Last night I attended the first installment of a serialized comedy performance called “The Baby Daddy Show” at Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction at # 34 Avenue A on Manhattan’s Lower East side, and I had one hell of a blast.
The basic setup involves an homage (?) to those trashy TV shows where women who habitually get knocked up and bear the children of uncaring scoundrels attempt to identify the fathers of their kids via DNA testing after regaling the audience with their ghetto/white trash sob stories, and the mothers on display in this show are two flamingly stereotypical specimens of deep Brooklyn trash named Brandi and Crystal. Hosting a show on Brooklyn’s infamous public access television system BCAT, shot in Brandi’s living room while her horrid little urchins cause periodic havoc offstage, the two fecund broads pontificate at length in thick Bensonhurst accents about their staggeringly promiscuous, prophylactic-free adventures and burst into occasional and hilarious song and dance numbers that test the limits of good taste with off-color dialogue, goofy and exuberant booty-shakin’, pseudo-sapphic Lamaze excercises and a stomach-churningly schmaltzy rendition of “The Greatest Love” that had me wiping away tears of laughter. And as if that weren’t enough to entertain even the most jaded of NYC theatergoers, the ludicrousness goes through the roof when the assumed fathers arrive for paternity confirmations, last night’s “baby daddies” including a screamingly gay disco regular and the most Guinzoed-out greaseball of a butcher that I have ever beheld (played by the same actor). The men came on when introduced, had their say on whether they were responsible for the gestating blights upon society, and had their genetic material taken by a buxom blonde nurse whose arrival was punctuated by John Williams’ “The Imperial March,” aka Darth Vader’s answer to “Theme From Shaft.” All of this madness did have a denoument of sorts, but the story ain’t over yet and will be continued each first Monday night of the next three months.
Bottom line: “The Baby Daddy Show” is a ton of fun, and you have not lived until you witness the rocking of the “Shurse.”
The game and gloriously over-the-top stars of this vortex of madness are Laura Sweeney (“Brandi”) and Katherine Valentine (“Crystal”), two dyed-in-the-wool burlesquers who are bursting with such verve and rubber-faced silliness that they seem to be deranged animated cartoon characters come to life; their trashy mannerisms, sub-K-Mart attire and hideous hairdos — Crystal’s electric-purple corn rows being particularly horrid since, in my opinion, that hairstyle does not work on non-blacks, to say nothing of the clownish shade — contribute to their image as dead-on grotesques who can be found all over the goddamned place, but especially in certain areas of the wilds of good old Crooklyn. Hats off to both of these talented ladies, and may they perpetrate more such offenses for a long time to come.
The show costs ten bucks per ticket, there is no drink minimum although there is a bar on the upstairs level, and the performance space is quite cozy, so get off of your lazy borough-centric tuchases and go see the motherfucker already!
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