Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Longenbaugh on Theatre: Off the Chain (Seattle Weekly):

When I first met Mike Daisey in 1998, he gave me a lap dance. It wasn't a pleasant experience.

I'm pretty sure he didn't realize I was a reviewer, there to critique his first solo show in Seattle, Wasting Your Breath; he was just picking some poor sucker in the audience to writhe his considerable frame against as he recalled an unfortunate moment during the cross-country road trip that took him from a pregnant girlfriend on the East Coast to a new life in Seattle.

But I don't think it would have slowed him down even if he had known. Daisey's outstanding quality as a performer is his fearlessness, as demonstrated by Stories From the Atlantic Night Cafe, which he's bringing to Seattle for one night only at the Capitol Hill Arts Center on Sunday, Feb. 4. It takes guts to do a solo show. But it takes a deep foolhardiness to draw up an outline for a story only an hour before curtain, then use that as the guideline for an evening of extemporaneous entertainment.