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Two-man team cleverly navigates 'Cody Rivers' through zany waters

By Joe Adcock
P-I Theater Critic

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Everything is highly original but vaguely familiar. Everything is painstakingly crafted but wildly unpredictable. "The Cody Rivers Show" is definitely worth seeing. It is seriously funny.

"Cody Rivers" is two guys, Andrew Connor and Mike Mathieu. After training at Ohio Wesleyan University, they ended up performing at Bellingham show spots. They are clever. Their comedy is of the "I would never have thought of that in a million years" variety. In that regard, they are a little bit like the Blue Man Group or Bill Irwin.

They are now performing at Re-bar.

Cody Rivers, in case you didn't know, is a mythical country singer. Cody is this year's celebrity king of the Maizeville Corn Festival. His bad luck demonstrates how amusing humiliation can be. Hog urine is involved. The Maizeville sketch satirizes both fame and obscurity. Where fatuity is concerned, the show biz celebrity and the small-town functionary are about even.

Each of Mathieu and Connor's dozen or so sketches is satirical and zany. Everything is precisely rehearsed. It has to be. The show is so wildly physical, that if it weren't exquisitely calibrated and choreographed, Connor and Mathieu would end up unconscious and bleeding on the floor.

A film noir crime caper spoof is a dance, mime, juggling and tumbling spectacular. A basketball game pits hyperactive jocks against sly mimes. The mimes are Connor and Mathieu with white masks on the backs of their heads.

A scene between the devil and an innocent becomes a case of mistaken identity and then a case of mismatched romance. A mini-opera is a horror genre spoof, brought off with the help of wigs and puppets. The lamest number involves Teutonic exponents of the art of water puppetry. Even though the water puppet business isn't very funny, it in no way lowers the "Cody Rivers" peculiarity quotient.

Outstandingly peculiar is a number featuring cloned super heroes. Outstandingly satirical is a bit ridiculing, all at once, flashy evangelism, slick motivational huckstering, grandiose inspirational pop music and New Age vacuity. Hyperactivity, attention-deficit disorder and felony-level littering are important elements in a Mother's Day -- yes, Mother's Day -- skit.

The show's finale is a small-scale distillation of the frantic percussion virtuosity that propels the large-scale stage musical "Stomp."

I see a lot of funny entertainment in the course of my work. "The Cody Rivers Show" is the best that has come along in ... well, in a long time. Especially memorable is that basketball bit pitting cool mimes against seething jocks.

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