May 14th, Jeff Grygny came to Play in a Day 3 and wrote this review, submitted it to The Shepherd Express unsolicited. It wasn't published because The Shep already had a reviewer on the show, but they gave Jeff some other reivew writing assignments, and we like the review, so I'm publishing it here.

Play in a Day 3: The Musical

2008 by Jeff Grygny

 “Play in a Day 3” was the unholy offspring of a group of good-looking, talented, yet thoroughly insane kids, who vowed to write and perform an entire musical in twenty four hours: an amazing feat of bravado that they actually pulled off, despite a script, set, costumes, props, and music all assembled overnight, and a title cobbled from audience suggestions at the last minute by the sleep-deprived master of ceremonies. The cut-up title, something like “Seventeen Serpentine Patches for Hannah Montana”, fit the product pretty well: a patched-together Frankenstein’s monster of “High School Musical”, “Rocky Horror Picture Show”, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, and “Doctor Who”.

The exciting thing about watching these brave thespians feeling their way through caffeine buzz and short-term memory strain is that you never really can tell whether they’re going to make it to the end of the scene. I must confess to laughing immoderately when I wasn’t frozen in suspense by actors playing without a net. When a gag hits the mark, it’s even funnier because you know full well how lucky the shot was. With no time to think or edit, it felt as if we were given access to the swampy yearnings and inchoate images directly from the player’s raw unconscious. It’s a story that the audience fills in, like tse sntncs wht ms f t ltrs rmvd. Fascinating.

I never imagined that characters could have less than one dimension; they were ciphers, helium balloons on which to hang the tatters of a story more like an episodic dream than a plot:  the head cheerleader and head jock (both of whom make surprising discoveries about their sexual identities);  the hapless principal, trying vainly to maintain order in chaos;  the evil biology teacher transforming students into vampires for the sake of research grants; the autistic nerd transformed by “vampire serum” into a playboy, and the stoner chick who, given the necessary fuzziness of the whole endeavor, gave perhaps the most believable performance of all.

And then there were the aliens: the leader of the Galactic Rebellion (of the future!) and her evil brother bent on her destruction, who both somehow needed to infiltrate an earth high school, leading to dialog like:

 “Funny, we’re graduating together but I don’t remember ever talking to you.”

 “Perhaps we have spoken many times but you simply do not remember”

“No, I don’t think so…”

The actors pull their alien characters wholesale out of their --imaginations-- with silly walks, a weird form of speech that sometimes lapses into gutter Shakespeare, and advanced technology made of aluminum foil-- and in one case, a grotesque stuffed animal. Somehow everybody ends up on “Vampire Island” in a chunky stew of evil science, intergalactic intrigue and unrequited high school crushes. Predictably, mayhem ensues. We get a few highly unpolished songs and a valiant attempt at a musical finale, including the lyrics “we do a jazz square and another jazz square.” Like a dog walking on two legs, the amazing feat is that they can do it at all.  Altogether ridiculous, trashy, and highly entertaining tripe.