As no one is more qualified to comment on my show’s aspirations and achievements than I - and also as no one else has - I have decided to write my own review of this past Wednesday’s Ars Nova debut! Here goes:
A darkened theater. A red velvet curtain. A vase of yellow daffodils, hinting at God’s promise of the coming spring. And a spotlit 600-page book with my picture on the cover. These are the sights and smells that greeted the audience of my show, I Light Up My Life: the Mark Sam Celebrity Autobiography Wednesday March 16th at Ars Nova. What a treat lay in store, few knew. And after it was over, perhaps even fewer truly understood just what had happened!
A frantic melange of aspirational (and catchy!) girl-pop songs set the tone during the pre-show for an evening of serious reflection on the real-life Fame Monster. At last, just when Miley Cyrus began to cycle for the second uplifting time, I appeared to an ovation that hinted that many of the 40+ in attendance were not strangers pulled in by the amazing Time Out advance press but were in fact people I am already friends with on Facebook. Thank you, fans!
(As this show encompasses the entire spectrum of human experience, it is however accessible to all, whether you know me or not: anyone who’s ever loved, anyone who’s never really tried; anyone who’s ever lost someone, and anyone who’s cried out to the deafness of night begging to be found!)
The audience was with me from the start, which always makes the show more gratifying for me - and easier to do. Even the questionably tasteful section dealing with September 11th touched more people than usual, baffled as some of the less erudite of them might have been by its seeming non-sequitur-ness. But of course one of the main achievements of this theaterstuck is its deft thematic maneuvering - disguised in a seemingly meaningless and erratic morass of meandering: put another way, I Light Up My Life is comparable to the winding rainbow-colored road that twists across the Candyland game board - if that Skittle-hued path contained the secret code to all existence. (That ought to make an excellent pull quote from this review!)
AIDS and pornography can be difficult topics for some theatergoers, but those at Ars Nova are savvy and swallowed whatever I shot their way without question. A charming moment was achieved when I showed slides from my 2000 sojourn to Bolivia that featured me posing naked (save for a pair of Aviator sunglasses!) on a salt flat the size of New Jersey. It seemed even the unusually large percentage of heterosexual male attendees appreciated the male form.
There was one technical gaffe, which probably didn’t spoil the show for anyone besides me, but it should be pointed out here so that perhaps the stage manager might be humbled into learning her lesson: These Are a Few of My Favorite Things was supposed to play while I crossed to the microphone after the scene about my father and the hash browns. Got it? It is hoped that will never happen again.
By the time the show reached its final rousing moment, many people’s lives had been changed forever - possibly irrevocably. For, while Charlie Sheen may claim to be a warlock in possession of a torpedo of truth about the perils of Celebrity, I have the same weapon and am also coherent. And if I’ve learned anything on my long, winding Candyland road of life, it’s this: applause doesn’t lie. The audience loved the show, perhaps almost as much as I did. It was a thrilling evening, and I know that, speaking for myself, I felt afterward less alone and isolated from the whole of human experience - at least for a few minutes.
:)
