A good one for me personally, and for the show, but a lousy one for blogging. Like a lot of people, I ended up putting way more energy into my Twitter feed than keeping up a blog — why say something in 2 paragraphs if 140 characters will do? — and while I can’t promise to do better in the new decade, I do thank all of you who keep me bookmarked or on your RSS feed for keeping the faith. Me = Godot, almost.

And,  As I’ve been saying to my colleagues, this may have been the best year ever for Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.  There were a lot of specific highlights — our show at Carnegie Hall high among them — but mostly, it had a lot to do with the addition of two new staff members, Ian Chillag and Eva Wolchover.  Along with Mike Danforth, our Senior Producer, and producer Emily Ecton, we had as much fun behind the scenes as, hopefully, you all do listening in, and I think it really showed.

I am always mindful of the fact that, like Tinkerbell (a character conceived of by a playwright, I note) we don’t exist without your applause. If people didn’t listen, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy ourselves so much making noise. So let me end the year — from an undisclosed, paradisaical location –  by saying, thank you, thank you, to each and every one of you, and we’ll try to do it again for you next year, as long as you keep allowing us.

On Saturday morning, I had the honor of moderating a Colbert Report discussion panel, part of the extraordinary Second City 50th Anniversary celebration. All of the folk you see above: writers Peter Grosz and Peter Gwinn, former exec producer Alison Silverman, co-exec producer Tom Purcell and Stephen Colbert himself, are all alumni of the Second City’s performing troupes, touring groups,  training center, and in Colbert’s case, the merchandise table. (He said that for a long time, he held the record for most T-shirts sold in one night.)  (more…)

I tweeted a very brief negative review  (”Shpathetic”) of Cirque Du Soleil’s new show at the Chicago Theater, “Banana Shpeel,” and I feel obligated to expand more…  besides, since I can’t get my money back, maybe I can keep you from wasting yours.

First, the obligatory Recitation of Credentials (all of the hate mail we get at WWDTM starts this way, too): I love me some Cirque Du Soleil. I saw their second touring tent show on a beach in Santa Monica in 1988, and have since then seen — let me see — four of their permanent shows in Vegas, one in Disney World, another touring edition, and a few more on videotape.  I celebrated my birthday last year by taking the whole family to see “Alegria,” and we walked out humming the trapeze act.  And, in fact, the four true circus acts in this show (two jugglers, two gymnast/strength acts) are up to the usual Cirque standards.

… but the rest of the show just sucked. Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune had a very interesting piece exploring the commercial rationale for the show: they want something they can tour to the large proscenium rental houses that are available in each major city (many of them, like the Pasadena Civic or the Wang in Boston are places where WWDTM now plays, so I know them well.)  He also wrote about the creative turmoil… apparently, it was planned as a real musical, with book and actors, but that wasn’t working out and they cut the songs and fired the actors.  They should have scrapped the whole thing and started again.

The show was “written” and directed by David Shiner, a very talented new vaudevillian who I saw years ago on Broadway in a double bill with Bill Irwin, called “Fool Moon,” Shiner, silent but otherwise un-clownlike in dress or demeanor, specialized in audience participation… he’d bring somebody up on stage, then somebody else, and somehow manage to coerce and cajole them into doing rather amazingly funny things. His demeanor, as I remember it, was mischievous, sometimes a little scary — but never cruel.

That cruelty is all that he’s got to offer here. The “framing device,” such as it is, is auditions for a producer’s new show. Two speaking clowns, whose schtick is that they hate each other, introduce the acts — more clowns, whom the first clowns hate, and who hate them in return. There were some fleeting moments of humor — the “World’s Oldest Mime” got some laughs — but by the long clown set-piece with an audience “volunteer” at the end of the first act (strange, the production photos feature the same “audience member” we saw) made my wife and myself stare downwards, hoping for it to be over. Can’t remember the last time I felt that at the circus.

I am usually quiet about the bad theater I see; I have committed enough myself  (and probably still do, some weeks) to know that those who make it are trying their best and don’t need somebody else out there on the internets trashing their work.  But Cirque du Soleil is  smart enough, and successful enough, that they should have known better than to foist this one on the public. Whatever they would have lost, financially, in canceling the engagement is less than the blow I think their reputation will take when more Cirque-lovers like me walk out of the theater, actually angry…