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Dry campsites and clear skies are coming, and Mayor Charlie Hales just OK'd our plans for summer campouts on city sidewalks. But the Aces' National Forest tops all that. Michael Fetters and Shelley McLendon's newest sketch-comedy show takes us camping now, in Old Town.
One of Portland's oldest comedy duos, this is the Aces' fifth show in five years, but their first in McLendon's new Siren Theater, which opened last October. "It looked like an elementary school cafeteria when we got it," McLendon said.
The show is a wacky camping trip that turns this spacious, white-brick theater space with concrete floors and yellow folding chairs into what looks like the Lost Lake Campground, complete with fresh firewood, red flannel shirts and a full-sized wooden canoe that Fetters built. "We can fit in it and row, but it has wheels. It's a stage canoe," McLendon explained while the show was still in rehearsals.
Part Oregon Trail and part Wes Anderson, National Forest's dozen or so sketches include bits about summer camp, where a counselor turns every campfire song into a rant against the patriarchy, and elfin fairies perform mating rituals while playing recorders. Fetters shows his uncanny knack for physical characterizations, equally believable as a hunched, yet alert, raccoon and a gung-ho camp counselor with his hand on a jaunty hip. And Marshall Bradley is a hilarious third wheel, making cameos as a distraught camper in short shorts and an automated paper-towel dispenser.
This is dialogue-based, character-driven humor instead of slapstick—a show where the jokes might be over-the-top, but Fetters and McLendon ground them with intelligent pauses and deadpan expressions. "It's comedy for patient people," says McLendon. While sketch comedy tends to be self-indulgent and overdrawn, the Aces know how to quit when they're ahead, ending each sketch with a welcomingly abrupt punch.
No one is expecting nostalgia for the collective memories of summertime camping trips in an Old Town entertainment hole. But the duo gives us painfully true-to-life skits about raccoons who steal your food and dignity, the floors of quarter-powered showers and that overly cheery camp counselor.
The Aces exit as they entered, playing a bourgeois couple that rides into the campsite on a canoe with drinks in hand. Peaches and Herb may not know how to paddle or pitch a tent, but they're taking you on the best camping trip you'll get this side of July Fourth.
National Forest is at the Siren Theater, 315 NW Davis St. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, through March 12. $15-$20.
Willamette Week