FRINGE 2019: Darwin not mentioned in play about Darwin
Darwin vs. Rednecks
Venue 38 (Sue Paterson Memorial Theatre)
If you show up expecting a send-up of Jeff Foxworthy one-liners about crimson-scorched knuckle draggers, you’ll be sadly disappointed. Instead, Kentucky-based standup comedian Stewart Huff has crafted a deeply-layered set of triggers pitting Right against Left and North against South – ever since the U.S. tore itself away from British colonial rule.
Huff’s verbal arsenal contains plenty of buckshot to pierce the heinies of rednecks throughout this hilarious one-hour session. Begrudgingly, though, the comic bemoans that there’s something about the down-home character of his targets that he wishes would be more prominent among the Left.
“Can we imagine if Noam Chomsky had a bit of hillbilly in him?” Huff says at one point. “Can we imagine if Ted Nugent was smart?”
We also get a crash course in the creation of the American Constitution, including one footnote that the actual ink on the document was courtesy of a peg-legged womanizer named Gouverneur Morris, whom Huff stated was totally redneck except for his revulsion of slavery. There’s also an exploration of gun culture capped by an account of coming across a Texas-based drive-thru liquor store and gun shop, aptly called The Double Shot. And he heartwarmingly states how his mentally-challenged younger sister is much smarter than he is, in that she doesn’t differentiate between race and gender: only that people are either “nice” or “mean.”
Ironically, Huff doesn’t mention Darwin once. But that’s a moot omission considering that there are still plenty of laughs for patrons who’ve reaped the cerebral benefits of natural selection.
4 out of 5
