I ended up at the opening weekend of The Lapsburgh Layover only by the strong solicitation of a sidewalk barker earlier in the summer -- probably the best sidewalk promoter ever.
Less play than immersive dinner theater [though few in the audience ate the bizarre food] Welcome to Lapsburgh takes at least two surprising turns in the course of the evening. First, in the 'Arrivals Area' on the way to our seats we had to pass through an immigration & customs line where the customs officer presided over a bag of siezed hand tools, handguns, handbags, a bag of marijuana, and a shrink-wrapped piano.
Later, in the airport lounge the play itself, initially threatening to be a mildly amusing Guy Noir type of Garrison Keillor corny play, became very funny, proving itself closer to the skill of The Firesign Theater in writing and delivery. There was also a later twist involving a plague of frogs that I won't reveal here.
The two scenes that made me feel like I got my money's 'worth were Mickey with the bartender (right before he dies) and Mickey with Mr Bigshot Mayor (before he dies and after he dies, if that makes any sense -- see the play!).
It's a play with no neuroses or avarice. The characters are silly but also have a simple wide-eyed sincerity that make you like all of them and so at the end of the night we left the theater feeling like we'd spent the evening with some interesting new third world Lapsburghian friends.
The only reason we knew about the play was that weeks before I had been given a flyer on the street in the Lower East Side during Fringe Festival and the flyer was so unusually shaped that for the rest of the evening I kept it and everyone kept commenting on it. It looked just like a boarding pass for an airline. At home the flyer got put up on the fridge where the boarding pass appearance commanded so much attention that we eventually bought tickets for the play.
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