Founded in 1998 by comedian Eugene Pak, Celebrity Autobiography presents celebrities reading passages from other celebrity (you guessed it) autobiographies. The show played on Bravo in 2005, and has run regularly in New York since 2008; in 2009 it won the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. Celebrity Autobiography has been playing in San Francisco thanks to SF Sketchfest for 11 years now, and, this year, I decided to take it upon myself to review it, so as to encourage newbies to check out what I consider to be Sketchfest’s hands down, funniest show.
The show never fails to induce OMG-I-Can’t-Stop laughter, thanks to the always passionate, over the top, and fearless readings by the performers. This year’s show, held Sunday, Jan. 20th at San Francisco’s Marines’ Memorial Theatre, maintained that standard, and didn’t fail to elicit riotous laughs from the appreciative audience.
Creator Eugene Pak introduced us to the show by explaining its origins. One day in a bookstore, he explained, he came across Vanna White’s autobiography Vanna Speaks. Intrigued, he flipped through its pages, marveling over a passage in which White talked about continuing to flip the letters on Wheel of Fortune even after a wardrobe malfunction involving a broken belt. Stumbling across that passage led to Pak’s light bulb moment: why not make a whole show out of such passages? The material writes itself. Indeed, every word we were about to hear, he told us, is actually printed in the books being read; nothing is improved, or made up by the performers. Pak went on to say that, over the years, the show has included such themes as: Women Who Have Slept With Burt Reynolds; Tori, Aaron, and Candy: AKA, the Spelling Bee; and He Said/She Said — celebrity perspectives on the same event. With such comedic gold in mind, we settled in for our first reader.
Actor and comedian Michael Hitchcock started us off, reading from Justin Bieber’s First Step 2 Forever: My Story. Hitchcock embodied the 16-year old Bieber to the hilt, exclaiming, “I don’t!!” with youthful confidence in response to a question about ever getting nervous on tour. An anecdote about opening for Taylor Swift with a broken foot provided even more head shaking laughter.
Next, actress and fellow Christopher Guest collaborator Jennifer Coolidge regaled us with a reading from Ivana Trump’s The Best is Yet to Come: Coping with Divorce and Enjoying Life Again. Coolidge, who paused to put her blonde hair up just like her subject, nailed the former Mrs. Trump’s Czech accent. Passages about wanting to take all her readers for a cup of tea, and her “recipe for raising kids” were particularly delightful. A part about her son Eric “crying for hours” after skiing lessons as a young boy took on new meaning, knowing what we know now about the adult Eric, some 20+ years after Ivana’s book was written. And the audience gave a collective eye roll at Ivana’s unapologetic declaration that she “wouldn’t go to Harlem at four in the morning because you’re asking for trouble.”
Our other readers for the night were comedian Cristela Alonzo, actor Ed Begley, Jr., actor and comedian (and another Christopher Guest alum) Michael McKean, playwright and original Celebrity Autobiography performer Dayle Reyfel, comedian and Saturday Night Live original cast member Laraine Newman, and Pak himself. Alonzo read Beyoncé’s Soul Survivor: The Official Autobiography of Destiny’s Child, channeling Beyoncé as she exclaimed, “I gain weight in my thighs! I’m human!” and, “Once in a while I look downright gross!” Again, as Pak emphasized at the show’s start: none of these words are made up; each author wrote them down, and they ended up on the printed page, for our performers to read aloud to us, as we wiped away tears of laughter.
Other gems included Begley, Jr. reading from what started it all: Vanna Speaks; Reyfel reading Diana Ross’s Secrets of a Sparrow; and Michael McKean and Newman bringing Gregg Allman’s My Cross to Bear to life, with McKean voicing Allman’s passages, and Newman reading the parts about Allman’s former flame Cher, whom Allman describes as smelling “like I would imagine a mermaid would smell.” Newman did a dead-on Cher impression, and the parts about Allman and Cher’s amorous encounters (“We made serious love,” Allman reports) drew some of the night’s biggest laughs.
What Pak termed “mash ups” were also highlights. Here, our illustrious readers alternated takes on the same subject from different celebrities. Newman, Reyfel, and Pak, for example, read hilarious bits about various food proclivities and diets from, respectively, Oprah (Food, Health, and Happiness), Dolly Parton (My Life and Other Unfinished Business), and Neil Sadaka (Laughter in the Rain: My Own Story). Newman was glorious as Oprah, describing the benefits of chai tea; Reyfel killed it reading a passage by Parton in which Parton advocates chewing food for its taste, but not swallowing it, so as not to gain weight (i.e., “What’s more disgusting? Spitting out food, or being a LARD ASS!?” Seriously; Parton wrote that); and Pak had us in stitches with his dramatic reading of Sadaka’s various food preferences (“No onions because of my digestive condition.”).
Mash ups about the Kardashians, Broadway experiences, and sports figures made us realize exactly why the “mash up” technique was so effective. McKean’s take on David Hasselhoff’s Jekyll and Hyde debut from Don’t Hassel the Hoff was especially illuminating, and Newman’s reading of the late Carol Channing earned special applause. Begley, Jr. channeled Joe Namath’s obsession with his hair, and Pak managed to making a description of Tiger Woods’s putting routine seem exceptionally erotic.
But the show’s big closing number was by far the best part of the evening, capturing the spirit of everything that had preceded it in one wild, crazy, laugh-‘til-it-hurts, giant he said/she said mash up. Here, the cast took on what Pak aptly termed “the greatest love triangle in history”: the Eddie Fisher/Debbie Reynolds/Elizabeth Taylor affair (for those millennials reading this who may not be aware of this infamous early 1960s scandal, think Brad/Jennifer/Angelina). We were treated to Reyfel reading Reynolds’s My Life, in the sweetest, most heartbreaking voice ever, as Reynolds shruggingly admits, after Taylor stole her husband Eddie Fisher, that she, Debbie, could understand why, since she, as she writes, and as Reyfel read forlornly, “wasn’t good in bed, and didn’t make a good gefilte fish.” Coolidge excelled as well, doing her breathiest Taylor, reading from Elizabeth Taylor: “Oh, Debbie: Don’t be such a girl scout!” Pak, as Fisher, reading from My Life, My Loves, hilariously displayed Fisher’s confusion with more trademark dramatic pauses. Also on stage again were McKean, doing a terrific Welsh accent as Taylor’s lover Richard Burton (“Has anyone ever told you you’re a verrrrrrry pretty girl?” McKean-as-Burton drawled seductively), Begley, Jr. as Taylor’s third husband Mike Todd, and Alonzo, who nearly stole the show in small parts as a telephone operator, a maid, and a gossip columnist. In her book, Reynolds says she called the Plaza Hotel on a suspicion, and discovered Taylor and Fisher’s tryst; in Fisher’s book, he claims the opposite: that, in an act of integrity, he and Taylor called Reynolds first. To hear these differing takes on the same incident, as expressed by these consummate comedians, is to appreciate anew the tragedy and comedy that mark the love lives of the rich and famous.
The show is worth checking out for this grand finale alone, as its high comedic caliber makes the $50 ticket price somewhat more palatable. With the ticket price in mind, though, and with so many Sketchfest shows to consider each year, I do have one caveat to offer. The four times I’ve seen Celebrity Autobiography here in SF as part of Sketchfest, the show repeated many of the same readings, and has always concluded with the Fisher/Reynolds/Taylor piece. Of course, every year different celebrities are tapped for the readings, so if there’s a particular performer you’d like to see who’s on the roster, you may still want to go twice or more. But, if not, once is enough to enjoy this blast of a show, and to make you want to read more trashy celebrity autobiographies aloud to your friends.
—————————-
More information about Celebrity Autobiography and tickets to upcoming shows can be found here.
