ME, ME, ME, ME, ME!, at Famous Door Theatre. Todd Petersen offers his own five ages of man in a solo show he created with director Patrick New.
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At 45 minutes Me, Me, Me, Me, Me! is not exactly overdeveloped, but it’s a sweet-tempered look at the discontinuities that together forge a personality. Resembling Lily Tomlin’s bratty, adenoidal Edith Ann, the first “me” is PJ, a twerpy thespian toddler who turns his mother’s force-feeding of mashed potatoes into his first Big Scene. PJ evolves into Peter Jonathan Brendemuhl, a reluctant Boy Scout merrily succumbing to make-believe a la Pee-wee Herman: he awards himself an imaginary Tony and as a talk-show host offers Julie Andrews a very forced medley of her greatest hits. A decade later pot-smoking Peter is a closeted gay actor who, despite his denials, falls in and out of love with a cute colleague. John B, the victim of bad affairs and chemical dependency, has become an insecure New Age convert experimenting with abstinence and affirmations. Finally, middle-aged Uncle Pete settles for contentment with his companion Joe. Nothing “cataclysmic” has ever happened to him, but he has his teenage nephews to spoil and Joe to help jump-start his memory.
