Imagine an inimitable shift in the universe that causes a door to the 4th Dimension to open that allows you to peek inside for ninety minutes; what you see would probably resemble a performance by The Fort Bragg Footlighters. I have seen a lot of theater, concerts, ballet, opera, and live performances in my lifetime and nothing, and I mean NOTHING prepared me for what I witnessed on stage. It was as if John Waters' Dreamlanders made a clandestine move from their hometown of Baltimore and set up production in Fort Bragg, California.
The performance I attended was titled, "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" or "Oh, Whoa is me!" The story is about a dastardly opportunist who strategizes the fleecing of a widow out of her home unless she can produce the deed that was hidden by her late husband. Chaotically spinning around the story are a handful of vaudeville-type vignettes involving a ghost, an escaped mental patient (played authentically by Jamie Medley) pursued by two inept hospital medics, a Keystone Cop who's in love with a snarky chambermaid, an "Egg Lady" (Yes, you read that right), a damsel in distress, and orchestrating all this madness is the show's host, Joseph Servko, who also plays the villain and is the apparent glue that holds this labor of love together. There are also three sing-along numbers where the audience is required to sing all three songs...twice!
"No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" was performed on the stage of the Footlighers Little Theatre and from what a couple of the actors told me before the performance, the story of how the building was nearly fleeced from them by a local television studio uncannily mirrors what is played out on stage (you can read about it here: https://www.mendocinobeacon.com/2009/08/13/footlighters-suing-community-tv/). The theater is old and in need of repair; shingles are detaching from the façade, the top layer of one of the plywood exit doors has completely peeled away, the outside desperately needs a coat of paint, but when you enter the building, you are transported back to a time when vaudeville was king.
David Lynch and Harmony Korine only wish they had the innate genius to create something so pure and genuine. The Fort Bragg Footlighters perform every Wednesday and Saturday from Memorial Day to Labor Day and if you are visiting from out of town, it would be a crime to miss their truly one-of-a-kind musical extravaganza. I completely LOVED what I witnessed and if I lived in Fort Bragg, I would attend each performance by The Footlighters every time they stepped on a stage. read more