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Uncle Sam's Satiric Spectacular

nytheatre.com review by Frank Kuzler
August 15, 2005

Uncle Sam’s Satiric Spectacular is all that it promises to be—it's satiric, and it's a spectacle. Created by the 2005 Apprentice Company from the Actors Theatre of Louisville, this is a smart, funny show that channels the neurotic anxiety of a culture crumbling onto its own ideals and converts it into humor and laughs.With 17 numbers and 18 performers, the show is a full night of vaudeville, and comes complete with an emcee in the likeness of Uncle Sam, a minstrel show, several contortionists, a knife thrower, and a striptease.From the opening number, “American Way,” in which the company culturally takes over the world in song, the show develops ideas based on personal mania, individual liberty and national identity. It caps off the night with a number extolling those catchwords of independence—“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”In its sophistication (which will only become more finely polished through the show’s run), Uncle Sam’s liberates itself from political mockery to true satirical commentary. Vaudevillian in nature, the show goes beyond random acts of entertainment and develops a cohesive idea and psychological picture of our time. The show even pokes fun at itself and the hypocrisy of the vaudeville tradition in numbers like “The Minstrel Show” and the mock striptease “The Lady Sings the Blues.”The numbers that I especially enjoyed, and they are numerous, include “Ties that Bind,” in which an escape artists must unravel himself from the psychological constraints of life; “My Geneva Babe,” in which a barbershop quartet bemoans the loss of their love, the Geneva Convention; and “The Minstrel Show,” which makes us take a good look at the face of theatre past and present.All of the performances are excellently accomplished and the actors show commitment and heart in each number.