ChipandGus
The two loneliest guys in upstate New York meet once a month in the grungy back room of a rundown Schenectady sports bar to do the one thing they both love – play ping pong – in Fat Knight Theatre’s production of “ChipandGus”, coming to Catskill’s Bridge Street Theatre at 44 West Bridge Street for eight performances September 26 – October 6.
In this award-winning ‘comedy with balls’, Gus is chair of the Philosophy department at a middling liberal arts college who lives almost entirely inside his own estimable head. Chip is a frustrated adjunct music teacher and struggling composer who’s got big hopes – but he’s never had a dream yet that didn’t get crushed. Playwright/performers John Ahlin and Christopher Patrick Mullen balance a furiously fast pace, a delicately slow reveal, blisteringly brilliant comedy, and unbelievable ping-pong action as these two sad sacks, the most casual of acquaintances, discover that their lives intertwine in ways they could not possibly have imagined. Swap out the ping pong paddles for bowler hats and it could pass for a modern-day homage to “Waiting for Godot” – a hilarious, cathartic, and emotionally resonant buddy comedy for thinking audiences. Conceived over a ping pong table and written and rehearsed in basements, attics, and garages, “ChipandGus” was the winner of the Overall Excellence Award for Ensemble in the 2016 NYCFringe Festival, was selected for an extended run in the Fringe Encore Series at Soho Playhouse in NYC, and has been touring ever since.
“I remember the exact moment the idea for the play came into my head – and it was at a ping pong table,” says John Ahlin. “I was playing ping pong for fun a few years ago, blowing the rust off my atrophied skills, when somehow, like a young me, I laced a screaming backhand down the edge and in an overly theatrical way I turned to an imaginary crowd and drank in imaginary cheers. And then I stopped, mid faux-celebration, and thought, ‘Standing here, at the end of a ping pong table feels very theatrical …. I wonder if this game would work on stage?’ And with that one idle thought, Ahab-like, I began chasing this leviathan of an idea.”
Come spend a little time with Chip and Gus in what is possibly the finest ‘buddy comedy’ yet written in the 21st Century!
September 26 – October 6, 2024 Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30, Sunday at 2:00
