Theater Punk! at Fallout Theater

“This is not a show, it’s a cry for help.” Those were the words belt­ed by Jer Moran that began an hour of oper­at­ic songs about all types of anx­i­eties and pho­bias. In The­ater Punk! An Impro­vised Musi­cal Cabaret About Anx­i­ety, Moran and pianist Lisa Sper­ry sang out their fears.

Fill­ing seats and keep­ing those seats full for an hour is the crux of a showrun­ner’s anx­i­ety, so Moran and Sper­ry nat­u­ral­ly began their cabaret with a song about the fears of los­ing peo­ple to the things they might rather be doing instead of attend­ing an improv show. Meta, slight­ly self-dep­re­cat­ing, and instant­ly relat­able to any­one who’s ever set foot on a stage let alone tried to hold a cap­tive audi­ence. This was a fit­ting musi­cal trib­ute to com­e­dy itself and a great start to the show. Thank­ful­ly, all eyes were on Moran and Sper­ry the whole time.

The sec­ond num­ber of the night was decid­ed­ly even more meta, as Moran wres­tled with inse­cu­ri­ties as to how fun­ny songs made up on the spot hold their place com­pared to the works of his­to­ry’s great com­posers. Metic­u­lous­ly writ­ten musi­cal move­ments may have been made through blood, sweat, and tears, but they don’t make us laugh, so that’s a point for musi­cal improv. 

Sper­ry jok­ing­ly chal­lenged Moran to get through one song with­out hav­ing a pan­ic attack; thus began anoth­er musi­cal num­ber where Moran fought his way through a sim­ple nurs­ery rhyme of a song, only to suf­fer anx­i­ety attacks in the form of sung gib­ber­ish. Moran left the stage after this one to recoup, tak­ing to the stage again dur­ing a solo song by Sper­ry and com­i­cal­ly freez­ing in place when he couldn’t find the right words to sing. The par­a­lyza­tion of stage fright was cap­tured to comedic effect.

In stage paral­y­sis, with all that time in your head to grap­ple with the task at hand, one might think of time as a ​“cru­el mis­tress” (or one might imag­ine the audi­ence in their under­wear, what­ev­er gets you through it.) Time itself became the sub­ject of musi­cal inter­est in the fol­low­ing num­ber, with Moran and Sper­ry count­ing down the sec­onds and try­ing to make each one enter­tain­ing. Every sec­ond counts.

A fin­ish­ing num­ber spoofed clos­ing songs as a trope, and then it was left to the audi­ence to sup­ply the inspi­ra­tion for the actu­al last song of the night. The audi­ence’s own admit­ted fears made their way into a song whose sub­ject mat­ter ran the gamut from McDon­alds to cro­quem­bouch­es to clowns; only one of these things relat­ed to an actu­al fear, but yes and-ing through music will take you anywhere.

Some­times the best form of ther­a­py isn’t singing out your fears. Some­times it’s watch­ing two impro­vis­ers do that for you.