Pity Pity Bang Bang

     Yesterday my daughter and I went to see "Pity Pity Bang Bang,"  an original sketch comedy about living with disabilities.  It was done by the Phamaly Theater company (formerly known as the Physically Handicapped Actors and Musical Artists League.)  We have previously been to a couple of musicals they have done but this is the first show I've seen that they have written.
     It was absolutely fantastic, done in the manner of Saturday Night Live.....drop dead funny, sometimes raunchy, sometimes heartbreaking.  I hope my descriptions can do them a little justice.
      There was the sketch by Paul who is blind and deaf, with bilateral cochlear implants, he called himself a modern day Helen Keller.  The sketch was called "Dyslexia in Dots."  He talked about learning braille as a child in a Catholic school taught by nuns, and how he couldn't distinguish between Ds and Fs.  He was spot on in imitating the nun's voices as he read aloud in a little child's voice.  He said that to this day he hates those god-damned little f....klings from the book.
       They did a skit about late-night product advertisements, and about new condom packages with braille writing so you can solve that pesky problem about distinguishing between mints and condoms in your pants pockets. You can visualize the hysterical scenes in demonstrating the need for this new product.
       Stephanie is a tiny older woman with cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair.  One of her sketches was "I got this" and was about surviving another day.  It was about locking her keys in her apt., and trying to figure out how to get back in.  She did wheelies on the sidewalk outside her apt. in Arvada for hours while contemplating what to do.  Finally she elevated her wheelchair to its utmost, and after more hours of trying, reached a lockbox to retrieve a key.  She survived another day.  But if she ever didn't, we will probably find her dead on the sidewalks of Arvada.
      She had a one-liner about how her Aide puts her pants on one leg at a time.....just like we do.
      And when they did a routine on how to distinguish if your partner is having an orgasm or a seizure, she did an impeccable imitation of the scene from "When Harry met Sally,"  the "I'll have what she's having" scene. You don't expect this from a tiny older woman in a wheelchair.
      Two  women who have great difficulty talking, one with Parkinson's disease and one who has had eight brain surgeries, did a sketch where they were in customer service at a cable company.  A frantic  customer whose service had gone out in the middle of an important football game, called in.  They each tried to assist him, one speaking slower and more succinctly, than the other.  The caller kept asking to speak with someone higher up. Finally one of them spoke very slowly in a marked Hindi accent trying to assist.  The caller was so frustrated, he demanded to speak to an American.  This time the actor who has had all the brain surgeries responded by imitating the voice recording of a very slow US telephone automation queue. It was spot on.
      There was a tribute to Robin Williams. This was done by Lucy, the tall slender woman with Parkinson's, who has a great deal of trouble walking and talking.  She had met Robin three times, most recently at a Michael J Fox Parkinson's fund-raiser.  As she stood there alone in the spot-light, holding her eyes open with her shaking fingers because often they remain closed on their own, she talked about Robin's recent diagnosis with Parkinson's.  She mentioned that it makes your body move frenetically, but that it freezes your face into a clown-face, and how that diagnosis must have affected a prominent person such as him. And she said how her membership in Phamaly has helped, and how if he had had a Phamaly to talk to or if he had joined their Phamaly, he might still be around. Not a dry eye in the house.