BASTARDS!
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Scripted by Hoffman and Michael Monterastelli, with help from the cast, Bastards! tries desperately to be offensive. It showcases a whole collection of blind jokes, and features both its women characters getting beaten up. It wants very much to imitate Metraform’s 78 RPM formula of the surreal and the mundane, but unlike Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack, Manson the Musical, and other tasteless but hilarious productions by Metraform, Bastards! doesn’t meet its own goal–to make us laugh, groan, and generally be amazed by its genius and stupidity.
Instead it plays somewhere in the middle–never quite striking the one genuine odd note that would raise it above its own absurdity, never quite hitting the lunacy or grossness that separate a Metraform show from the rest. Bastards! plays like a frat talent show: basically good boys trying real hard to be bad. Bastards! just isn’t offensive enough for its own good. Instead it’s riddled with cliches and goofy vaudevillian antics, with lots of bat swinging, slapstick violence, bug-eyed horror, even a woman gagged and bound.
