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OINGO
BOINGO LANDS IN WESTWOOD The nine person Chederanian musical task force, a.k.a. "The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo" is back on earth, and in town through Saturday, at the Westwood Playhouse. Five new numbers have been added to the show since it blew by last year at the Aquarius, but the zany motif is basically the same. A band of gorillas marches up the aisle in a musical processional, and out of a tangled nebula of sound gathers itself into a jumping rendition of "Avalon". That is only the beginning. Chederania, if you are not familiar with the Oingo Boingo and its ways, is the planet to which they have repaired, after having zapped us with flash points of evolution. It features flying saucers and other Flash Gordon accouterments, but its essential medium of exchange is music, mostly bold and brassy and occasionally exotic, as when the troupe holds forth on balaphones and other kinds of vibraphonic instruments (in one set, a Tyrannosaurus rex fills in as backup musician). There is no point in trying to give a serious look at this program, because seriousness is left at the door. What can you say, after all, when a hooker's john turns out to be a well-dressed toad, or when a neatly mustachioed man in a tutu dances "The Nutcracker Suite" and is assaulted by two dinosaurs? There are rocket ships, film clips, friendly animals, a glimpse at the life in Hotel Hades (this reviewer gives it two stars for being enterprising but tacky), and a general aura of organized pandemonium. It could be said that the Oingo Boingo's roots are in Dada, where anarchy reigns supreme. But there are important differences. There is no antibourgeois connotation here, or self-conscious revolutionary message. Deliberate, antic nonsense is the keynote. What gives the evening its legitimacy is the Oingo Boingo's superior musicianship. Most of the musicians are able to double and triple up on a variety of instruments, and the sheer energy of the evening - which would certainly pale were we left with sophomoric Mad magazine humor - resides in the number, length and variety of songs which split open any illusion of thematic unity. Much of the music has a Big Band '40s sound, although there are excursions into rock and jazz (Sam Phipps on tenor sax gives us an exacting rendition of Coleman Hawkins' "Body and Soul", and some of the rarely heard instruments of West Africa and Bali. The protean musical director Danny Elfman and Miriam Cutler are standouts; Dale Turner on trumpet and the aforementioned Phipps, as well as the rest of the ensemble, are expert. This is a show that has only one thing in mind, a theatrical and musical expression of exuberance. Some of it may seem unnecessarily silly, some of it may not work, but the spirit prevails. |