At the Brattle Theatre’s Oscar Party Gala in February, Scot and I dropped a few hundred bucks to support the Foundation at its Silent Auction. As we often do, the focus of our bidding comes in the form of theatre tickets. This year, one of the packages we won provided us with four passes to see some shows at the usually delightful Theater Offensive.
After reading a couple of great reviews, we decided to catch Mike Albo’s “My Price Point,” which wrapped its Boston run this past Sunday. I’ve seen lots of great one-person shows, and “My Price Point sounded intriguing and fun. Whoo boy… maybe Albo was just having an off-night, but I can’t for the life of me understand where those good reviews were coming from!
To be fair, Albo is a comfortable performer, relaxed on stage, and a good dancer. The material, on the other hand, was fairly unoriginal, boring, obvious, and unfunny. “My Price Point” is a satire… oops, I mean a lampoon (according to its press release), which is a “light, good-humored satire” (thank you dictionary.com, I thought there was a more clearly defined difference.) While “light” is certainly accurate, good-humored is less so… and satire? Hmmm… just what was he supposed to be satirizing? Consumerism? American society’s fascination with branding? Albo is clearly someone who is fascinated with consumerism and pop culture himself, and intends to lightly poke fun at the extremes of our culture, somewhat effectively, but not very originally. I felt as though I was watching a less-talented Jack-McFarland performance of “Just Jack!” (especially during the interminably long and lacking-in-laughs J-Lo skit.)
So, you missed the Boston run of “My Price Point.” Consider yourself lucky.