Inside a Broken Clock...

For the love of all that helps us avoid responsibility in life, THIS SHOW IS GOOD.

Our girlfriend picked up tickets to Inside a Broken Clock: a Tom Waits Peepshow for this past weekend’s showing at Victory Grill. We were skeptical about the whole thing, because we have a really unhealthy respect (read: disturbing and borderline criminal fascination) for the work of Waits. And we have a nagging suspicion that the world is hell-bent on ruining all interpretations of the things we hold dear. But this time… this time was different.

The title of this cabaret show is a reference to the opening line of "Rain Dogs", off the album of the same name. We love this song. In fact, if we were born fifty years earlier, we would probably have been a New Orleans Rain Dog. That, or in politics. But that’s just a question of locational semantics.

You do not have to be a Tom Waits fan to enjoy this show. At least three of the Kitty Kitty Bang Bang girls are part of the act (we recognized them from our Extravagasm experience). The show is divided up like an old fashioned Revue (many thanks, Odam, for the typo correction!), or (as they put it) Peep Show (which is just the slutty cousin of the Revue). Each act is transitioned by the narrator, who sometimes takes the stage as main performer. There are shit-talking puppets, dancing skeletons, a drunken narrator, chicks shaking their bloomered money-makers (cabaret style, word), and some dude who sounds EXACTLY like Tom Waits singing live. If that is not enough to stir your interest, then you are a cold-souled communist robot, and there is no reasoning with the likes of you.

Our experience occurred at Victory Grill, which has a certain personality of its own. A very different personality than Arts on Real does, to be sure. But the more polished atmosphere at AoR might give the show an element of irony that would make even Tom Waits proud.

There are three shows playing at Arts on Real theatre (map): one on November 4th (7:30 pm) and two on November 5th (7:30 pm and 10 pm). Get those tix here.