A collaboration between Danielle Georgiou and Justin Locklear, The Bippy Bobby Boo Show: Call-In Special is a mashup spoof of pop and trash culture television that owes a great debt to Laugh In, What We Do in the Shadows, and the kind of variety shows (Dean Martin, Carol Burnett, Sony and Cher Comedy Hour) that featured solos by singers with great pipes and gobs of gravitas. There is a medium, a self-absorbed chanteuse, a stage manager, a stand-up comic, go-go dancers in bell bottoms and so forth. Georgiou’s choreography is varied and energetic, whether it’s the stylized, nonchalance of the 70’s or the wobbly convulsions of zombies.
At the beginning I thought that Bippy was on a nostalgia bender until I realized that all the characters are ghosts. It’s probably both. Except Nick, who longs to join their realm. He makes a pact with the Devil, manifested by a creepy, squeaky, bilious red puppet. The Call-In guests (I tried a couple of times myself) add another layer to this exploration of campiness, tongue-in-cheek irony, and a sort of tacit resignation. Much is revved up or vamped, with only the occasional hint at subtext. There seems to be a kind of mania informing most of the pieces, except for the lugubrious divas, torchy and turgid.
Bippy trades in grotesque, nearly vaudevillian content, some kinds of performance effectively being their own derision. At the same time it pays tribute to the tropes and icons of bourgeois entertainment, it diminishes it. You watch, convinced it cannot possibly be on the level, and yet it is. It was only years after I’d watched Green Acres that a friend explained it was the genius of mainstream absurdism. Bippy certainly pays dubious tribute to the frantic energy of a host like Bippy Bobby, who keeps the gags rolling with insipid gusto. Here and there (true to the old adage) throwaway sotto voce comments reveal his contempt for the audience.
The Bippy Bobby Boo Show is a triumph of style, ingenuity, tone and savvy. It works very well on its face, but the unspoken despair, the longing for us to evolve as a culture, to let go of empty values, also comes through. Georgiou and Locklear have created a strange and complicated, yet quite satisfying critique of loopy, congealed content that panders to mindless kitsch. Like Shakespeare it’s got something for everyone, whether you’re in the front row, or the nosebleeds.
Danielle Georgiou Dance Group and Theatre Three present: The Bippy Bobby Boo Show: Call-In Special. Last chance to see Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020: Election Night! Tickets are $15 and are available for purchase at www.Theatre3Dallas.com