String Bean Reviews

First off, please accept my apologies for not having posted in a while, as I've been busy working on my re-write of 'Pirate Man and Jazz Boy'. As superhero movies are currently all the rage, I've been trying to wrap up that particular script post haste. Perhaps I'll run a treatment by you loyal readers after I've registered it with Prince. I know most screenwriters rely on some arcane copyright or WGA-related process to protect their ideas, but as far as I'm concerned, there's no safer haven for creative capital than His Purpleness Himself. Don't believe me? Look into it - Prince offers a comprehensive set of legal and clerical services for writers. Song writers have ASCAP. Screenwriters have AFKAP. (Ho, I think I'm being so clever, but if anything Prince's name would be AFKAAFKAP now, wouldn't it?)

At any rate, I want to take this opportunity to expoundify upon a previous post. My folks had another mock will-reading this weekend (at my insistence, I don't trust them), and this time my mother was kind enough to drag the aforementioned Crapbook out of the attic so she could pretend to give it to me. We had a lovely time perusing its many pages of deceit. As noted earlier, my folks would pretend to read scathing reviews of my dinnertime "performances" out of the day's newspapers, when in fact the articles were utterly random. These articles were then placed in the Crapbook accompanied by my parent's notes of what they'd said. All the way into my 20s I was convinced that every major theatre critic in the tri-state area already hated my work. This only made me work harder. Etc. and etc. bringing me fame and fortune yawn. At any rate (that's twice I've used that phrase!) here are the actual string bean reviews:

- Insufferably self-indulgent! A complete waste of stringbeans!

- Du Bouchet insists on endlessly cycling between his tired old elephant and walrus impressions. Has he not heard of a unicorn? A triceratops? A narwhal?

- Tonight I eschewed the typical Broadway fare in favor of lurking outside the du Bouchet's kitchen window in the New Jersey suburbs, in order to sneak a look at the show everyone's mocking: Stringbean Toddler Trainwreck. And boy oh boy did it live up to its name. This is one show that is so bad it needs to be seen to be believed. The smug look of happy satisfaction on du Bouchet's face after he gleefully pretends to be a walrus with a pair of stringbeans is utterly repellent.

- Much like the namesake of the bean for which this show is named, Andres du Bouchet's Stringbean Animal Impression Review feels strung together, with no cohesive storyline or theme. From Walrus to Elephant and then back to Walrus, the narrative skitters along schizophrenically and, in the end, predictably. Oh he's doing the walrus impression, the elephant one is right around the corner. And yes, here it is. Is this child really four years old? I would have though he was two.

- Make no mistake. Terrible theater is created by bad little boys. Therefore, Andres du Bouchet must be the worst little boy there is.

- Bean There, Done That!

- More like string-has-bean

- Young du Bouchet's performance belongs where those stringbeans are ultimately going: The compost heap.