Cookin' at the Nanta Theater

Nanta, originally uploaded by tgolamb.

Today Sue and I went to a live performance called Cookin'. It's sort of a mixture of Jackie Chan, Benihana, and the Marx Brothers. The theater is smallish and cozy, which is good because it's one of those shows where everyone gets involved. It is not only entertaining, it is great fun. It was very entertaining and probably one of the best shows I've been to in a very long time.

At two points in the show they come into the audience to solicit help... well actually you are volunteered. The first couple of people had easy expectations of them. They had to taste some soup. No problem.

Later on in the program they had a place in the program where they had a dumpling making contest between the four people (two on each team). Anyway, there was lots of physical activity going on... beating things, making dumplings, etc. All to music. At one point one of the guys came into the audience and grabbed a woman in the audience to help make dumplings. With her helping the other person on the team, he ran into the audience again. OK, you guessed it... he grabbed me! (I had a sneaking suspicion, being the only white guy in the whole theater)

So here I was... wearing a chef's hat, slamming some sort of post into a stump, and then when the dumplings were made, running in front putting the pan of dumplings in the stack and then yelling the new count to the audience. After a time of two, the guy who recruited me gave me his job of crashing the rolling pin into a pile of dough. Now I was slamming the post with one hand, beating the dough with the rolling pin with the other, and then running down and stacking the dumplings when they were ready. About two thirds of the way through the exercise I looked around, the four people recruited from the audience were the only ones on the stage. The performers had totally left the stage and were watching us behind the curtain. What a laugh! We just kept going, and some woman I never saw before and I won the dumpling competition. I felt like one on the Blue Men Group up there beating on things in front of an entire stage audience. It was a lot of fun, and from Sue's estimation (and some other Korean I met as we were walking out), I did pretty good. I never thought about all the people watching me, I just gave it my best, and had a terrific time.

Aside from my playing a part in this show, it was a fun time and one performance I can recommend you see if it ever comes your way.