Some of my favorite Celebration Theater actors and some I’m just now
discovering are currently delighting “late night” audiences with one of
the funniest hours I’ve spent in a theater recently. Composed of 20 short
playlets, Milk Cartons and Other Places to Find Yourself, a new sketch
comedy “experience” created by Rob Mello and Todd Milliner and
directed by Mello, gives each cast member a chance to shine and
provoke belly laughs. 

Jill Benjamin is very good at playing annoying/neurotic, Maia Madison is a
true master of dialects (her phone operator must be heard to be
believed), and Jason Moyer excels at playing “the gay parts,” especially in
a hilarious phone sketch skit opposite Michael Tauzin’s outrageous
Bangladeshi phone sex operator.  Sarah Taylor (magnificent in the recent
Beautiful Thing) proves herself a fine (and obscene) singer/guitarist in
“Song Slut” and hot-bodded Jon Wellner abandons his Jewish nerd
persona as hilariously gay for pay Russian guy Oleg. Michael Shepard is a
riot opposite a funny Justin O’Connor and others in a sketch skewering
racism and homophobia. Arguably the best/funniest/most touching/most
Celebration-appropriate sketch features the always wonderful (and cute
as a button) Nathan Frizzell and his Beautiful Thing partner Tauzin (this is
one amazing actor) in a Spelling Bee skit which turns into an unexpectedly
touching coming out/first love story.  Special praise to straight but not
narrow Tauzin for writing this one.

Some of the skits fizzle instead of sizzle, but overall Milk Cartons and Other
Places to Find Yourself is a great way to spend an hour laughing at our
human foibles. Closes August 18th; Performances every Friday and
Saturday, 10.30 pm, following the main stage production Still Photos);
Tickets $10 ($5 if you purchase a ticket to Still Photos)  Tickets: 323.957.1884

--Steven Stanley