Coleman Crenshaw

Robert Trussell reviews The Living Room’s recent production of Bucket of Blood.

Tongue-in-cheek post-modernism gets a thorough workout in the Living Room production of “A Bucket of Blood,” a show in which the performers on stage appear to having at least as much fun as the audience.

Screenwriter-turned-playwright Mitch Brian serves up an amusing adaptation of a 1959 Roger Corman movie, a horror flick that satirized beatnik culture and the modern art world. Brian translates the essence of the film to the Living Room stage, more or less without commentary, and even assigns himself a small role as an art critic.

The plot revolves around a shy coffeehouse busboy named Walter (Matt Weiss), who puts up with a fair amount of verbal abuse from his employer (Damian Blake). Carla (Kimberely Queen) is friendlier to Walter, who is unabashedly enthralled by Maxwell Brock (Forrest Attaway), a beat poet given to extemporaneous improvisations with the house band.

Read the rest here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/30/3525820/two-performers-stand-out-in-bucket.html