Last night, I went to see Puppet Up!, which is a show the Henson people have been doing, mostly in and around Los Angeles, for a few years now. Even before their company sold Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie and the rest to The Mouse, they've been developing other franchises and ventures and this is one of them. Basically, it's a puppet show that is almost wholly improvised based on suggestions from the audience, and intended for adults. They sell alcohol before, during and after the show and its purchase and consumption are highly encouraged. And encouraged. And encouraged.
One interesting thing about the two shows they did last evening: It's one of the first times, if not the first, that a public event like that has been done at what most folks call The Chaplin Studios. It's that studio every Angeleno drives by all the time at the southeast corner of La Brea Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. Built in 1917 by Charlie Chaplin, it has changed hands often since he sold it in 1953. Red Skelton owned it for a time. So did Herb Alpert. So did others.
The George Reeves Adventures of Superman show was filmed there. So was the Raymond Burr Perry Mason series. So were Soul Train and loads of music videos. The Henson family bought the place in 2000 and set up shop there. They do much of what they do there and also rent out office space to others. I've been on that lot many times and it seems like a nice, friendly place to work.
Puppet Up! has played at many local venues like The Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City but this is the first time they did it on the lot, converting (for the night) the largest soundstage into a comedy club with tables and chairs and an amazingly-effective stage area. That was one of the impressive things.
Another was the show itself which was enormously fun and entertaining and, since it's almost all improv, the kind of thing you could go back to again and again and again. They didn't advertise this much but the two shows apparently sold out instantly, most tix going to folks who'd seen it before and wanted to bring friends. No other performances have currently been announced but I got the feeling there'll be a lot of them and they'll do them there. You could kinda tell Brian Henson and his crew were delighted with how well it all went.
Brian is the sub-host of the proceedings and he got on stage for one segment in which a member of the audience — deliberately chosen to not be experienced in puppetry — was dragged up there, outfitted with a puppet and stuck into a scene so all could laugh at his ineptness. Apart from him, the performances were by six skilled Muppeteers (Oops — can't call 'em that; Disney owns the word) puppeteers who operate a wide array of characters you never saw before and who improvise scenes.
There was no printed program so I can't copy info here from it but I might remember all their names: Drew Massey, Victor Yerrid, Colleen Smith, Allan Trautman, Ted Michaels and Peggy Etra. If I got a name wrong, don't blame me. Blame whoever decided not to print programs. I do know that the main emcee — who was very, very good at moving things along and extracting suggestions from the audience — was Patrick Bristow.
Another star of the show is the process. I've been on the set of Muppet shoots and it's fascinating to watch the live puppeteers holding their characters aloft and manipulating them and supplying the voices…and then you look over at the monitor and see the scene minus the human beings. Here, you can also do that. The puppeteers are on stage playing to a fixed camera, and on either side of them there are huge screens showing us what that fixed camera sees. Everyone in the house seemed to be looking back and forth between the screens and the performers.
There are also some amazing video effects added in live, and there's a great live band…and twice during the show, they abandoned improvisation to re-create a classic "Muppet" routine, though I'm not sure they ever said the trademarked and sold-to-Disney word. But they did bits that Jim Henson and Frank Oz once performed on The Ed Sullivan Show and elsewhere, and they were great. The whole evening was.
One other observation: The show was somewhat dirty and for the most part, very funny. It did strike me though that the "f" word has either lost its power to evoke laughter on its own or it just seems so outta-place in a puppet show that it doesn't work. It's a potent comedy tool when Lewis Black uses it. Maybe it wouldn't be if he was made of felt.
As I said, no other performances have been announced but I'll bet there will be some. I'll try and let you know if and when I hear about them before they sell out. And when they sell out, it will probably be because people who were there last night want to see it again and want to take friends…as I do.