The first showings of the staged reading of Joseph Zettelmaier’s “All Childish Things: Episodes I and II,” at Eastern Michigan University’s Sponberg Theatre were Friday and Saturday. The performance of “Episode III” was held Sunday afternoon.
Zettelmaier’s trilogy is about three middle-aged men and one woman who embrace the Jedi ways with adventure, danger and lots of “Star Wars” references.
Their journey is one filled with collectible “Star Wars” memorabilia, a Cincinnati crime boss and an epic quest to save the princess.
This play is hysterical with the right amount of drama to make it evenly balanced.
Though there were no props of any kind, the show went very smoothly. Because of the actors, it didn’t make a difference it was just them and nothing else. They made every second count.
There were many jokes, including character references, importance of dates and famous character lines such as, “I don’t like you either,” originally said by Dr. Evazan to Luke Skywalker.
The only slight downside to this show is if you are not a huge “Star Wars” fan you might not get all of the jokes.
“As a ‘Star Wars’ fan, I thought it was tied with Friday night’s performance for the best play ever,” said EMU senior Andy Orscheln about a later performance.
Episode I had an imaginary light saber fight and a spot-on Wookie impression from character Max Farley, played by Alex Gay.
Even though it was a stage reading, this performance was very well done. The acting was believable and the audience was caught up in the plotting of these four characters. Maxium Hunt played the ever-brilliant, yet completely dorky Dave Bullanski, the strategist behind the operation of breaking in to Kenner Toys to steal all the “Star Wars” memorabilia.
Episode II starts off just like George Lucas’ trilogies with the epic music and recap of everything the audience may have missed if they did not see the first episode.
Zettelmaier did a wonderful job making sure even if you only saw one of the shows everything still made sense.
Carter and Kendra, the newly-weds played by Lorenzo Toia and Luna Alexander, are fighting like droids and Jedi. Their fighting scenes were believable to the extent the audience was reacting to what was going on, on stage. The show was a nice blend of theater and George Lucas.
“I think we made a lot of Star Wars fans into theater fans—at least I hope so,” said cast member Lorenzo Toia.
“The audiences’ turn-out and response has been much better then I hoped,” Zettelmaier said. “I’m very pleased.”
Zettelmaier held a talk-back at the end of every show and was highly responsive to suggestions, comments and concerns.
