by Zach Raffio. @zachraffio.
FAIRFIELD, CT. Talk about stage magic! A two-act performance I wasn’t enjoying at the local Fairfield Fantasm mystically became a one-act performance, right before my eyes and fast-walking feet.
“Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you witness a two hour and 30 minute show wrap up in about 75 minutes. I’m still in awe,” I noted in response to the Fairfield Players’ A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, which weirdly ends with absolutely zero plot points resolved. “One minute I was polite-laughing at poorly executed jokes and clapping for choreography sloppier than beef diarrhea, and the next I was enjoying wings and a beer at the bar next door. There’s no business like show business.”
While I was abuzz with the wizardry of this hypnotic hippodrome, some of my fellow theatergoers weren’t as enthralled.
“I guess there is such a thing as bad magic. For example, the show was a little over two hours, but by some enchantment, felt like four,” noted audience member Desma Cramer, scouring the playbill for whoever was in charge of special effects so that she could shoot them with a gun. “I would’ve honestly preferred to be cut in half. Not, like, for a magic trick. Just actually cut in half.”
Still, some of the cast were quick to defend the play’s wondrous splendor.
“This show even manages to surprise us! For example, when the curtain goes up at the beginning of the act one, there’s a certain number of people in the audience. Then when the second act starts, they seem to have disappeared,” noted lead Derrick Smoith, who still gets fooled by the thumb trick. “Then they magically reappear at the bar next door, enjoying wings and a beer. There’s no business like show business.”
At press time, the company performed their most eye-popping trick yet, as my subscription to the Fairfield Fantasm disappeared completely following their announcement of fucking My Fair Lady again.