Review: HOT STUFF at SBX Theatre

To understand Shadowbox Live’s latest offering, HOT STUFF, you need to go back to Thanksgiving or, more precisely, the day after Thanksgiving. On Nov. 24 this year, families offered up the traditional fare of turkey or ham, mashed potatoes, and Aunt Clara’s green bean casserole. The day after Thanksgiving, though, you get to pick through the best parts of the meal, feast on your favorites, and leave the green bean casserole in the fridge.

That’s kind of the premise of HOT STUFF, which runs Jan. 9-March 29 at the SBX stage (503 S. Front Street in downtown Columbus). The metaperformers of the theatre troupe picked out the best skits and musical presentations of 2024 and repackaged them with other winners from past seasons for an all new, two act show.

“The annual ‘best-of’ show is always a highlight for us,” said Julie Klein, Shadowbox Live’s producing director and the director of HOT STUFF. “It’s an opportunity for our metaperformers to revisit standout moments from the past year and for our audience to relive their favorite performances.

“Our writers truly outdid themselves in 2024, which made selecting the top sketches a challenge but a great problem to have.”

For those who are unfamiliar with the Shadowbox Live’s type of shows, HOT STUFF is a great way to be exposed to the theater group’s talented group of performers. For regulars, the show is a refresher course of many of the best sketches, songs, and videos of last year as well as classics from past seasons.

For reviewers, it is also a chance to praise the stuff they missed in their other write-ups. When writing about shows like WILD THINGS, BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, and PILLOW TALK, it’s easy to hone on the sketches.

However, after watching HOT STUFF, you are reminded how strong their musical performances are. Under the direction of Matthew Hahn, the SBX house band of guitarists Hahn, Jack Walbridge, and Justin Doe, bassists Andy Ankrom and Buzz Crisafulli, keyboardist Rick Soriano and drummer Brandon Smith match the original cuts note for note, solo for solo.

For HOT STUFF, SBX brought back two Prince tunes from their EVOLUTIONARIES show from the fall of 2024. Nyla Nyamweya opens the show with a powerful reading of the Purple One’s “Kiss” while Ash Davis adds her own funky vibe to “Baby, I’m a Star” to close out the first act.

Prince is the only performer to have two songs on SBX’s nine song bill. The band covers a vast landscape of music, ranging from Haley Keller’s bluesy cover of Z.Z. Ward’s “Charlie Ain’t Home,” to Amy Lay’s gritty take on P!nk’s athematic “Just Like A Pill,” to Jamie Barrow’s delivery of Ozzy Osbourne’s iconic “Crazy Train.”

Shadowbox even turned 80s clunker “Wild, Wild West” by Escape Club into a show-stopping ensemble piece. The song is set in an 1800s saloon. Mary Randle takes the reins of the lead vocals but each member of the cast creates their own interesting piece of stage business while the song is being performed.

Seeing a sketch a second time is like watching a movie you’ve already seen. Sometimes pieces lose their shock value and surprise. Other times, you see things you missed the first time through.

“Ass Trick,” a sketch about the creation of punctuation marks by the ancient Greeks, stood out more on a second viewing. Aximandia (Leah Haviland), Democlitus (Tom Cardinal) and Pyphoria (Riley Mak) debate the value of the symbols created by the anal obsessed Bob (Jimmy Mak). Cardinal complains that Bob’s latest creation, the asterisk, is a visual representation of a butt hole.

Aximandia defends Bob and says, “Surely he has other symbols.” Bob puts two parallel dots on the board, and says mischievously, “I do have this one …I call it a colon.”

In one of the revived sketches, “Love is a Battlefield,” Lay and Jimmy Mak play a couple who have an argument on the eve of their anniversary while two warring submarine crews represent their inner thoughts.

Katy Psenicka, the captain of the female submarine team, encourages her crew of Deirdre Tobin, Keahlie Cruz, and Haviland to load the guilt torpedoes as Lay asks her husband “You do know what today is, don’t you?”

David Whitehouse, the captain of the male submarine, yells at his crew of Aiden Segna, Luke Marconi, and Barrow, “Surrender! Surrender! Surrender!” as Jimmy Mak stares blankly ahead.

Positioned between the songs and the sketches are the brilliant parody videos of Whitehouse and Zach Tarantelli, which skewer everything from Pixar movies, news breaks, commercials, and yes, Veggie Tales.

Lay becomes a featured player in many of the sketches including “The Karens.” What happens when the Heathers from HEATHERS and the plastics from MEAN GIRLS grow up? According to the video clip, they become “The Karens,” adult women who threaten to sue Starbuck baristas when they don’t have their oat-based creamers for their Iced caramel macchiato. Later she becomes the sexy 900 operator at 900-22Nerdy who soothes geeky Jimmy Mak with a sultry discussion on the origin of Captain America and the repressed housewife who uses Benadryl to sedate her daughter so she can be seduced by a Rent-a-Gent (Barrow).

While it may not offer fresh servings of new material, HOT STUFF provides a fantastic highlight reel of the best Shadowbox Live has to offer. And you don’t have to worry about Aunt Clara’s green bean casserole ruining your palate.

Photo credit: Buzz Crisafulli

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