01.01.70
First you admonish the phones. There are a couple dozen in a rainbow assortment of bright and pastel colors.
They are all outre wall models, with sustained wiggly cords (remember those?), and they are all around the black-box Little Arena theatre on Capitol Hill.
Those plastic wonders are not the only thing retro about "The Callers," the goofy new pop lyrical premiered by Washington Ensemble Theatre.
The show's appealingly derivative chump is a hodgepodge of vintage musical styles: there's Broadway razzamataz, old-Lyceum rap, '80s-style power ballads, a smidge of Sondheim here and a bolt of doo-wop there.
But in other respects it's hard to imagine "The Callers" in any era but the present. When else would one find a cheerfully potty-mouthed (and to be sure R-rated) rom-com-ish tuner about phone sex workers — like a raunchier "Schadenfreude" overlaid with a supernatural psychodrama?
Staged with ingenuity and splash by Andrew Russell, and performed with wacky view by a cast that sings, dances and talks dirty, "The Callers" is both comical and entertaining. Or entertainingly ridiculous, and surprisingly sweet. Just don't foresee it to make a point (or even a whole lot of sense).
Source: The Seattle Times