[Woody’s [rating: 5]
I may be decades late sliding down a hole with Alice for a twisted tea party with the Mad Hatter and White Rabbit, but I’m okay with that.
That’s because I finally got to see Trevor Allen slip into a time warp and re-create his ultra-high energy, one-man backstage view about those and other Disney characters.
The title of “Working for the Mouse” — now onstage at the Cinnabar Theater in Petaluma — is, in my estimation, bland.
Pedestrian.
Trevor Allen dons the Mickey ears he never got to wear as a Disney worker. Photo by Kevin Berne.
Allen’s 75-minute is neither.
Rather, it’s the funniest employee exposé since “SantaLand Diaries,” David Sedaris’ celebrity-making 1992 NPR essay about being an elf at Macy’s.
Allen’s primary aim is to get laughs, not bash Disney.
His actual work at the Magic Kingdom, dating to the ‘80s, was at times no laughing matter, however.
Being inside a Pluto head and suit, for example, might mean toiling in a 110-degree sweatbox. And Disney had stringent rules to adhere to — lest suspension or firing lie just around the corner at the Happiest Place on Earth.
But Disneyland wage-slaves, whose daily well-being required transcending the child’s fantasy world, invented a countering set of directives, including one injury-avoiding biggie:
Don’t let the kids get in back of you.
The monologist/performer, who’s effectively directed by Nancy Carlin, remembers that his dream of a being a boy who didn’t want to grow up “seemed attainable” — despite the Peter Pan role he aspired to fill staying out of reach.
Allen, whose boyish physicality can be breathtaking, recounts his side-splitting memoirs with touches of reverence and nostalgia — in his own 45-year-old voice, in squeaky character simulations, and in the cadences of antique Big Names (Ed Wynn and Jimmy Steward the funniest and most quickly recognizable).
His succinct word-portraits can be devastating.
I couldn’t help but smile as he told of the Fantasy in the Sky fireworks setting off car alarms throughout the neighborhood, of his costumed head falling off when he tripped over a sprinkler, and of guys thinking Cinderella and Snow White were hot but him not having “the heart to tell them those two were only hot for each other.”
Whatever one’s caveats about drugs and sex, I found it impossible not to laugh aloud as Allen honed in on 300 mostly strangers jamming a luau (including the mental image of Pinocchio doing lines of cocaine in a guest bathroom) — or seven dwarfs and three little pigs having “some kind of orgy. Nobody should see that.”
It was easy, too, to watch his amusing discomfort showing all brightly colored characters being “a compass for Mickey — we always knew where that damned mouse was.”
As well as sharing his delight in graduating from suited “rookie” to a character who didn’t wear a mask.
Because “Working for the Mouse” flips back the calendar, don’t expect any topical references. No Lady Gaga imitations. No dancing like Hugh Jackman with retractable claws.
Be prepared, instead, to hear lines like the somewhat blasphemous: “What Would Walt Do?”
Allen’s show, which years ago was voted best of the San Francisco Fringe Festival and played to sold-out audiences in San Francisco and Berkeley, offers his audiences vast insights into “the right way, the wrong way and the Disney way.”
That last way led right to my funnybone.
Only one more performance of “Working for the Mouse” remains at the Cinnabar Theater, 2222 Petaluma Blvd. N., at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 26. Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at the door. Information: www.cinnabartheater.org or (707) 763-8920. Another one-man show: Brian Copeland’s “The Jewelry Box: A Genuine Christmas Story,” Nov. 30. Other special evenings: (Sam) Misner and (Megan) Smith performing roots music Nov. 2, and “My Raunchy Valentine,” with Sandy & Richard Riccardi, Feb.8.
