STUMPY’S GANG . . . A COMIC MUTATION
The newest member of the cast is Booger, who consists almost entirely of a periscope eye and a ventral vagina with a prehensile clitoris through which she feeds. On this day Booger turns on her savior, eating Frank’s entire hoard of Twinkies, his obnoxious coworker, his intimidating supervisor, and eventually the whole world. In despair at the Frankenstein he has created, Frank commits suicide, climbing into his own fiery furnace at the beckoning of a clown-host mentor. A video then shows Frank entering heaven–labeled Frank’s Show, and populated by such angels as Froggy Gremlin, Kukla and Ollie, Howdy Doody, and of course, Stumpy and Gristle.
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Stumpy’s Gang is not perfect by any means. There’s something discomfiting about a play in which Germans are equated with Nazis, and which has as its villain a devouring vagina with teeth–one gets the feeling that these things were not central to Cannon’s purpose. Cannon seems to be striving to say something significant and thought provoking about the psychopathology of our times, however, and his success is not as important as the attempt to go beyond the facile formulas. It may sound strange to say that I liked Stumpy’s Gang because it made me sick, but–well, let me put it this way: the play finished at 9:30, and at 1 AM, the folks at the bar next door were still discussing it. Could you imagine that happening with Pump Boys and Dinettes?
