Being a Muppet fan in the Midwest can sometimes be a disheartening existence. One looks on with awe and seething jealousy while Muppet fans on either coast attend MuppetFest, make Whatnots at FAO Schwartz, or bask in the singular glow of Frank Oz’s trademark cantankerous charm at a Sesame Street panel discussion. But for once, I have a leg up on you suckers, because from September 8th until October 25th, the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota is producing a new show called “Bert and Ernie, Goodnight!” Eat it, monkeys.

However, being the benevolent Minneapolitan (it’s a word) that I am, I went to see the show intending to share it with the Muppet fan community at large here on ToughPigs. So, armed with a notepad and bedecked in my best Cookie Monster T-shirt (I wasn’t going to wear a Bert and Ernie T-shirt – that’d look weird!), I eagerly made the trek to CTC this past Saturday. As I was circling the block, looking for parking, I saw a little girl wearing an Elmo shirt, and even the sight of that red little demon was cheering to me – kids were excited about seeing a Sesame Street show!

The Children’s Theatre Company has long been regarded as one of the leading children’s theatres in the country. Indeed, in 2003, they were awarded the Regional Theatre Tony Award – their attention to detail and commitment to quality is fantastic. After buying my rush ticket and walking up the stairs to the theatre, I was dumped into the merchandise area. Mixed amongst the Bert and Ernie dolls, figures, and generic rubber duckies were some items exclusive to the show – a T-shirt (no adult sizes – nuts) and a small soccer ball. A friendly usher tore my ticket when my Muppet sense began tingling and right in front of me I spotted a glass case with two real, live Bert and Ernie puppets inside. Seeing Muppets up close and personal is always a lovely experience – being able to closely inspect the careful detail and care with which these familiar characters are crafted. On a definite Muppet high, I happily located my seat.

Inside the theatre, I found myself squarely in the center of an undulating, chattering sea of CHILDREN. Oh yeah … Sesame Street’s for kids, isn’t it? And these kids were jazzed! It did my heart good to feel that 40 year-old characters that I grew up with could still be seen as rock stars to the Pull-Ups set. A polite smile to the boy behind me who was compelled to kick my seat, and we were off!

Now, to preface, this is not a show where Sesame Workshop has shipped puppets off to a regional theatre and entrusted locals to bring the classic characters to life with little to no puppetry experience. Instead, for the first time ever, actors are being allowed to professionally portray Sesame Street characters – no giant foam heads, no orange or yellow facepaint, no false Muppet noses (though I hope for the sake of his friends and family that Bradley Greenwald’s unibrow isn’t real). And Bert and Ernie could not be in better hands, played by Bradley Greenwald and Reed Sigmund, respectively. Greenwald and Sigmund are well respected in the Twin Cities, having been seen together in a memorable production of “A Year With Frog and Toad”, also at CTC. They both have epic shoes to fill – Jim Henson and Frank Oz, who played Ernie and Bert for over 20 years in their heyday, were comic geniuses and close friends. Within the first few minutes, though, it was clear that both actors had nailed the finer points of their characters – Sigmund suitably loose and sloppy as Ernie, and Greenwald perfectly crisp and stately as Bert. Any doubt I had at live actors playing Bert and Ernie (and I must admit, there was some) evaporated as I watched them settle into the rhythms that are so distinctly and idiosyncratically “Bert and Ernie”.

The show is a hybrid of new and classic material, incorporating familiar songs like “I Don’t Want To Live On the Moon”, “Doin’ the Pigeon”, and “Dance Myself To Sleep” (among others), with two new songs, “How Can I Sleep” and “Bert’s Lullaby”. A through-line involving Ernie’s attempt to write a poem gives the show a satisfying arc, but even just watching Greenwald and Sigmund do classic Bert and Ernie sketches would have been a treat. Considerable effort was made to enthrall the young ones while still delighting the older set who came to the theatre with considerable nostalgia in tow. References to Bert’s paperclips, Ernie counting fire engines, and monsters that go “wubba wubba” showed that attention was certainly paid to Sesame Street’s lauded 40-year history (save for one mildly baffling line where Bert tells Ernie to “put the duckie down” – wouldn’t it have been easy to switch around the words and pay homage to one of the biggest Sesame Street hits of the 80’s? But I digress.).

Bert and Ernie are the only actors onstage for the entire 75 minutes, but they are joined by some friends. Puppet pigeons and sheep join the pair for the iconic songs centered around the animals. Delightfully performed by a troupe of teen puppeteers, the puppets lend the show a “Muppety” feel of authenticity. My sources tell me that shortly before opening, Mr. Elmo himself, Kevin Clash conducted a workshop with the young puppeteers and was quite impressed with what he saw. For good reason, too – the entire show, while being uncharted territory for two such seminal characters, is incredibly respectful and affectionate towards its roots.

While enjoying flesh-and-bone portrayals of traditionally felt-and-fur characters, I found myself thinking of the recent recast drama that has been swirling around the Muppet community. Why was I so willing to readily accept two actual humans playing Bert and Ernie, but uncomfortable with Kermit not being portrayed by Steve Whitmire on America’s Got Talent? The answer, I think, lies in intent. By humanizing Bert and Ernie, this portrayal is automatically something different than other Muppet endeavors – it moves into the realm of homage and playing a variation on a theme. It is not asking an audience member to accept Bradley Greenwald as THE Bert – instead, we see him as A Bert. Even a younger audience member can enjoy these actors having a ball pretending to be Bert and Ernie, and then go home and watch the “real” Bert and Ernie, in all their technicolor, fuzzy glory, on television. Tossing an actual puppet to a new performer and asking them to take up the mantle of a legendary character with countless hours of work documenting its history is daunting, and doomed to fail by comparison. Being the first of their kind to portray Bert and Ernie this way, Greenwald and Sigmund are allowed to create fresh, important takes on time-tested characters and allow us to see them in new ways (hey, have YOU ever seen The Pigeon done by a human being? It’s revelatory.). In the end, “Bert and Ernie, Goodnight!” succeeds in balancing the familiar with the fresh, while adding to the history of the characters and not trying to rewrite it.

If you find yourself in the Twin Cities area, get yourself to the Children’s Theatre Company before October 25th and see this wonderful show. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to keep the Midwest Muppet renaissance going, and try to convince the Guthrie Theater to stage Fraggle Rock.Special thanks to David Beukema for this fantastic review!

Click here to take a quick nap on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: guest bloggers, review, stage

Wow. One hundred twenty Muppet haiku poems. It seems like just yesterday that Tough Pigs pal David Beukema started writing a haiku for every single episode of The Muppet Show... and now here we are at the final season. If you haven't seen the previous seasons' haiku, check out season one, season two, season three, and season four. And now I'll turn it over to David for the last batch of poetry.

Episode 501: Gene Kelly
Suave Gene serenades
Piggy, then Gonzo. Now, that’s
Versatility!






Episode 502: Loretta Swit
Thog makes the earth move,
Proving once and for all that
Seismic does matter.







Episode 503: Joan Baez
A rat coup d'état?!
Dear God, can you imagine?
Kiss New York good-bye...







Episode 504: Shirley Bassey
Fifty mil in gold
Buys more than a Goldfinger
Buy the whole Goldhand!







Episode 505: James Coburn
Calming Animal
With Buddhist meditation?
Yeah … good luck, Coburn.







Episode 506: Brooke Shields
Um, when you guys are
Done being brillig, please leave.
You’re freaking me out.







Episode 507: Glenda Jackson
Theaters ahoy!
This gives a new meaning to
Being all at sea.







Episode 508: Senor Wences
Lew Zealand’s manners
Are atrocious, but he sure
Hammers his point home.







Episode 509: Debbie Harry
The Frog Scouts go punk.

These kids, with their "rock 'n roll"...

And get off my lawn!







Episode 510: Jean-Pierre Rampal
Rockin’ in treetops
Works for birds, but you best have
A parachute, Zoot.







Episode 511: Paul Simon
Gonzo checks into
Vet’s Hospital. Pity it’s
Not for a nose job.







Episode 512: Melissa Manchester
The Chef chases some
Bouncing chickens with a knife –
Poultry in motion.







Episode 513: Tony Randall
Tony turns Piggy
Into solid stone. At least
Now she’s lost some weight.







Episode 514: Mac Davis
Multiple Beakers
Are really pissed at Bunsen.
They’re beside themselves!







Episode 515: Carol Burnett
Carol shouldn’t be
A lonely asparagus.
She looks quite tasty!








Episode 516: Gladys Knight
In ancient Egypt,
Singing mummies show us they
Can carry a tomb.







Episode 517: Hal Linden
The two old guys host,
While Fozzie gets to heckle.
A bear’s sweet revenge…







Episode 518: Marty Feldman
Googly eyes abound
When Marty and Cookie meet.
Long lost twin brothers?







Episode 519: Chris Langham
Hawaiian Cowboy
And Zen skiing – Chris Langham’s
A renaissance man!







Episode 520: Wally Boag
Leprechaun Brothers
Are easy to understand –
If you speak Moron.







Episode 521: Johnny Cash
Johnny insults Rowlf –
Or is “Egg-Sucking Dog” a
Term of endearment?







Episode 522: Buddy Rich
Buddy’s drum battle
With Animal results in
A sore winner! Ouch.







Episode 523: Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt sings
"When I Grow Too Old To Dream".
Sniff ... where's my Kleenex?







Episode 524: Roger Moore
Hey, join the navy!
All the ducks you can steal and
A great dental plan!

And there you have it! One hundred twenty episodes, one hundred twenty haiku. My thanks once again to David Beukema for his great work, and to Muppet Wiki for image assistance.

Click here to talk about mummies, asparagus, and egg-sucking dogs on the Tough Pigs forum!

ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com

Labels: guest bloggers, poetry, The Muppet Show

Hey, remember when Tough Pigs' close personal friend David Beukema wrote some terrific and entertaining haiku for season one, season two, and season three of The Muppet Show? Sure you do. Now guess which season he's doing haiku for this week.

TIME'S UP! It's season four. Go for it, David!




Thanks again to David for the groovy haiku! And big thanks to Muppet Wiki for huge major assistance with images! Click here to talk about moldy truffle jokes and kosher hats on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: guest bloggers, poetry, The Muppet Show

If it's Thursday, that means it's time for more Muppet Show haiku from Tough Pigs' own David Beukema! David has already taken on season one and season two, so this week he's tackling season three. Take it away, David!

Labels: guest bloggers, poetry, The Muppet Show

Last week I posted a set of haikus written by Tough Pigs' close personal friend David Beukema, one for each episode of season one of The Muppet Show. Today David's back with a complete set of haikus for season two. So without further ado, here's some haiku!

Labels: guest bloggers, poetry, The Muppet Show

You know what haikus are, right? Those poems with three lines consisting of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively? Over on the Tough Pigs forum, we recently had a thread (started by Tough Pigs' own Mo W) called "Muppet Haiku Time!" As the name implies, we filled the thread with haikus about every conceivable Muppet topic under the sun.

Tough Pigs regular David Beukema had so much fun getting in touch with his poetic side, he told us he bet he could come up with a haiku for every single episode of The Muppet Show. So that's exactly what he's going to do. David's going to write one hundred and twenty Muppet Show haikus, and I'll be posting them here, one season per week, until we're out of seasons. Now, what better place to start than with season one? Take it away, David Beukema!

EPISODE 103: JOEL GREY
Pachalafaka
Is the song you sing to meet
Turkish transvestites.

EPISODE 104: RUTH BUZZI
Buzzi and Sweetums
Are star-crossed lovers who fight.
How will the kids look?

EPISODE 105: RITA MORENO
Crazy Marvin Suggs
Bangs Muppaphones night and day.
I hope they’re insured.

EPISODE 106: JIM NABORS
Here we meet Scooter.
Please ignore his presence in
Three earlier shows.

EPISODE 107: FLORENCE HENDERSON
Galley Oh Hoop Hoop!
Kermit the Frog narrates some
Hot alien porn!

EPISODE 108: PAUL WILLIAMS
Send me to Pittsburgh,
Short travel agent. But got
Anything cheaper?

EPISODE 109: CHARLES AZNAVOUR
Gonzo wears a dress
The poor guy's got more issues
Than Reader's Digest

EPISODE 110: HARVEY KORMAN
Harvey does it all!
No one can accuse him of
Being chicken. Cluck!

EPISODE 111: LENA HORNE
R! I say R-A!
R-A-G! R-A-G-G!
Rag! George loves this act.

EPISODE 112: PETER USTINOV
The writing Hatrack
Is wed to a chair. Oh man!
Think of the splinters!

EPISODE 113: BRUCE FORSYTH
A burning question:
Who the hell is Bruce Forsyth?
Who cares? That duck rules!

EPISODE 114: SANDY DUNCAN
Downing whiskey shots
Dancing in bars with monsters.
A nice girl, indeed!

EPISODE 115: CANDICE BERGEN
Kermit tells Candice
Last week, Sweetums ate the guest.
Poor Sandy Duncan.

EPISODE 116: AVERY SCHREIBER
Honeydew invents
The Gorilla Detector.
Some bugs to work out…

EPISODE 117: BEN VEREEN
Ben says dynamite
And Crazy Harry pops up.
One airborne guest star.

EPISODE 118: PHYLLIS DILLER
Will someone please get
That Hugga Wugga dude some
Afrin nasal spray?

EPISODE 119: VINCENT PRICE
On the DVDs,
Thanks to Carole King’s demands,
Vincent’s got no friends.

EPISODE 120: VALERIE HARPER
Statler goes gaga
Over Valerie. Why not?
Rhoda was a fox!

EPISODE 121: TWIGGY
Uncle Deadly rocks.
Haunting the show and many
Poor Muppet fans’ dreams.

EPISODE 122: ETHEL MERMAN
Ethel versus Pig.
The all-time diva match-up.
Take some notes, Britney.

EPISODE 123: KAYE BALLARD
The band is on strike.
The frog’s gotta watch out for
Those puppet unions.

EPISODE 124: MUMMENSCHANZ
Mummenschanz are weird.
Let’s move on to normal guests,
Like Shields and Yarnell.

Big thanks to David for sharing his mad haiku skillz, and to Muppet Wiki for photo assistance! Come back a week from today for haikus about every episode of season two! Click here to comment on this article seventeen syllables at a time on the Tough Pigs forum!

ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com

Labels: guest bloggers, poetry, The Muppet Show

The following review was written by Tough Pigs' close, personal friend Peter Papazoglou. Here, Peter shares his thoughts on the Jim Henson Company's live stage musical version of Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas, which completed its run at the Goodspeed Opera House in Haddon, Connecticut on January 4. Take it away, Peter!

I have a confession to make. Until a couple of hours ago, I had never seen Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. Worse yet, it’s not for lack of opportunity; I’ve had in my possession for over three years now not only the HIT! Entertainment-released DVD (gifted to me by my then-girlfriend, now-fiancé, and sometime-Tough Pigs contributor Leah) but also a copy of the much sought after original cut of the 1977 HBO special.

When I shared my secret with Tough Pigs’ own Joe and Ryan last month, they were, of course, shocked. After all, in certain Muppet fan circles, this surely amounted to nothing less than blasphemy. But luckily for me, they had a touch of the Christmas spirit about them, and rather than run me out of Riverbottom, they took their seats beside me as I was introduced to Russell and Lillian Hoban’s story in a brand new way - on stage.

And having finally seen the television special, I can confirm that Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, the new musical produced by the Goodspeed Opera House in association with the Jim Henson Company, adeptly and (for the most part) faithfully adapts its source material.

The story, for those of you fellow cretins unfamiliar with it, tells of Emmet Otter and his ma, Alice, two of the poorest residents of rural Frogtown Hollow, where bartering is common practice and even fifty cents can make a difference. Since the death of Pa Otter, the two have barely managed to sustain themselves with odd jobs and a laundry service. But just as they resign themselves to another year without gifts beneath the Christmas branch, word comes out of nearby and newly electrified Waterville that Doc Bullfrog is hosting a talent contest with a first prize of fifty dollars cash.

In a plot twist that borrows from O. Henry’s short story, “The Gift of the Magi,” Alice and Emmet, both inspired by Pa Otter’s legacy of foolhardiness, decide to enter the contest so they can afford a treasured gift for the other - for him, a guitar with mother of pearl inlays; for her, a down payment on a used piano. But when Alice hocks Emmet’s tool chest to buy fabric for a dress to perform in and Emmet puts a hole in Alice’s only washtub to fashion a makeshift bass for his jug band, they put their only sources of income at risk. So when the Riverbottom Nightmare Band, a devilish but talented rock quintet (whose incongruous style foreshadows the juxtaposition of the funky Electric Mayhem with the vaudevillian setting of The Muppet Show) wins the contest, Emmet and Alice are left to put a brave face on their impending destitution.

This being a Christmas story, all ends well for the Otters when Jane, who had previously sacrificed her place in the talent contest roster to Alice, who had showed up moments too late to register, realizes that the songs performed by Alice (“Our World”) and Emmet’s Frogtown Jubilee Jug Band (“Brothers”) could be performed in counterpoint as “Brothers in Our World,” just in time to convince Doc Bullfrog to hire the newly formed quintet to perform nightly at the Riverside Rest.

What’s that? You don’t remember Jane? Oh, come on. Jane. You know...little girl? About eleven, maybe twelve. Short. Brown hair. Human?

That’s right. Human.

I guess I forgot to mention Jane. You see, it’s Christmas in Jane’s world, too - the first since her mother’s passing - and she’s pushing her father, Russ, away. What has this got to do with Emmet Otter, you ask? Well, it was (conveniently, of course) her favorite book when she was a child, one that her mother had read to her and left a heartfelt inscription in. So when her father suggests he read it to her, she grudgingly concedes.

And before you can say deus ex machina, Jane is magically transported to Frogtown Hollow, where nobody seems to notice that she’s the only one around without her species as a last name. So, quite naturally, she sings a song, solves a plot complication that wouldn’t have existed if she had never showed up in the first place, saves the day, and then - get this! - wakes up.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in a plot line lifted straight from a short story I wrote when I was eight years old, in which Alice (of Wonderland fame) fell into the wrong rabbit hole and ended up in Sherwood Forest instead, our heroine wakes up at the end of the story to discover that the whole thing was just a dream; she had never been to Frogtown Hollow at all. What a cop-out.

I want to be clear. What bothers me about Jane is not that Timothy A. McDonald and Christopher Gatelli, who adapted the work for the stage, felt that the story needed a framing device. After all, the original special was bookended by scenes featuring Kermit the Frog, who could obviously not be reused here due to copyright issues. It’s that the playwrights don’t trust their material.

Because the rest Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas is wonderful and remarkably complex. Like all good Christmas stories, it weaves together themes of commercialism, charity, and sacrifice. But unlike so many stories written for today’s children, its protagonists are passionate and reckless, sympathetic but tart. Its lessons are far from simple; the villains, after all, walk away with first prize. And its grief is real. Emmet and Alice don’t miss Pa in some abstract way; they reminisce about him and obsess about him. They blame him for their predicament and look to him for a way out. Nothing about Emmet Otter is simple, so it’s a testament to the strength of the source material that the play shines in spite of the framing device, which is at best an unnecessary way to give children a way into the story.

It doesn’t hurt, of course, that the production is beautifully designed.

Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas uses a costume-based approach for the majority of the main characters, who wear full-body outfits that only expose the actors’ make-up laden faces. The costumes, impeccably designed by Gregg Barnes (Fred Lizard, Harrison Fox, and Wendell Porcupine are favorites), achieve the aesthetic of the original puppets while also allowing the actors the physical versatility to perform their roles. The only snag, and it’s a minor one, is that the furry, mittened hands are distracting, pushing the costumes just a bit in the direction of the theme park variety.

More minor characters like Doc Bullfrog, Yancey Woodchuck, and Old Lady Possum are performed as bunraku-style puppets, with their performers either hidden among the scenery or dressed in black against a black background. Doc Bullfrog, in particular, is meticulously recreated and expertly performed by Tyler Bunch. And Yancey Woodchuck is built so that his puppeteer, the talented David Stephens, can effortlessly change from rod-operated hands to live ones to play the banjo on “Barbeque” at the talent show.

The remaining characters are performed as hand puppets based on the original Muppet creations. These include Howard Snake, who is seamlessly handed off from one onstage character to the next; Catfish, who spews water in other characters’ faces after appearing in the most unexpected of locations; George and Melissa Rabbit, and a quartet of gibberish-speaking squirrels who steal the show in their quest to grow a Christmas tree from scratch overnight. Even woodland creatures that appear only momentarily in the television special have been faithfully recreated for the stage: the ducks on the river in “The One Bathing Suit,” the egret at the end of “Ain’t No Hole in the Washtub,” and the owl at the end of “When the River Meets the Sea,” to name a few.

It is of note that while the majority of the puppets were recreated for this production at a larger size, so as to be more easily viewed by the audience, the puppets of Alice and Emmet that bookend the production are, in fact, the refurbished puppets from the original production.

The sets by Anna Louizos are versatile and make adept and surprising use of the small stage, most impressively conveying the illusion of Alice and Emmet rowing along the river on their way to and from Waterville. And the lighting by Brian MacDevitt effectively conveys the woodland mood while also carefully obscuring the puppeteers as necessary, particularly in the talent show climax in the second act.

As with recent adaptations of children’s films, the book and score for Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas has been expanded in order to fill the longer running time required of a stage musical. Composer/lyricist Paul Williams does an admirable job of matching the style of his new musical numbers to the ones ported over from the original score. And the revisions to the book do quite a bit to flesh out the history of Alice and Pa Otter, explaining, for example, the significance of Emmet’s wanting to give his mother a piano for Christmas. The additional material also serves to more fully develop the residents of Waterville and Riverbottom. And while the television special is remarkably efficient in its exposition, the pacing in the musical is definitely an improvement over the original, which now feels a little rushed by comparison.

Although there is some consolidation of minor characters (Yancey Woodchuck, for example, serves as the fruit stand owner in the stage version; and Will Possum’s role has been greatly reduced, split between Yancey and Old Lady Possum), only Shirley and Nat Muskrat (and their act, Carrots the Dancing Horse) appear to have been cut entirely. Most minor roles have been expanded, especially musically. Harrison Fox, performs the bouncy new song “Waterville” ; his jealous wife, Gretchen, attempts to sabotage the talent show with an incognito aria; and the heretofore unnamed Mrs. Mink gets two musical numbers - the brand new “At the Music Store,” the most lackluster and, frankly, unnecessary of the additional songs (which was also hindered by unfortunate staging that caused her to be constantly upstaged by the set), and the delightfully burlesque “Born in a Trunk,” which was written and recorded for but ultimately cut from the original special. Even Jane gets to sing with the scene-stealing squirrels, and “Trust” is one of those moments where you almost forget that she doesn’t belong in the story in the first place.

Aside from Jane and Russ, two brand new characters round out the cast. The first, Madame Squirrel, now leads the formerly haphazard acrobatic squirrels. The more notable addition, however, is the ghost Pa Otter, who appears to sing the lovely ballad, “Alice, Keep Dreaming,” when his widow has been disqualified from competing in the talent contest and is at her lowest. Tony Award nominee Alan Campbell, who appropriately doubles as Russ, captures Pa’s mischievous and compassionate spirit in his subtle, understated performance.

The rest of the cast is similarly talented, bringing vitality to roles that could easily suffer under the weight of their costumes or become mere caricatures. It is, unfortunately, the younger characters who have the most trouble. Instead of seeming like children, Daniel Reichard as Emmet, Jeff Hiller as Charlie Muskrat, and Daniel Torres as Harvey Beaver, all seem a little older, at least in part because of their height. And in trying to play the correct age, they sometimes come off as slower than they ought to be.

Out of the Frogtown Jubilee Jug Band, only the intentionally dimwitted Wendell Porcupine is spared this fate, in part because performer Robb Sapp so fully captures the character and voice created by Dave Goelz. Still, they all do admirable jobs, and their performances, especially Reichard’s, ring emotionally true if a little physically and vocally awkward.

And finally, even though it is, by definition, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, the show at the Goodspeed Opera House belonged to understudy Lisa Howard as Alice Otter, a role usually played by Cass Morgan (Howard usually performs Gretchen Fox). If Reichard’s Emmet runs a bit on the older side, Howard’s Alice is a more youthful creation than Frank Oz and Marilyn Sokol’s original, artfully melding the character’s maturity with an impish playfulness on display in numbers like “Ain’t No Hole in the Washtub.” Howard inhabits the role completely and is especially heartbreaking in “When the River Meets the Sea” (arguably the best song in Paul William’s score), in which she sings, in her lilting soprano, of birth fulfilling itself in death, invoking the truest meaning of Christmas.:

Like a baby when it is sleeping
In its loving mother's arms
What a newborn baby dreams is a mystery
But his life will find a purpose
And in time he'll understand
When the river meets the sea

Word on the street is that Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas may return as a perennial Christmas performance, with the hope of expanding nationally. If the production at the Goodspeed Opera House is any indication, it’s poised to be a classic. Let’s just hope its creators trust the story of Emmet and Alice Otter to tell itself, unencumbered by the modern trappings that threatened to drag down the first incarnation of this beautiful tale.

Our thanks to Peter for his review. Click here to discuss the Emmet Otter musical on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: Christmas, guest bloggers, Jim Henson Company, other Muppet/Henson shows, review

The following article was written by Tough Pigs' close, personal friend Peter Papazoglou. Thanks for the review, Peter!


As a loyal and - let's face it - masochistic fan of the Muppets, you have no doubt had the pleasure of reading my girlfriend Leah's review of Studio DC: Almost Live. So it should come as a surprise of John-McCain-endorses-Barack-

Labels: Disney, guest bloggers, Muppets on TV, review

Today's article was written by ToughPigs' own Leah Hooper. Special thanks to Leah for all her hard work!

Last night I sat down to watch a television special that recently aired on the Disney Channel. Entitled Studio DC: Almost Live!, the show purported to feature the Muppets, which is how I came to be watching the program to begin with.

First, some background: I'm a fan of the Muppets, but not a Fan. My boyfriend, Peter, is the Fan in our house. He knows which episode of The Muppet Show featured Clive Cahuenga; I can't tell the difference between Clifford and Jar Jar Binks. But I watched Sesame Street and The Muppet Show as a kid—the latter with my parents, who would laugh at mysterious jokes that eluded me and suggested that the comely, curious puppets on screen were more than just kids' stuff. So I've always had an affection for—if not an encyclopedic knowledge of—Hensonia and its inhabitants. Which brings us to Studio DC.

Joining us for the viewing were two other Muppet Fans who, like Peter, were anxious if unoptimistic about possibilities of Studio DC: Almost Live!. Watching these fans await the premiere of this new Muppet endeavor was a little like watching the law of entropy in action: no matter how excited you want to be or how well you want it to end, you know the chaotic tragedy is predestined. Outside Sesame Street, which continues ("Elmo's World" notwithstanding—just ask a baby) to live up to its legacy as outstanding programming, it seems that many recent Muppet offerings continue not just to disappoint but to be lost in a frenetic, Disney-crafted phantasmagoria of cross-marketed incoherence. It was in this tradition, and not in the beauty of "Turn the World Around" or the sanguine whimsy of Gilda Radner and the Seven-Foot-Tall Talking Carrot, that Studio DC continued.

The show begins with an announcer oozing Cool™ over a pre-fabricated bass beat that I can only assume was meant to indicate to the pre-teen audience that this is not your older cousin's (no, not that one; the one who just started at Arizona State—yeah, that one) Disney Channel. You know, the Disney Channel that actually showed Disney cartoons and had no commercials. But whatever.

Then the hosts come out, Cole and Dylan Sprouts, or something like that. They're starring in a show on the Disney Channel that I think is supposed to be, like, if Eloise had a sex change and instead of running around the Plaza bossed around her single mom and a black guy. As the hosts arrive on screen, I realize that I saw them in Big Daddy. I don't know who the other kid is, but I swear the one of the left is Adam Sandler. Only he got fat. Pepe and Rizzo show up and tell a joke that could have been written by a baby seal, post-clubbing.

Next, Billy Ray Cyrus sings part of a song. Where's the rest of the song? Maybe he's hiding it in his soul patch for later. Then Billy Ray's daughter, Rhoda Minnesota or something, sings her hit song called "G.N.U.," a ballad about a party-loving equine mammal. Her back-up band was the Electric Mayhem, but they seemed a little more like the Battery-Powered Tameness. At least Animal got a chance to cop a feel on Billy Ray's daughter. I wish Annie Leibovitz had gotten a photo of that.

I started to suspect that things were going downhill when I could actually understand something the Swedish Chef said. And the situation only got worse. Have you noticed that I've not mentioned the Muppets much? That's because Studio DC didn't either. Zac Efron got more play, and he wasn't even there.

A plot rubbed its sleepy eyes, looked around, tried to muster the strength to get up and start the day but ultimately decided to hit the snooze and stay in bed for the rest of the show. So much the better; I wouldn't want the product placement to get obstructed.

Then an Olympics-themed commercial aired for the Disney Games, featuring the Cheetah Girls. Are they the ones who sing "Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Legal Like Me?" In any case, I'm glad to see the Disney Channel is building a cavalcade of players that I'm sure will rival "Your Show of Shows" in the glory days. With more lip-synching, of course.

Studio DC recommences, and I'm starting to feel like I need something to restore my faith in mankind and my optimism about the future. Say, a mushroom cloud? A speech from Dubya? A Seth Green movie?

Now Ashley Tisdale shows up and asks Kermit, "Where's Miss Piggy?" My thoughts exactly. Presently Titsdale shimmies around speaking white-lady-talking-to-gardener Spanish and THEN THERE IS AN AMAZING PIECE OF PUPPETEERING WHEN STEVE WHITMIRE MAKES KERMIT DO A KICK. Mucho gusto, indeed.

A few minutes later, Miss Piggy joins the Jonas Brothers for a song. The Jonas Brothers, as you may know, made a fortune last year in cloning and then spent it all in waxing services and Hot Topic merchandise. And I notice that Piggy, unlike the Jonases, isn't wearing a promise ring. The whore.

And then Adam Sandler and his co-host show up and I think the show ended. At least that's when credits came up and Statler and Waldorf started cracking jokes. This was the part that hurt the most, because it made the distance between Studio DC and The Muppet Show all the more glaring, since The Muppet Show is where Statler and Waldorf's choleric heckling began and ripened to full vaudevillian juiciness. Maybe it's because Peter and I have been watching so many episodes of The Muppet Show, which represent, to my inexpert audience mind, a television Camelot of Muppetdom, full of artistic and comical beauty so great that it imbued even a bulbous nine-foot blue monster with a kind of knightly comeliness. Whatever the reason, watching Studio DC: Almost Live felt like seeing Jackie Kennedy trawling the Port Authority area, with one tooth, offering to do the no-pants dance with you for a pack of Newports. You keep trying to reconcile this image with the older one, the better one, and they simply don't match up.

But like I said, I'm not a Muppet Fan, I'm a fan. That's why I don't jump at any chance to see the puppets doing, say, an appearance on The View or selling Ginsu knives on QVC. I want the Muppets, and they were nowhere to be seen in Studio DC: Almost Live. And, no, it doesn't deserve the exclamation point. Period.
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Labels: Disney, guest bloggers, Muppets on TV, review

Today's article was written by Andrew Leal. Andrew is currently an administrator on the Muppet Wiki. Special thanks to Andrew for all his hard work!

This past week, another seminal figure in Muppet history has left us. Kermit Love, the man, who may or may not have loved Kermit the frog (and certainly did not inspire his name), died at the age of 91. Alongside Don Sahlin and Faz Fazakas, he was a key pioneer in the Muppet Workshop and in shaping how Muppets look and move. For even ardent Muppet fans, his name may register only as that, an interesting handle glimpsed in the closing credits. As a child, my awareness of Kermit Love was limited to his role as Willy the hot dog man, and by the early 1980s, that was limited to a “Hey, it's that bearded guy who for some reason shows up in Sesame Street Treasury cast photos. But Kermit the human had a long and often surprising history, both within and outside the Muppets.

Before he came to Sesame Street, Love had his home on Broadway. After a childhood of puppet building and drawing, he made his stage debut in a small role as a student in the (apparently justly) forgotten 1937 musical Naught Naught '00, a musical full of characters named Spunky and P. De Quincy Devereaux (still, the show managed three revivals through 1946). He soon shifted to costume design, working on such shows as 1943's One Touch of Venus, the brainchild of humorsists Ogden Nash and S. J. Perelman, with music by Kurt “Threepenny Opera” Weill. For the latter, Love shared praise for “real genius” in the inventive costumes worn by ingenue Pauline Laurence (one featured “a front with no discernible relationship to its back.”)

Love continued in this vein, and was one of an odd assortment of craftsmen (costumers, puppetmakers, set designers, even actors) recruited to build the stop-motion figures used in Michael Myerberg's obscure 1954 animated feature Hansel and Gretel. Love worked with future Muppet designer Don Sahlin on the project, but soon returned to the stage. In the 1960s, he began working with famed choreographer George Balanchine, and created large-scale costumes and puppet figures, such as a giant for Balanchine's 1965 “Don Quixote.” Around this time, Love and Jim Henson crossed paths. Not surprisingly, he worked, at first anyway, mostly on full-bodied Muppets, working out both mechanics and aesthetics for the La Choy Dragon and the full-bodied beasties in The Great Santa Claus Switch and The Frog Prince, among others. His biggest impact was on Sesame Street, however, constructing Big Bird, a beloved character built like a tutu, Caroll Spinney, in The Wisdom of Big Bird, remembered Love as simultaneously “the most frustrating man i knew...” but also a “perfectionist and brilliant craftsman.” He went on to work on Mr. Snuffleupagus and for many years was the head of the Sesame Workshop, guiding and shaping the aesthetic of the street Muppets which was both familiarly similar and yet distinct from the Muppet Show gang. He did the same thing for many of the international shows, notably redesigning Samson and Tiffy for Sesamstrasse.

Love slowed down and eventually left Sesame Street after the 1980s (during which time he also worked on The Great Space Coaster and mentored the likes of Kevin Clash and Jim Martin), but abandoned neither puppetry nor costuming. Love was the man responisible for cuddly fabric softener spokescharacter Snuggle Bear, and in the 1990s, he launched a PBS series called Whirlygig, starring himself and various Love puppets. Through recent years, he worked with the Joffrey Ballet on their annual presentation of Balanchine's Nutcracker, creating mice and an enormous Mother Ginger puppet.

So Love leaves another void for the Muppet historian, another link to the past gone. But living to the age of 91 is quite antihistimine (not to be sneezed at), and Love left behind a very diverse legacy for future children, puppeteers, designers, and obsessive Muppet bloggers. And on a personal note, Love's life partner for an impressive fifty years was one Christopher Lyall. Lyall assisted Love on various projects, and in the Muppet realm, he chreographed Thog's charming dance with Mia Farrow in The Muppet Valentine Show. It's comforting to confirm that the grandfatherly, bearded father of Big Bird, this cheerful looking man called Love, was indeed loved himself.

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Labels: death, guest bloggers