Imagine Beavis and Butthead, imagine Bill and Ted and Wayne’s World. You’re pretty close to imagining Dave and Mark, two American idiots assailed on all sides by oppressive forces telling them to grow up and get a job like everybody else. The only reason to get a job is to get some money so you can eat. What do folk eat in the computer game Oregon Trail, which they are playing at the public library? Bear. So off they go to kill and eat some bear, and prove to everyone that they are adults.
Interspersed by commentary from an erudite talking bear at the side of the stage, Dave and Mark set off to all the obvious places to find their quarry. The Walmart meat counter, where they delight in getting ticket number 69, and the zoo (with surprisingly easily-purchased automatic assault weapons). Eventually they come face to face with our talking bear. Later still, Mark, David and the bear reach and epiphany of sorts, and they all get to follow their dreams rather than kowtow to the demands of society.
Taken on the level of two relentlessly optimistic gormless fools, this is a very funny production that went down a storm late in the evening. But if you see them as two entitled white guys who never take no for an answer, find positive reinforcement in every defeat they have, and see themselves as always in the right and much put-upon at every turn, there is something Trumpian or Johnsonian about them… and by god, you wish the bear had just eaten them.
But let’s accept it in the vein of Bill and Ted. This is a very well-written show by Mack Stine and Luke Belagia, with non-stop great jokes, physical comedy, and wonderful characterisations by Katelyn Berrios and Balagia as Dave and Mark, with sardonic support from Pat Clark as the Bear. Don’t overthink it, and enjoy.