Local Freaks at Fallout Theater

“A base­ment full of freaks in the mid­dle of the night. What could go wrong?”. That tagline is entic­ing, but it only tells you half of the sto­ry. This isn’t just your aver­age every day gath­er­ing of freaks in a base­ment; it’s a birthing of freaks in a base­ment. Where oth­er shows come with freaks ful­ly formed, Local Freaks invites us to see them in the making. 

The premise is sim­ple: three guest comics are invit­ed on stage one at a time, each are then adorned with ran­dom cos­tume pieces and props, and with­in a lim­it­ed amount of time are tasked with cre­at­ing a char­ac­ter based on the acces­sories giv­en to them. Hosts Jo Fos­ter and Bri­an McAugh­an are our local news anchors report­ing weirdos on the beat, but they’re also extreme makeover artists. Each plain dressed guest is trans­formed before our eyes as the two fran­ti­cal­ly decide what wacky appar­el mis­match­es best. A wheel is spun to decide the fin­ish­ing touch- a prop to tie every­thing togeth­er. The guest is then sent back­stage. They’ll return as an entire­ly new person.

The cre­ative process is thrust upon the per­form­ers as char­ac­ters are fleshed out through audi­ence inter­ac­tion and a brief inter­view with our hosts. When we’re intro­duced to ​“Thog”, a barista and wannabe-god liv­ing on Mount Olym­pus, we know he’s every­thing Neil Dorsey could come up with when giv­en a Star­bucks apron, mus­cle suit, and a long blond wig. Ryan Ashke­nase made sense of a robo-hel­met and cop uni­form with­out going for the obvi­ous. The hel­met became the head of his swad­dled new­born, and Fallout’s base­ment loca­tion the inspi­ra­tion for an upstairs neigh­bor try­ing to soothe his baby to sleep while liv­ing above a loud com­e­dy the­ater. ​“Cir­cus Man” was Kol­by Jacobs in a der­by hat and gog­gles try­ing in vain to find her lost cir­cus mon­keys. Through her inter­ro­ga­tion every audi­ence mem­ber became a sus­pect in the case of the miss­ing apes.

This inau­gur­al show was a rous­ing suc­cess, and an excit­ing spin on char­ac­ter com­e­dy. Come see Local Freaks to watch clowns made in the moment.