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Good Luck With It

nytheatre.com review by Hieu Tran
August 15, 2005

“I’ve rarely seen anything this deep be that funny.” Those were the words of my friend after we got a chance to see the solo show Good Luck With It, an indescribably surreal romp into the mind of San Francisco comedian Will Franken. Well, perhaps “indescribable” is too strong a word. But let’s just say that any description I, or anybody else, tries to give of this show is a poor substitute for the actual experience. In fact, “comedian” itself might be too weak a word to describe Franken. He seems to be more of a comic force than a tightly defined comic persona.How so? Well, in a mere hour and 30 minutes, Franken manages to inject more thought, soul, and hilarity into such varied topics as the parents of murdered children or President Bush’s campaign to capture the 18th century (yes, you read that right) than any other show I’ve seen. The best part is he pulls no punches. He refuses to dumb down or censor his material, and he virtually obliterates any distinction between the high-brow and low-brow. So, with that, be forewarned. Parts of the show are incredibly racy. Yet even in those parts Franken’s performance is so winning and smart that you never get the impression he’s doing any of it for a cheap laugh. In fact my friend, whose close friend was murdered a few years ago, found the piece about the parents of murdered children to be absolutely brilliant, as it revealed the media’s obsession with “getting to the bottom” of people’s grief, as if 15 minutes on television and a published book deal would somehow help the mother of a child pick-axed to death find closure over her son’s gruesome demise.Aside from effortlessly mixing high culture (references to Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Milton, deconstructing television ads) with low (the most scatological ad for a woman’s empowerment symposium ever), Franken also manages to find a marvelous balance in his performance between precision and spontaneity. The density of his work, not to mention the frequency with which he logically transitions from one subject to the next, suggests that much of the show has to be pre-coordinated. Yet, in actual performance, it never feels that way. Franken appears to be just coming up with these topics off the top of his head. The show doesn’t feel so much like a rehearsed routine as it does a series of spontaneous combustions.Not to mention, it’s probably the funniest thing I’ve seen all year. My friend and I are planning to see it again, this time with more friends in tow. In a theatre with, say, maybe 15 people tops on a Sunday afternoon, the audience was laughing so hard it sounded like 45 people were in the room. I wonder how it’ll sound when the house is full.