If you're in Chicago, and you're looking for some brilliant comic juxtapositions, go see any show produced by the folks at Theater Oobleck; they are the Brilliant Comic Juxtapositions People.
This is exemplified well by their current production, David Isaacson's "Casanova Takes a Bath" (subtitled "Current trends in the American Financial Sector as explained by the World's Greatest Lover"). One element that is immediately disappointing is that despite the title, Casanova does not bathe onstage, but this rather refers to taking a bath in the metaphorical sense of losing one's fortune, which is exactly what so many of America's financial wizards would have done recently had it not been for controversial government intervention.
The show alternates between Isaacson talking directly to the audience about current events, then leaping stage left to read relevant passages of Casanova's notoriously salacious Memoirs, in which the infamous 18th-century rake recounts stories calculated to simultaneously horrify and amuse adherents of pretty much any known system of morality: stories of gambling, irresponsible stock speculation, and the seduction of 14-year-old nuns.
Isaacson obviously sees all of this as a pretty good parallel for the present shenanigans on Wall Street, and he illustrates a number of examples from news headlines to make that point.
If Isaacson's goal is to explain the economic crisis to the layman, he largely fails because it's still pretty incomprehensible, but he does succeed in wringing out a lot of gallows laughter, and in making a case for his thesis, which is that human greed and dishonesty caused it, not some unaccountable natural forces.
Reviewed by Centerstage!
Map it