One Man Star Wars
Lisa and I caught One Man Star Wars at the Post Street Theatre up in San Francisco the other weekend. I vaguely remember seeing a video clip of the performance a year or more ago, but seeing it in person is totally different.
Charles “one man” Ross runs through Episodes 4-6 in about an hour, blazing through each one in 20 minutes. I was expecting a longer show, but he condenses the script considerably. It doesn’t hurt that he talks incredibly fast as well. True to the name of the show, Charles is the only person on the stage. He has no props, unless you include Charles himself. He makes do with personal sound effects and his four appendages. Try to imagine a five year old acting out Star Wars for the family. It’s kind of like that, complete with the *pee-ow* *pee-ow* of laser blasters and the *wom* *wom* of a lightsaber (or however you spell them). He does an amazing Jabba the Hutt, too. He pays extra attention to the well known lines and scenes from the movies, which is awesome.
After his show he mentioned that he was heading out of the country for some shows but that he’d be back in the Bay Area soon (April, I think). If you get a chance, I totally recommend seeing his show. One word of advice, however. If you’re not very familiar with the plot lines from the movies, you should take a refresher course. Lisa got lost a few times, mostly because Charles was just running around on stage acting out space fights with things blowing up. You really have to remember how those space fights go to figure out that he’s not having a seizure, he’s just acting.
