Leave it to Denver’s Buntport Theater to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the grossest accident to make national headlines. The experimental company continues its tradition of flushing traditional theater norms down the drain with Eyes Up, Mouth Agape, a riotous take on the infamous 2004 incident involving 800 pounds of shit and a Dave Matthews Band tour bus.
As the bus crossed Chicago’s Kinzie Street Bridge, it discharged sewage, showering an open-air tour boat below — a nightmare scenario of terrible timing. The driver of the bus was eventually fined $10,000 for polluting a waterway and sentenced to 150 hours of community service and 18 months of probation. The band paid the State of Illinois $200,000 and donated another $100,000 to environmental groups.
In a 2009 interview, Matthews told a radio host, “It would be funnier if it was anyone else but me. … I’ll apologize for that as long as I have to.”
Shit gets real
Buntport’s five-person ensemble, who co-wrote this original play with guest artist Emily K. Harrison of Boulder’s square product theatre, embraces this grotesque story with the same joyous absurdity that has defined the theater group since 1998, diving into the event’s fallout with wry humor, clever design and a slight wink to the audience.
Rather than reenacting the hilariously improbable incident, the creative team wisely focuses on the aftermath, as told by the key “players” involved: the bridge (Erik Edborg), bus (Brian Colonna) and boat (Hannah Duggan), all of whom are anthropomorphized by actors dressed in black with playful models of these objects hanging around their abdomens.
The play’s imaginative set includes a strikingly tall, stylized representation of the Sears (er, Willis) Tower on one side, as well as a central projection screen that anchors the action and displays live footage from multiple onstage cameras. This combination of detailed costumes and real-time projections creates the impression of watching a bizarre but strangely captivating talking-head documentary come to life.
This decision to stage the incident as a series of post-mortem interviews heightens the farcicality while emphasizing the undeniable pathos of each player’s situation. Each character comes to life through interviews conducted by a frantic, truth-seeking documentarian, played with manic energy by Erin Rollman, who passionately (if curiously) seeks deeper meaning in the event.
The documentarian, standing in for both the Buntport team and the audience, questions whether this incident holds any deeper meaning or if it’s just an excuse for poop jokes. It’s a question the play never definitively answers, but one that allows for gleeful exploration of its own silliness.
Wit and waste collide
While Rollman’s documentarian orchestrates the proceedings, it’s Duggan and Colonna who steal the show as the hapless boat and the unapologetic bus.
Duggan’s boat, dubbed “Chicago’s Little Lady,” is fiery and bitter, delivering her grievances with biting wit. After enduring what was, quite literally, a crappier day than most, she is understandably salty, lamenting her fate as an essential cog in Chicago’s relentless tourism industry, forced back into duty almost immediately after the cleanup. Duggan’s sass and indignation make her both sympathetic and sharply funny.
Meanwhile, Colonna’s bus is a delightfully slippery character, playing the devil’s advocate in defense of the (supposedly) innocent Dave Matthews Band. His character exudes confidence and comes prepared with an “alternate bus theory” that blames Linkin Park’s tour bus instead. Colonna’s bus is as smooth-talking as a seasoned politician, spinning his own narrative with impressive dedication, despite the smelly evidence.
A bridge too mild
While Duggan and Colonna bring energy and memorable comic timing to their roles, the performances and writing around the Kinzie Street Bridge and the Sears/Willis Tower (Harrison) are less effective. Edborg’s bridge, though intentionally passive and mild-mannered, struggles to maintain the comedic momentum of the show. His dry delivery occasionally works, particularly with his joke about how he is better known for the 1992 Chicago flood than this, but the character often feels like an afterthought to the show’s zany energy.
Similarly, Harrison’s Sears Tower provides some clever laughs, particularly with running jokes about refusing to be referred to as the Willis Tower and her character’s desire to turn the entire ordeal into a musical. The jokes become repetitive, but the writing eventually culminates her arc with a spectacular payoff: a hilariously outrageous musical number that turns “Poopgate” into a chaotic spectacle of song and dance.
Eyes Up, Mouth Agape doesn’t attempt to offer a profound message or extract deeper meaning from Chicago’s most infamous moment of public defecation. Instead, it revels in its own ridiculousness, finding comedy in the unlikely convergence of a bus, bridge and boat — and the unforgettable shit that ensued. The show’s refusal to take itself too seriously is what makes it work, offering up escapist, crass humor in a time when laughter feels more necessary than ever.
As we enter four more years of Trump’s America, it is nice to have a place where we can laugh at life’s unexpected chaos, no matter how messy it is.
ON STAGE: Eyes Up, Mouth Agape. Through Nov. 23, Buntport Theater, 717 Lipan St., Denver. Name your price.