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Comedy sketches, much like sharks, endure as evolutionary marvels of brutal efficiency. They're borne forward on sheer momentum, form-bound to a brutal functionality and devoid of shame. As audience-servicing blends of familiarity and flattery, sketches may seem timeless, but they age poorly.
It's been four decades since Jaws re-wrote the movie business and three years since J.A.W.Z. The Musical—In 3-D re-imagined Jaws. This means nearly everyone on stage or in seats at the Alberta Rose Theatre likely learned of the film through cultural osmosis. The production's best two jokes—adding lyrics to the iconic theme music and casting a foam-clad nebbish as the toothy threat—seem stolen directly from early SNL. But their meaning seems to have been lost along the way. As opposed to SNL's stoned absurdity highlighting the silliness of Hollywood, Portland's Saloon Kingdom show is a frenetic mishmash of grotesques and banjoists.
It could never have turned out well. Three years ago, following his troupe's tweaked re-imagining of The Nightmare Before Christmas, Saloon Kingdom maestro Jason Wells marched his band of damaged-roots provocateurs to a screening of Jaws and, for reasons that defy understanding, he set the performers loose upon an epic parody.
Jaws isn't the blockbuster blueprint subsequent generations might expect. Leaving aside the impossibility of mimicking Spielbergian techniques via theater and ignoring the gall of attempting performances more over the top than a young Richard Dreyfuss or a drunk Robert Shaw, the original simply doesn't have the grist for scattershot satire. A de facto remake might try and get around its own uselessness by upping the mayhem, twisting the plot and pitching all dialogue as psychotic break, but the Jaws 3-D movie already perfected that approach.
By even the tail-chasing standards of pop culture parodies, this remake has been done. By the time Saloon Kingdom readied its version for previews, a troupe at the Minnesota Fringe Festival had already laid claim to a properly-spelled Jaws The Musical. âJaws The Musicalâ dates back to a Mad magazine cartoon libretto and an â80s standup routine. More to the point, since J.A.W.Z. debuted in 2013, there has been a groundswell of iconic films rendered anthemic pastiche by ramshackle companies at nontraditional venues.
While these other productions might not boast the well-drilled professionalism and engaging talents currently treading the J.A.W.Z. stage, at least wringing comic operetta from Top Gun or tweaking Flash Gordon toward Queen musical are original ideas. Keep retracing such shallow seas and you're going to need a smarter boat.
SEE IT: J.A.W.Z. The Musical—In 3D is at Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055. 9 pm Thursday-Friday, July 2-3. $25.
WWeek 2015
