Theater Review / Oklahoma Smith, a manic musical at the Key West Theater

By Joanna Brady

Local playwrights Michael Marrero and Christopher Shultz are again serving up a zany confection of fun and Rabelaisian lunacy with Oklahoma Smith and the Pantheon of Annihilation—this time with music. It’s kind of an Indiana Jones meets Robert Langdon of the DaVinci Code, with Rocky Horror Show and The Night of the Living Dead thrown in.

In other words, it’s a pastiche of every entertainment cliché in the past half century blended to create an evening of clever hilarity. What makes it work and gives it an added kick is audience participation. At intervals, a disembodied voice asks the audience for choices before the hero proceeds. Should he choose this course of action or that one? Fight the demon ninja or jump over a ravine? Take on a gunfight or go get a lap dance? The audience obliges, usually assigning him the craziest or most dangerous.

The ever-popular David Black plays Oklahoma Smith, a famed explorer. He and his trusty sidekick Beanpole—played by the talented Dakota Mackey-McGee as an 8-year old child (we last saw her in Throw Me on the Burnpile . . .) and by the zaftig funny man Chad Newman as an adult. Colin Bevis, Phillip Cole White, comedic Pony Charvet, and the shapely Alexandra Zeto as the evil dominatrix, Mistress Nefarious, round out this excellent cast.

Oklahoma Smith heads off, with all the flair of a latter day Don Quixote, on a quest to find an ancient book called The Necronomicon and the elusive key required to open it, in order to save the world from the evil Mistress Nefarious. His stops include a gritty bordello in Tijuana—the ‘ladies’ there are hilarious drag queens—a torture chamber in Havana, where he is temporarily turned into a zombie, and the Bermuda Triangle. There’s a floating voyage on the ocean in an amphibian pick-up truck, a fast-paced chase in mine carts, a visit with Fidel Castro, appearances by Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, and Mother Teresa, dancing skeletons, a chain-saw massacre, flying body parts, and a sacrificial burning at the stake. It’s a lot to keep track of. Don’t even try.

In between, there are some really good song and dance routines. Kudos to Nikko Benson for music and lyrics. And Tim Peterson has done a great job on music direction.

Leave the kids home for this one; oh, and leave great-aunt Edith as well. She’d want to wash the cast’s mouths out with soap. A lot of the visual gags are suggestive, too, no—make that graphically ribald. What the heck, what I’m trying to say is that it’s a naughty play. See it for a good adult laugh. The show runs through Sat., April 29.

For information and ticket availability, visit http://www.thekeywesttheater.com or call 305 985-0433. The theater is located at 512 Eaton St., Key West.

(Joanna Brady is a Key West writer, author of The Woman at the Light, a historical Key West novel, published by St. Martin’s Press)

[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]