The past is dead and gone. And smells a bit.

[stephbg]

Husband and I went to The Blue Room's 21st birthday party this evening as proper invited guests. The Blue Room is a small theatre venue that started life as a standup place called The Actors' Centre before it got all respectable (relatively). Husband was one of the first people to use the place to put on a theatre production there, and is thus partly responsible for turning the place over to the dark side.

Or maybe he turned it to the bright side; when he wrote and co-starred in the two-hander Not of This Earth (1991), the venue didn't have a lighting rig and a temporary one had to be assembled from scratch. The seating was still cabaret-style tables and chairs: seating in rows and then raked rows came later still. He'd done standup there for several years prior, and indeed for several years in Adelaide before he came west. He's Really Old.

Sadly the event tonight was loaded with theatre scum people rather than old comedians, so we felt a bit out of place. We were able to enjoy an improv show featuring scenes, lines and titles from old productions. I was very pleased that angriest's Angriest Video Store Clerk In The World came up for the first improv exercise. The actors seemed suitably mystified by the idea of Hollywood Bunnies, but twigged to the "angry" part quite happily. And noisily.

Somehow being in a position to know that angriest was in Melbourne made us his spies.

We were alone in our little cheer when Stuck Under Something Heavy came out of the improv hat. We remember that little guy Rove McManus even if no-one else did.

Lacking suitable old war horses with whom to exchange old war stories we left after the show and did a lap of Northbridge. It's very dark and icky, although I like the big screen and beanbags. We indulged in our traditional entertainment of looking at the live seafood in the windows of Chinese restaurants.

Comments

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Woo!

I for one found it very lovely that the Blue Room considered Video Store Clerk to be one of their more stand-out shows of the past 21 years - and probably more entertaining to do comedy improv to than Degree Absolute, Serpentine or Cry Havoc.

I remember Stuck Under Something Heavy.