Babs the Dodo
Written by Ashley Kelmore, Posted in Reviews
A few weeks ago Renee forwarded an invite to me to the effect of ‘this looks cool. Want to go?’ It involved free theater, so … yes. But I didn’t really look too closely at what it was.
Tonight I found out. It was ‘Babs the Dodo’, put on by Washington Ensemble Theatre. The basic premise is a home shopping channel host is turning 50, and her life is – well, it’s changing. That’s about all I want to give away. Except to say that it is totally worth checking out. I was almost in tears I was laughing so hard. My mother orders many things from QVC, and sometimes when I go home to visit we’ll have to see what ‘the special of the day’ is, which requires listening a bit to their sales pitches. And let me tell you, they are disturbing at times. The writer of this show really captured the bizarreness of it all with an excellent scene involving an extraordinarily ordinary item up for sale. But there’s more to it than picking away at the (admittedly easy) target that is home shopping.
There are loads of small theater companies like this in Seattle, apparently. And apparently I’ve been living under a rock these past few months and have missed this fact. I clearly need to check this out.
As an aside, for fellow dorks out there – Radio Lab is coming to Seattle! I bought tickets today – they’re here March 30.