The capacity crowd anxiously waited as the de rigueur five minute late curtain extended to ten minutes, and when the lights went black and the music began its loud throbbing, the crowd erupted with expectation.  They were not disappointed.

JoeDog, (aka) Josh T. Ryan appears doing a Fonz, slowly combing his hair;  but not just combing the hair – loving – caressing – worshipping the hair with his comb as he moves from one part of the stage area to the other.

Ordinarily a man combing his hair is no big deal.  But this is Josh T. Ryan, who’s so intense he can reduce anyone to tears just by reading the phone book.  This is the Ryan of a thousand faces – of a plethora of expressions – of a million moves.  To say that this is a one man show would be a gross understatement.  It’s more like a show of dozens of men with one man doing all the parts.  So when Josh combs his hair there is an uncommon artistry and expression, and a deconstruction of the action that lets the audience explore the minute intricacies of one of the most common acts, and gives us an inside glimpse of puffery and arrogance at their best.

The only connection (that we know of) between the seventeen tabloids offered, is that the audience howls with laughter every time.  Other than that, the Colonel Saito from the Bridge on The River Kwai, is just as compelling and comic as the Chicken Boy, or the rude Irish lad who can’t pronounce “rude”, but all the characters are about as different from each other as the Jamaican Bob Sled team is to the Austrian Limbo dancers.

When Josh tells his Scary Story, his story is really scary, and when he shows a White Boy breaking it down, you know this man is a genius in progress.  The title piece was the most poignant as it shows actual photos of Josh as a baby through his teen years, but the closing Sip of Lemonade was one of the funniest.

The number of people who do a one person show keeps growing, but the number who can do it with intelligence, style and creativity and still deliver a meaningful message is dwindling.  Put Josh Ryan at the head of this elite line, for he is one of the few who sees the little human foibles and turns the mirror back so we can see their absurdity.  His sarcasm is biting and his jabs poke deep, sometimes too uncomfortably, but always wrapped in humor so no matter how piercing, there is a comforting message that there are many people just as zany and that there is a way out – no matter how deep and black the sludge.  That’s something one can laugh about. 

For a laugh-a-thon like only Zombie Joe can provide, come and wallow in the Sludge before the show closes on July 31, 2004.

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Produced and Directed by Zombie Joe

Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre

4850 Lankershim Blvd

North Hollywood, CA