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Arts and Entertainment

Lost steam

Snowdown barely channels Steampunk in this year’s Follies

Hairy legs exposed, the inimitable Dave Imming used to parade as Tinker Bell in a queen-size costume. Once upon a time he also played Big Jim, leader of the Durango Danglers. With frying pan cod pieces, the band made the most of song and dance.

For Snowdown Follies 2015, Imming has donned a respectable frock coat, vest and top hat, looking for all to behold as if he were Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days.” What happened?

This year, Imming has toned things down at the Follies. So has the whole enterprise. Gone is the biting social satire of earlier days when the Durango City Council, the county manager and the The Durango Herald took so many hits you lost track. Maybe the Steampunk theme caught Follies loyalists off guard. Few acts linked to the colorful, Victorian vision of the future. This year’s show was a mixed bag. Is it losing steam as well as bite?

That said, and I’m getting too serious, at least the emcees looked good if a bit too droll. Only a handful of numbers got into the spirit of Steampunk.

Imming appeared as Dr. What to Rebecca Gilbert’s Shirley Holmes. Their dry banter set up each of 10 variety show pieces. “Good Vibes” imaginatively connected to the theme. Baudi and Sandra Shellnut welcomed the zany Lisa Zwisler to a new, aka 1890, Durango treatment center for female hysteria. Performed silent-film style to jaunty piano accompaniment, Zwisler entered a vibrating cabinet and reacted with wide-eyed wonder. It was over before the earth moved.

“Condom Kiosk” coiled around an interview format where men appeared behind a shadow screen for a fitting. The visual joke imaginatively addressed the old “size matters” conundrum.

After intermission, emcees Titus Punderbush (Dan Brown) and Naomi Ramsbottom (Dawn Kast) launched another vaudeville bag of mixed tricks. In “Time Machine,” Steve Govreau and Bob Griffith tumbled on stage from the past as H. G. Wells and the fictional Captain Nemo. They fell into today’s Durango and couldn’t believe what they saw – a lot of bad taste but great beer. They reappeared later in the show and noted that Francisco’s had become the Durango Pot Emporium. This clever duo could have navigated the whole show.

Ditto Greg Hoch and Kelly Haun as Alexander Graham Bell and an admirer. Old-fashioned conversation got a high-tech twist in “Auto Correct” through Bell’s magic voice box. As Hoch and Haun cranked away, their words and misunderstandings appeared on a center stage screen. Thank you, Stephen Colbert.

Alas, most acts relied on lip-synced music and dancing. A few local figures and issues got brief mentions; J. Paul Brown, Duke Schirard, and Sweetie Marbury got one nod each. Legalized pot and public art got a little stage time, but mostly the fun centered on the pitfalls of gender tensions, Durango dating, male anxiety and female hysteria.

When Adele Nielsen appeared in a Dell box for a simple walk-on joke, I remembered her brilliant solo stories filled with off-kilter word play. In 2012, Nielson’s “Rindercella” brought down the house, the same year Dave Imming dangled about as Tinker Bell. Those were the days.

jreynolds@durangoherald.com. Judith Reynolds is a Durango writer, art historian and arts journalist.



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