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HBO's three seasons of Deadwood are some of the premium channel's finest offerings. In many ways, the show was the blueprint for Game of Thrones, just set in the Wild West frontier. Fans writhed in ecstasy weekly as brilliant cast members like William Sanderson (E.B. Farnum) and Ian McShane (Al Swearengen) delivered Shakespearian soliloquies chock full of profanity.
So you'd be forgiven for questioning Funhouse Lounge's plan to improvise new episodes in front of a live audience using local volunteer actors. But this rough, crude and hilarious approximation should tide you over until the feature film spinoff we've been promised actually goes into production.
Even before the rustic Americana strains of something like the Deadwood theme music began on opening night, the audience contributed wildcard plot points: someone's horse "breaks down" and another character has a secret laudanum habit. Actors immediately wove those curveballs into the "script," then a procession of characters like Calamity Jane and Wild Bill ambled through an awkward new episode.
Rumors flew when one citizen spotted a mysterious "character" in Deadwood city and the actors began riffing on the show's tropes in a succession of short scenes that followed like a clunky wagon wheel. Wild Bill turned out to be the laudanum abuser and continually asked after his hat, which was always on top of his head. And I lost count of how many times the lights and music cued for the next scene in the middle of a speech by the surly puppet who portrays foulmouthed brothel proprietor Al Swearengen. Eventually the haphazard darkness and sound glitches became a running gag.
Being a small production, Deadwood Unscripted is saved by its large cast. No one star carries the entire play. Instead, it's a showcase of stumbles and misspeaks from everyone. But the fuckups are the funniest bits, and that's a rare boon in a genre that often feels awkward. While Sean Lamb stood out as E.B. Farnum—one of the most endearing and loquacious Deadwood characters—even he outrageously overdid the voice, mannerisms and thesaurus peeks.
That's not to say it's inaccurate. Like the original, Deadwood Unscripted is coarse, uncouth, violent and vulgar. Characters pull guns, swill whiskey and laudanum, and humans fuck puppets (not that there's anything wrong with that). If anything, this rough carbon copy proved the merits of its source material. At the opening, one obnoxious woman in the audience kept repeating, "I've never even seen the show!" But she laughed through the rest of it as much as anyone, and that is to say, everyone.
Fans will lament that Deadwood ended too soon, but Funhouseâs parody hints that the best may be yet to come in this amateur spinoffâso long as the next six âepisodesâ donât clean up too much. Puppet-fucking and all, this is a rough production thatâs all the funnier for its frayed ends.
SEE IT: Deadwood Unscripted is at Funhouse Lounge, 2432 SE 11th Ave., 841-6734. 7 pm Thursdays-Saturdays through Sept. 26. $12-$16 (pay-what-you-want Thursdays).
WWeek 2015