Maggie and Coco
Save the World
Written by Sarah Garner, Michael Menendez,
Lynn Stransky and Grayson Vreeland
Directed by Grayson Vreeland
Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan #803 (map)
thru Sept 28 | tickets: $15 | more info
Check for half-price tickets
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A drone of a plot
Coriolis Theater Company presents
Maggie and Coco Save the World: A Live Sitcom
Review by Lawrence Bommer
Performed in a big room adjoining an airshaft, this live sitcom, now completing its pilot episode, is a mainly unfunny, semi-explicit lifestyle comedy. Typically with this ingrown genre, the slacker characters are characterized more by quirks than inner lives. Maggie (Stephanie Murphy) is a first grade teacher who defends dolphins against her putative poet boyfriend JJ (Michael Menendez), a deadbeat artist and Cuban-American who can’t speak Spanish but still loathes Castro. Her best friend Coco (Molly Pan) returns from camp to continue her clueless Occupy-hungry activism. (She hates “American Idol” so must be pure of pettiness.)
The semi-zanies are joined by their stereotypical friends: Coco’s buxom admirer Skeeeter (Meegan Kelleher); Andrew (Nathan Weiland), who hopes to overcome a disastrous date with the lesbian Coco; giggling, gun-toting Darlene who likes to shoot at pigeons; and her doting Hector.
The first half-hour episode (now happily history) has the gang listening to Obama’s State of the Union address. Their approval offends Coco, who doesn’t find the President radical enough. (Get in line…) The episode ends with the arrival of the police, no doubt summoned by the gratuitous attack on the bird. To be continued(?).
Wacky but never witty, this concoction would be easier to take if there were such a thing as a running elevator once it’s over. As it was, after pressing a dead button for several minutes, beleaguered audience members had to trudge down eight flights of stairs and push through an alarm door to reach the main lobby of the very old Fine Arts Building. Like the show and the elevator, the alarm didn’t work.
That emergency door must get used a lot, I guess. Here’s one more reason.
Rating: ★★
Maggie and Coco Save the World continues through September 28th at the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave, Suite 803 (map). Tickets are $15, and are available online at BrownPaperTickets.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at CoriolisTheater.org. (Running time: each of the six episodes are 30-minutes in length).
Performance Dates
Pilot: April 26th, 27th and 28th at 8pm
Episode 2: May 27th at 8pm
Episode 3: June 25th at 8pm
Episode 4: July 29th at 8pm
Episode 5: August 27th at 8pm
Episode 6: September 28th at 8pm
