A Bad Night’s Sleep This crazy-quilt revue from the loons at Radio Music Theatre is really a show about nothing, but RMT out-Seinfelds Seinfeld — and is much funnier to boot. Although one of the 14 Fertle Family shows, Sleep keeps our favorite family gang off stage until Act II. It works because the lunatic trio (Steve Farrell, Vicki Farrell and Rich Mills) features enough new characters up their hilarious sleeves to populate Sugar Land. The first act is a variation on RMT’s “infertle” comedies, such as Life Beyond the Loop and The Story of Burford, Category 5, wherein writer Steve Farrell aims his barbs at the idiosyncrasies of Houston. In one sequence, we’re treated to Mills, in a nightmare, trying to pass a virtual driver’s test. The instructor’s electronic voice, amplified like Stephen Hawking’s, speeds up, skips syllables and generally screws up like any government bureaucracy, while Mills, in brilliant pantomime, sits on a stool in his arcade helmet and rubber gloves and zooms madly through Houston’s streets. He drives over barrels and rubber cones, loses points by even thinking of driving on U.S. 59, stops for days on Memorial because of the trail riders, and maneuvers over dead bodies. It’s a screamingly funny sequence that shows, in essence, what makes RMT so unique: simplicity of execution, flawless timing, exquisite performance and wicked satire. Before the Fertles appear, we’re treated to a parody of regional theater in a divinely bungled production of Macbeth, a TV commercial by insane furniture maven Uncle Dan, a delicious MTV knockoff, a Swedish movie from PBS and Little Teddy Witherspoon singing his one un-hit “Tall in the Saddle” in Gregorian chant. Great big laughs inside this little theater. Through November 18. 2623 Colquitt, 713-522-7722.
This article appears in Nov 9-15, 2006.
