an elec­tric vibe to every thing they did dur­ing the debut per­for­mance of How to Dri­ve Your­self Crazy at Fall­out The­ater dur­ing Hacks­fest, a cel­e­bra­tion of script­ed comedy.

Meier is a trained singer and it came through in her musi­cal num­bers. And while that’s not to say that Hart can’t sing, between Meier’s singing range and the com­bined duo’s comedic chops, the show felt like it could have staged at an inti­mate Off-Broad­way venue. Am I man­i­fest­ing? Yes, but my guess is I’m not the only one that night who felt incred­i­ble ener­gy watch­ing this com­e­dy musical.

The packed audi­ence attend­ing the show gave back so much ener­gy and love to the per­form­ers who per­formed vignettes about the insan­i­ty of wom­an­hood. Was the audi­ence large­ly female? Sure. Was every­thing said and sung on stage some­thing that res­onat­ed with every sin­gle per­son in the audi­ence? Absolute­ly. The relata­bil­i­ty, the humor, the musi­cal num­bers, the dis­clos­ing of per­son­al pain were all part of the mix.

The six­ty minute per­for­mance began with our two ​“char­ac­ters” (large­ly based on true expe­ri­ences) in a make-believe doc­tor’s office and closed at the same office cre­at­ing the per­fect book­ends with devel­op­ment of the two char­ac­ters in between. We can’t reveal the clos­ing line since we try to be PG-13 over here, but suf­fice it to say, it per­fect­ly encap­su­lat­ed the Meier char­ac­ter’s jour­ney to, shall we say, self-dis­cov­ery. Hart’s char­ac­ter devel­op­ment revealed a com­mon human trait — once you change some­thing about your­self, you assume every­thing about you will be all fixed, only to real­ize, you either learn to accept your­self, or con­tin­ue chas­ing changes. 

I loved watch­ing this expe­ri­ence. Most­ly because I’m such a huge fan of Meier and Hart and think they’ve cre­at­ed some­thing so utter­ly mag­i­cal. How to Dri­ve Your­self Crazy can eas­i­ly trans­late to a Youtube series, or an Off-Broad­way musi­cal. Lucky for us, before it reach­es those mile­stones, we get to enjoy it all to our­selves for at least one more per­for­mance at Fall­out The­ater at the end of the month.

And then it’s off to Broad­way. Ok, not yet. I’m sor­ry, I was man­i­fest­ing again.