Audacious Theatre’s parody is taking over a taproom near you with a silly take on the Lucas canon

Transcript

Alex: All right, so we wanted to do kind of a little bit of an audio review that we will put out as a transcript as well from Audacious Theater, who had a show called Space Conflicts that Tony and I were both at last night. And Audacious is probably best known for doing the Drunk Christmas thing every year where they do Christmas Carol and drink heavily while they’re doing it. This was different. They were not drinking, although it was set in a bar or taproom at Empourium Brewery and there’ll be at a couple of other ones throughout this run for, what, the next week or two Toni?

Toni: Yeah, they’ll be… You asked me the thing I was pulling up. That’s not on their program.

Alex: Damn it. Put it on the program, people. So while Tony looks that up, yeah,  was Space Conflicts was their take on doing a Star Wars spoof without getting sued by Lucasfilm or whoever.

Toni: And as they point out in the opening, this is not the strip or the striptease Star Wars show that’s been going around Denver as well. They make an opening joke about how many Facebook ads people are constantly inundated about that. And I can attest, I have also seen a plethora of those ads for that show. I’ve not seen the show yet though, have you?

Alex: No, what’s it called?

Toni: The Emperor Strips Back. It’s a burlesque Star Wars parody, and it is not the same as Space Conflicts, the thing we saw, which will be running for the next two weekends in slightly different locations. So we saw it last night, opening night was April 26th. We saw it at the Emporium Brewing Company in Denver, where it’ll also be playing again this evening.

(Note: The Emperor Strips Back ends its Denver Run May 4.)

Alex: Okay.

Toni: We’re recording this on April 27th. And then next weekend, Space Conflicts will be at Fiction Beer Company, May 3rd and 4th. And then May 10th and 11th, it’ll also be at that same location. So, and Fiction is a frequent sponsor of theirs. They’ve done Drunk Christmas there a number of times.

Alex: Good brewery too. I enjoyed Empourium. I hadn’t been there before. I think they’re maybe just a little rough around the edges and some of the more established breweries, but I thought they, you know, I’m always out for the hazy IPAs and I thought they had a pretty good one there.

Liz Porter as the Hero and Scott Jamieson as the Rogue in ‘Space Conflicts’

Toni: Totally agree. It’s a really cool location. It’s kind of over on down on South Broadway, right across the street from the Atomic Cowboy over there. And the interior of the location is just filled with these kind of pop art style of all of these different like, I guess, cartoon characters. Like there was Bender, he was wearing like this Egyptian, like Pharaoh headdress. And like Batman looking down sad or something. Yeah, it was a cool spot.

Alex: At what point does a hat become a headdress? Does it have to have like protuberances or dangly things? Think about like an Apache headdress. I mean, it’s clearly not a hat. It probably isn’t relevant to this conversation. Anyway, so yeah, Atomic Pizza, Fat Sully’s, Denver Biscuit right across the street so you can nail a slice on the way in or out as we did. So anyway, Space Conflicts, May the Farce Be With You. You can guess that this is a very, very silly show and it’s in a teeny tiny little area of the taphouse. So like, I don’t know, maybe 25 people in attendance or something. It looked sold out-ish. You know, all seats were taken.

Toni: Yeah, all of the seats that they had set up were taken and there were people kind of, we sat at one of the tables just behind and there were several other parties that had kind of were spilling out into that table section. So it seems like it was a very good crowd and the crowd was really engaged. It was written by local writer, Rebecca Gorman O’Neil and this is actually the second time that this production has been done because they did it last year, around this time last year, in honor of Star Wars Day on May 4th. So they did it this time last year, and they’re going to be doing it again on Star Wars Day, May 4th again this year. So maybe this will become another kind of tradition for Audacious in the style of their Drunk Christmas.

Alex: Right. It makes a lot of sense. People like to celebrate May 4th as a Star Wars day or Space Conflicts as we’re talking about. So anyway, well, they had, so it’s basically a spoof of mostly the first film or the fourth one, if you go by that, but the one that came out in the seventies, what the hell was that one called? Star Wars, A New Beginning, A New Hope.

Toni: A New Hope, as it was later titled by George Lucas. Although it was, I believe it was originally just called Star Wars when it came out.

Alex: Yeah, it was. Yeah, before he knew we would get money to do more of them. But anyway, very silly. So the cast was Liz Porter. She played, you know, like the Luke Skywalker character. And Joaquin Liebert was he played several ones, but he’s billed as the mentor. So I think he was Obi-Wan. And then the gold robot, also known as C3PO, was Ben Hartmann, who was very funny. Alyssa Bosch was the goddess.

Toni: Oh yeah.

Alex: And Scott Jameson was the rogue and Raleigh Smith was shadow. And so they had very silly things like, you know, like R2D2 was like a, I think the woman at our table thought it was like a toy chest that had wheels on it that they had painted to kind of look like. And you know, all of it was very low budget, very fun, but you know, they had decent costumes and, and they had a really good soundtrack that, that was going along with it, that was done by, let’s see who did that.

Toni: I believe sound was done by Ren Manley.

Alex: Okay, so she’s kind of the head founder of Audacious Theatre. So what did you think overall of the show as an entertainment?

Toni: It was incredibly inventive. It very much reminded me of the style of like the Complete Works of William Shakespeare ( Abridged) because I mean that is very much what I mean the in my interview when I interviewed Joey and Rebecca — Joey Laughlin, who is the director of the production and Rebecca who wrote it — as I mentioned earlier last year about this piece they mentioned that as being one of the inspirations directly for the show they were like we wanted to have a trunk on stage, which is that R2-D2 that would open up, have all the props in it. And then they were like, we want it to just feel very quick, very fun and give people an overall sense of the entire franchise, which I think they did a very nice job of because they kind of condensed the, they start with the prequels and they do the first three movies. They make a quip. They say the first three movies, which is like nine hours and about seven minutes. And they do it by cutting all the stuff about the Trade Federation. No politics in this version. It’s just very quick. You learn about Anakin, you learn that he did not get the high ground, which is something that will haunt our Shadow character throughout the rest of the production. And that part in particular, I thought was very funny.

Alex: Yeah, no politics.

Toni: They’re kind of just breezing through and making fun of those infamous prequels, if you will.

Alex: Right, right. Yeah, and yeah, it did remind me of Complete Works. And one of my comments kind of going out was like, you know, it was a lot funnier than Potted Potter, which is a big touring show that’s going around that filled the Newman Center in Denver. And I was just kind of like, man, you know, this was a lot funnier. It was just silly. It was fun. And a lot of, you know, I mean, what they were doing, there’s plenty of takes on Star Wars where they point out the plot holes and, you know, how a lot of stuff just doesn’t make sense. And of course you can probably do that with most sci-fi movies, but Star Wars is particularly ridiculous in a lot of ways. But they had fun poking holes and all that stuff. And all the actors were really having a lot of fun doing it.

And the way they navigated that tight space was impressive.

Toni: Yeah, I think my favorite gag of the evening was when they blow up, when the Shadow Darth Vader stand-in blows up a planet, which is just a balloon, which they do by blowing up the balloon and then just subsequently releasing the balloon over the audience and having it go crazy, which it, they didn’t, I thought for sure they were gonna whip out like a needle or something and just have it go explode.

Alex: Yeah, they didn’t pop it, they just let it fizzle.

Toni: But the release of it was just so much funnier. It was more unexpected. I think that was my favorite gag of the night. Did you have a favorite gag, Alex?

Alex: Um, yeah, I think it kind of was that one, but yeah, there were so many and they don’t stop to milk any of the lines. They just blast through, which is the way you have to do those, those types of shows. And that was, that was always the Complete Works thing. It’s like, don’t wait too long for the laugh, just keep moving.

Toni: And anytime things start to feel like they’re getting long-winded or they’re giving too much exposition or they’re over-explaining something, particularly the Ben Hartmann’s gold robot character, Scott Jameson as The Rogue — which is Han Solo’s stand-in — will pop up out of nowhere and be like, “Don’t, don’t over-explain it. Don’t give too much context. It’s not necessary. Nobody cares.” Which is very funny. And I think just also kind of a nod poking at people who like obsess over the tiny these tiny little details and try and like just go too so much into that which so I thought it was very funny.

Alex: Yeah, he was great. And the gold robot slash C3PO that Ben Hartmann did he kind of functioned as the MC in a lot of ways he was kind of setting things up and so, you know, I would say that you know, this is certainly a fun fun night out. It’s fun that it’s in a brewery can have some nice beers while you’re watching it and low stakes, you know. It’s only a little over an hour long, but if you’re someone who just doesn’t dig the silly like, you know, I mean, and you know, my son Andy was with us last night and he was kind of a little lukewarm on it. He thought a lot of the jokes were sort of warmed-over stuff that he’d heard before, which, you know, it’s probably true in some ways, but, you know, it was right there in your face and you can’t help but laugh at some of that stuff.

Toni: Yeah, I can’t speak as a Star Wars superfan. I’ve seen all of the movies, but none of the TV shows. I don’t know really anything about the extended universe. So maybe if you’re somebody who’s like super obsessed, maybe these are… this is territory that’s been mined before, but as someone who is more Star Wars curious than Star Wars obsessed, I found it… I found it really entertaining.

Alex: Yeah, I’m more of a Trekkie than a Star Wars guy. Star Wars doesn’t really have a, they don’t really have a name like a, I don’t know, what’s the version of Trekkie for Star Wars people? I don’t know. But yeah, and they did have an incursion from Star Trek at one point. William Shatner’s Jim Kirk came on and had something to say and they kicked him out.

Toni: Indeed. I was about to say they had a reference for you Trekkies in there.

Alex: Yep. So anyway, definitely a thumbs up for Audacious Theater’s Space Conflicts, if you get a chance and you like beer for sure, definitely go out and check out one of these shows. Coming up, I’m guessing they’ll probably sell out the May 4th edition, but you can go on their website and find out all about it.

Toni: They are already sold out in their best seating on May 4th.

Alex: Okay, so yeah, they’re already sold out for their best seating. So maybe you can get standing room only seats or something.

Toni: You can get the general seats, like where I guess we’re in the zone that we were sitting in. But yeah, they’re already sold out for their reserved seating for May the 4th. So get on it.

Alex: Yeah, well, if you can get in there, there’s not a bad seat or place to stand in the house.