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Wham City Comedy Rides Again Just in Time For Halloween

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Baltimore-based comedy troupe Wham City Comedy has always straddled the dirty railing that is dark comedy and horror. If you’re like me, then they clearly speak to you and your spooky-365-days-a-year kind of soul. Lucky for us, they’re back again with something for those dark and rainy Halloween nights.

Wham City returns this week, with a departure from their very visual style of comedy in the form of a scary and thrilling audio book. Reverse Transmission is what I would imagine Stephen King’s Christine and Knight Rider of Hasselhoff fame would be in 2018, with a pitch black sense of humor.

Available now, Reverse Transmission tells a very Black Mirror telling of a self-driving car and its reluctant would-be driver, opening with the beginning kill. With the car voiced by Wham City’s own Alan Resnick, Reverse Transmission keeps the pace quick with a new shock and WTF moment just as you think you can relax. Spoiler Alert: Just accept that you won’t be relaxing, get comfy on that pointy edge of your hardwood chair, and you’ll be fine.

While the comparison to Knight Rider or Christine is not intentional, Wham City’s Ben O’Brien gets it. O’Brien, who directed the audio book and came up with the initial idea (along with his brother and writer Param Anand Singh), just figured that the timing for it might as well be now.

“It was such a great pitch in the sense that we knew we had to do it quickly before it got taken,” said O’Brien. “A self driving car driving people over, is so very of-the-moment right now. We were all ‘Let’s get this out there’ because it’s so very Black Mirror and other things right now, but at the same time it’s very fun and the idea just immediately excited us and pulled us into it. We developed the way the story would go, and the characters and stuff, and just let the story go from there.” 

PHOTO: Wham City Comedy

Anyone who loves Wham City Comedy as much as I do will be quick to tell you that most of their unique blend of comedy relies heavily on visual elements and cues (such as last year’s Cry of Mann, and This House Has People in It). O’Brien shared that what makes this such a departure from their previous work, and what made it more of a challenge, was the simple fact that they could not rely on the visuals for this. Their sound cues and punches had to be just right in order for it to work.

“[This] really took a learning curve for me,” said O’Brien. “Being audio, the emotions and acting, there’s a lot of emphasis on character and actor performance. If you can’t have these big visual moments, you have to rely on these big emotional moments. We tried to have a big moment in every chapter, something that was just the juicy part of that chapter.”

But will there be more audio books in the future for Wham City? While naturally the numbers and response will be the final telltale, O’Brien fervently hopes so.

“I personally am definitely going to continue [with audio books] because I fell in love with the format,” said O’Brien. “I’m very interested. It all depends on how this one goes, I mean that’s always the nerve-wracking thing. Normally we get aired at 4a on a TV and they’re not looking to closely at our analytics so that may or may not be a good thing,” he laughed.

As I spoke to O’Brien about Reverse Transmission, I would be remiss if I didn’t notice and point out just how stoked he sounded for this to be released. Ultimately despite the challenges, his favorite part about working on this was being in the director’s chair.

“Definitely it pushed me as a director, and that was the most exciting thing,” said O’Brien. “Having to go for real emotions, and kind of getting the humor out of that and really diving into the scenes and working with actors was such a pleasure. Immediately I was like ‘I wanna do this again.’ We directed, I think, fourteen days of taping straight — and I wasn’t tired by the end. I was energized.”

So pull up your dusty Victorian-style high chair, set that fire pit aglow, and load up Reverse Transmission on your computer or your iPhone. This is no doubt going to be a go to Halloween classic for years to come.

Reverse Transmission is available now on Audible.com

Firehouse Theatre Debuts Haunting, Captivating Production of ‘Wings’ on Thursday

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The aviation daredevils of the 1920s and 1930s forms the backdrop for Wings, the latest musical production from Firehouse Theatre. Emily Stilson, a former wing walker who defied death on the wings of a biplane, faces both her mortality and an accompanying language disorder after suffering a stroke.

Kerrigan Sullivan directs the work, adapted from Arthur Kopit’s 1978 play, with a novel visual approach to reflect the fracture between Emily’s mental and physical state. 

“We’re exploring this sort of fractured mind, and that was just really, really fascinating to me,” Sullivan said. The performance uses a constantly shifting set, with music and visual changes that mirror Emily’s struggle to recover her voice.

The work takes place in two worlds, depicting both the physical facility that Emily recovers in and the vivid mental space where she relives the daredevil feats of her life as an aviatrix.

“One of the biggest things that I want people to take away is to see that there are other pathways to connection, even when you feel like you are leaving something behind,” Sullivan said. “You are moving toward something, and not necessarily away from it.”

Bianca Bryan. Photo Bill Sigafoos

Emily is played by Richmond actress Bianca Bryan. Performing alongside Bryan is Lauren Elens, Landon Nagel, Andrew Colletti, and Lucinda McDermott.

Elens said that with a cast that small they wear a lot of different hats. “We’re all part of the set. We create the environments with our bodies and our voices. The five of us have to really be on our toes.”

As Amy, Emily’s clinical psychologist, Elens is Emily’s connection to her new world, overseeing her from the start of her stroke to her social rehabilitation. “She treats Emily like a human being, not a case study,” Elens said. “It’s about finding that humanity.”

“The biggest thing I’ve taken away from this process so far is whenever my cast comes to talk about different scenes, everyone has a personal attachment to someone in their lives that they’ve lost along the way,” Elens said. “Wings does such a great job of finding all the glorious things that the human brain can do, and all the things that can tear your heart out.”

Though the entire cast is crucial in shaping the on-stage universe, the world of the play is seen through Emily’s eyes.

“It’s a chamber musical,” Bryan said. “It’s telling this huge story but in a very tight, intense, intimate way. It’s almost like you step in as a part of the world.”

The audience sees the stage as Emily does. The voices of doctors, nurses, and Emily herself are sometimes incomprehensible gibberish. The set shifts and fractures, and even the musical refrain reflects the brokenness, beginning as a disjointed overture. It is the world through the lens of someone else’s experience, one that is vastly affected by a tragedy beyond her control.

“It’s an interesting way to see it, because musical theater is so presentational, a way of being able to distance yourself from it a little bit, but it’s inevitable, the story is going to suck you in,” Bryan said.  “To think this woman was basically cheating death her whole life, and now she’s had this stroke. It’s her story of how she’s coming to terms with death.”

The play touches on many issues, but Bryan said the most important theme was communication.

“Everyone will have something they can relate to. But I think the whole theme is really just the need and the want to communicate. [Emily] is not able to [communicate] because her speech is impaired and she can’t break across this barrier…I think it’s really just about making that human connection,” Bryan said. “There’s such a level of distraction in our society, but this breaks it down to the core…just communication.”

Firehouse’s community engagement manager Dave Timberline said Wings is a great way to start a conversation. In fact, he is using the production as a launching point to talk about strokes, aphasia, and theater production through Firehouse Forum, which supplements the onstage activity at Firehouse with a wide variety of additional programming.

“I think that this is something that you won’t often see on stage,” Sullivan said. “This is really something different, both in the way the story is told through music and the way that it’s presented on stage. This is going to be something that you don’t want to miss.”

Wings opened at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 15, and runs through March 10. Tickets are $20 which you can purchase here.