The Wonder Bread Years
State Theater, through May 22
Running Time: 1 hr, 50 min
Finally, a show for the late-generation baby boomer in all of us.
Just looking at the title, you have to know what you’re getting into. Wonder Bread was a staple of my diet when I was young, usually in condiment sandwiches made by slapping a ton of mayo or mustard in between two slices of that fluffy, vitamin-filled, white-flour miracle (although there was one time that I used mayonnaise, bologna, and relish and ate two of them because I had to prove to my friends that this was a really good sandwich, and then I started cramping up …).
If you can see the childlike foolishness in that story, then you need look no further for your entertainment pleasure than this touring production at the State Theater. Pat Hazell, the writer and sole performer in the show, is a veteran stand-up comedian, playwright, and, most significantly, one of the original writers for Seinfeld. Here Hazell does what, on its surface, appears to be an extended stand-up routine, riffing on his time growing up as a kid in the Sixties, but Hazell’s got more on his mind than just entertaining you for a couple of hours. Not a lot more, but enough to make this different from your usual stand-up concert.
The show begins with a film showing clips of commercials and other material I recognized from my childhood, and it was a blast to watch. Erector Sets, Easy-Bake Ovens, the NBC peacock, and delicious, smooth red Manwich sauce flowed by and set a nostalgic tone (that is, nostalgic if you happen to be between the ages of 40 and 55 and spent a couple of hours a day with your orbs glued, zombie-like, to a fuzzy black-and-white screen). When Hazell enters, he looks like an overgrown kid, in jeans and a plaid shirt – all he lacks to complete the look are a couple of plastic six-guns at his hips. For close to two hours, Hazell tells dozens of stories, making hundreds of references to things I knew and remembered – Kellogg’s cereals in the boxes you could turn into a bowl, milk money, TVs without remote controls, family vacations to nowhere, pieced-together Halloween costumes, the kids table at Thanksgiving – all with knowing humor and at lightning speed. At his best when displaying the put-upon child in us all, Hazell moves through his material so expertly and with such energy, it’s amazing he’s still standing upright at the curtain call. One of the most amusing sequences is a slide show in the second act during which Hazell proves that many of the stories he told in the first act are true, including one about a Colonel Sanders Halloween mask. I laughed until tears leaked from my eyes, and in the end, during the final moments, I almost shed a tear of another kind, as Hazell’s ultimate message isn’t one of humor, but of wonder.
Look at yourself in the mirror. Can you see the similarities between you and a slice of white vitamin-enriched bread? Then this is the show you’ve been looking for.
This article appears in May 13 • 2005.