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Creative two-man show evokes comparison to comedy greats.
By Paul Hood
Andrew Conner and Mike Mathieu have been
transfixing audiences with the two-man Cody Rivers
show since September 2004, but the show has been
gelling between them for nearly a decade. When
the iDiOM theater provided a venue and a vote of
confidence for the duo, it seems everything came
together. This is a variety show in the truest
sense of the term, encompassing music, dance, drama,
mime, inventive use of multi-media, live culinary
arts, Matrix-style combat sequences, and the nearly
lost art of Bavarian water puppetry.
Not being an aficionado of live improv theater,
one-man or two-man shows, or of anything described
as wildly creative (read: embarrassingly bad
theater) I was reluctant to go at all. I was wrong
to hesitate, dead wrong. This highly scripted,
choreographed and mostly breakneckpaced show contains
no awkward moments, except those that were humorously
scripted in. Billed as a “strange and
wondrous journey,” the description is a hard
one to disagree with, but in a good way. The audience
claps and laughs in something close to awe. There
is a rumor that a few of their fans are so devoted
they have attended every single performance over
the entire six month run.
Connor and Mathieu live their art, and their entire
lives revolve around the act. Mathieu described
a “fatigue
wall” as the only real impediment to what they do. Any small eddy
of an idea for a sketch is fostered between them until it grows to a raging
torrent, thus developing to its fullest potential. Over the years Connor and
Mathieu have evolved the zeitgeist of their artistic process, with the ultimate
goal of keeping ego out of the way so that creativity can truly flourish.
So, which one is Cody Rivers? And is he from Wyoming?
Well, Mathieu is Cody on occasion; he’s a
character invented by the duo who appears and disappears
depending on the mystical needs of the moment.
Cody is something of an iconic figure, a force
of nature, unstoppable but elusive. The night I
attended, Cody himself made only brief appearance
in what I would call a live slide show, complete
with artful dissolves that told a dramatic silent
story. Moments later the action was all purple
spandex and red-glitter song and dance. Cody, a
country western star and champion bear fighter,
was gone. Actually, I’m told that Connor
and Mathieu don’t have a lot uses for Cody
of late - they just like the name, and he’s
bound to show up from time to time.
From where I sat, Mathieu dominated the stage,
and only later in the evening did Connor’s
unique chemistry hold sway. The way the two performers
are able to project their stage personas was reminiscent
of some of the great comedy teams: Martin and Lewis,
Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello or of more
recent lineage, Penn and Teller.
But Connor and Mathieu are not doing stand-up,
their sketch comedy is perhaps more comparable
to Saturday Night Live (when it peaked, many years
ago), The Daily Show, or better yet Monty Python.
I’m grasping at straws here, because there
really is no comparison. This is the next generation
of comedy. I plan to see the show again just to
make sure I didn’t miss something - the evening
flew by. All that is missing now is a film crew
and about a decade of literary analysis to get
at the Id of Cody’s psyche.
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