FIRst night review: out of the boil, a climate change musical @ The new marigny theatre

A Survivin' Thing: Out of the Boil, A Climate Change Musical @ The New Marigny Theatre
Review by Todd Perley

​The setting: a New Orleans dive bar. The players: neighborhood working folk—a nurse, a teacher, a tech guy, some service industry, etc. The conversation: climate change, education, local infrastructure, and why doesn’t the Algiers ferry run twenty-four hours anymore? Sound familiar?

It should. I think we’ve all been to this bar with these people and discussed these things with similar passion. Except in Rel Farrar’s new play, these aren’t people; they’re crawfish. Socially aware crawfish, dressed in red, complete with little red claws. And they sing. They sing their P.O.V.s to the tunes of E.L.O. songs. Okay, so maybe we haven’t been to this bar.

The conflict: Chef Bezos (played by local treasure Ratty Scurvics) is offering a sizable grant to the crawfish that pitches the best socially-conscious scheme. I’m sure that will work out well. Clearly, the chef has the crawfish’s best interests in mind.

The characters are intellectual, hilarious, and self-aware, reminiscent of classic Woody Allen films. The arguments are tight and multi-faceted, never preaching to the choir. Tech Guy waxes rhapsodic on the philosophy of Ayn Rand to his girlfriend. When rebuffed, he sings his angry response to her via the song 'Evil Woman'.

While the arguments are mature, there’s a childlike joy throughout. All the props are over-sized. Picture a crawfish holding human-sized cups, beer bottles, cigarettes, or scissors, an effective offset to the serious themes when the lines are delivered by someone drinking from a shot glass the size of a paint bucket. The table is a board set upon a bottle of Mod Podge (those crafty crawfish!)

Danielle Small directs this serious piece with campy lightheartedness. The mood matches the tongue-in-cheek vibe of her 'Waterworld', which has played, hilariously, in local swimming pools for years (I look forward to these annually). Neal Todten as musical director pounds out E.L.O. hits on the piano beautifully.

But it’s the cast that brings the Zatarain’s to this crawfish berl. They’re all just having so much fun, and the actors’ joy is infectious. Whenever things get dark, someone starts playing darts…with dart props made of four foot pool noodles.

The goofiness never detracts from the message. As Rel tells us in her author’s note, “This show is about believing you can make things better…maybe pigs can fly (metaphorically speaking).”

You can suck da heads of these concerned mudbugs at the New Marigny Theater, October 3–6.
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