Make fun, not war

With their latest production, A Thunderbird Night of Terror, San Francisco’s Thunderbird Theatre Company has joined the interminable War on Terror, launching an offensive comprised of six terror-themed one-act comedies into the Blue Room last Friday and Saturday nights.

“The Play is the Thing” pits ‘60s pop stars Donovan and Ringo Starr against the forces of media banality as exemplified by the poser heavy-metal band Grandpa’s Dirty Diaper. Driven into a frenzy of righteously indignant bloodlust by their inadvertent success at wiping out the metal scourge, and joined by the wheelchair-using, telekinetic spiritual master Ram Das, the former purveyors of flower power are in the midst of a butcher market massacre before self-doubt and their author’s loss of interest in continuing the narrative casts them and the audience adrift off the shores of absurdity. Having the author destroyed by his own creations was a fitting finale.

The second piece, “They’re Fine, Dear,” showcased the dramatic acting of Malinda Trimble in a somber vignette that may or may have not involved the aftermath of a bus wreck. The third, “Evil Does Not Wear Mittens,” hinged on the comic social ineptitude of a couple of wannabe stalkers negotiating a relationship with a couple of nearly identical girls.

The post-intermission "Terror at Ten" was probably the most fully realized of the playlets in its examination of a TV station seeking to raise ratings by turning its nightly news broadcast into a vehicle for sensationalism. Jennifer Lucas as anchorwoman Pamela Angora was hilarious in this piece and in the following "Gate 13," in which she and Trimble were a pair of airport floozies trying hook up with everyone, from two drunk airline pilots to Hall & Oates to Osama and George. The closing "Sorcery for Dummies" made the dubious—but very funny—point that a young woman’s unleashed sexuality is more powerful and frightening than a demon summoned from hell. All in all the production provided many moments of absurdist hilarity, but by diffusing their talents through six vignettes the Thunderbirds diminished the impact provided by a more focused group effort.