WAVELAND RADIO PLAYHOUSE: ON THE AIR
The most involved and lengthy adventure is from a series called Rex Koko, Private Clown; here we get one episode, “Die, Clown, Die,” which is completed over the course of the evening. Our hero, Rex Koko, has all the trappings of Sam Spade, but his business is jokes and his underworld contacts are circus folk, freaks, and critters. The story–which is outrageously complicated, full of strange twists and characters–is ultimately not very important. But the jokes and the scores of peculiar persons are, and they come at you at astounding speeds. In fact the jokes are so fast and furious that, just as in the movie Airplane, it doesn’t matter if some of them are duds–the next joke is on top of you before you know it, and sometimes they’re so funny that you lose the next three because of the laughter.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
This problem may stem from the fact that the show originated as short segments on a cable-television show. In these discrete segments, it wouldn’t matter if the behind-the-scenes antics didn’t add up to anything as long as they were funny on their own. But in a longer piece, we keep waiting for something to happen, and it never does.
