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Last night, live on YouTube, the Jonathan Tolins showBuyer & Cellarrose again.
(The show isavailabletill 11:59 p.m. Wednesday night.)
As of this writing, the YouTube ticker indicates that the production has raised $50,062.
without losing everything that makes it vigorous and exciting.
And here it is, at least for one pop in of show: a clear answer.
It turns out that even without an audience laughing and rustling, a 100-minute comedy can be funny.
Here wasBuyer & Cellarrecognizably as itself, delivering the text and the interplay of thought-over-time.
I bought it, people; I was sold.
The play itself is eerily appropriate for quarantine.
(The first time they changed to Camera Two, Twitter gasped.)
Uries shelter-in-place cameraman was his partner Ryan Spahn, who was also in charge of animal-wrangling their cute pup.
It wont be easy to replicate this success.
First, you need the right play.
(Cf.the filmed theatrical version ofFleabag.)
Also,Buyer & Cellarcontains the right throw in of humor for the zero-audience set-up.
When he came close to loom in our laptop window, it made you gasp.
Something else I learned fromBuyer & Cellar: We dont always know which plays are the serious ones.
Yet wrap the pandemic around something, and it changes.
You know, I think we might have many such comedies.
Certainly we have many such viewers, leaning closer to hear them.
Now is their time.
