reviewvancouver:Chutzpah Festival: Blink and you might miss me

Blink and You Might Miss Me – A tongue-in-cheek title that aptly sets the tone for Larry Blum’s (rhymes with plum, not groom) autobiographical one man show.

Blum has worked with – or at least had incidental contact with – the best, biggest and brightest stars on the planet. And while he is able to recount the experience in some detail, it’s improbable that they would remember him. Blum has been employed at union scale on some of television’s most popular shows. So, why is it that his name is unfamiliar to anyone outside his own family? Well, if you blinked, you might have indeed missed him.

Despite being absurdly gay, he has escorted the likes of Madonna, Michelle Williams and Meryl Streep – okay, so it was the last three seconds of their journey from where they were seated to the stage to collect their award at the Golden Globes.

Blum is a self-confessed celebrity junkie, but his show is much more than brush with fame anecdotes and constant name-dropping. You certainly have to hand it to this guy. He parlays a career stood firmly on the bottom rung of the ladder in the entertainment industry into a fascinating piece of whimsical theatre.

His only stage props are a beige steamer trunk and a portable coat rack (the kind you see in hotel lobbies). At various times throughout the sixty-minute show he transfers outfits that reference career milestones from the former to the latter. The show also includes multimedia in the form of Powerpoint^TM presentations (many back copies of Playbill covers) and rare video footage of his (very) brief appearances on the movie Xanadu with Olivia Newton-John and as a member of the original Solid Gold dancers.

Blum also shares eye-opening opinions of some celebrities he has had the opportunity to work with. He admits to being employed on Roseanne Barr’s television production as being particularly unpleasant. But his stories about his work as, what he calls a “rehearsal actor” (basically a stand-in) are especially farcical. He has stood in for the likes of Simon Cowell and Len Goodman during rehearsals, when the “star” couldn’t or didn’t want to turn up.

Larry Blum’s insight to the many quirks of show business is written with savvy and wit. It may not make you laugh out loud, but it’s sure to make you chuckle. Try not to blink though; you wouldn’t want to miss any part of this tour de force performance.