Stage: Is "Charlotte Squawks" Only for Liberals?
"Charlotte Squawks" overflows with talent, but punches down one too many times.
Brian Kahn and Mike Collins’s rollicking, left-leaning-to-the-point-of-falling-over musical revue “Charlotte Squawks” is back for the eighteenth year at the Booth Playhouse in Uptown Charlotte. Dubbed “Charlotte Squawks 18: Barely Legal,” the musical parody show follows its traditional format, with send ups of news and culture through parodies of pop music and Broadway numbers.
With Kahn writing, Collins directing and emceeing, and a talented ensemble of ten carrying the show, Charlotte Squawks lives up to its good name.
Charlotte Squawks 18: Barely Legal
Booth Playhouse
130 North Tryon Street
Charlotte, North Carolina 28202
704.372.1000
Tickets on sale here.
Remaining Shows:
Thursday 6/22 7:30 PM
Friday 6/23 8 PM
Saturday 6/24 2:30 & 8 PM
Tuesday 6/27 7:30 PM
Wednesday 6/28 7:30 PM
Thursday 6/29 7:30 PM
Friday 6/30 7:30 PM
Now a celebrated tradition in Charlotte, “Squawks” has only missed two years since it debuted in 2004. Alongside Collins, a small troupe of performers deliver fully fleshed out musical parodies about events so current that some of the numbers were completed as recently as three weeks ago. The effort seems huge, and the cast pulls it off admirably.
However, as our nation’s fraught politics grow ever more wearisome, the emphasis on national partisan potshots, especially at this level of excellence, feels stale.
When it was first produced, “Squawks” was meant to be a one-time fundraiser for WTVI, Charlotte’s public television station.
“We were a terrible fundraiser (because we made fun of all our sponsors and pissed them off),” Kahn wrote to Y’all Weekly, “but people liked the show so we kept coming back.”
In its early years, Kahn said the format was the same but that it was not the sharp parody it has become.
“At the beginning we shied away from controversial topics [and] figures because we weren’t sure our audience would like that,” wrote Kahn. Over time they could see that there was an appetite for pointed commentary, and have since leaned in.
“Squawks” covers everything from woke culture to CBD to classified documents, and a little more than half the show was about North Carolina and Charlotte specifically. They lampoon the tone deaf elitism of Panthers owner David Tepper in “Thank You for the Music, White Boy” (a parody of “Play That Funky Music”) and a disappointing Hornets season with “Stinkin’ the Hive” (“Stayin’ Alive”).
With “I Just Derailed the Train,” Kahn uses “A Little Fall of Rain” from “Les Misérables” to roast the Charlotte Area Transportation System (CATS) for a year plagued by scandal. As a train conductor and bus driver shrugging off their incompetence to enjoy a meet cute on a city bench, Shaniya Simmons and Patrick Ratchford are sincerely charming in one of many numbers that take local government to task.
On screens bordering the stage, we see a perfectly cast Jeff Stetson deliver a commercial parody as Michael B. DeMayo, a legal alternative if real Charlotte lawyer Michael A. DeMayo won’t take your case.
One of a few reproaches to white mindlessness was set to Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero.” In a Chic-Fil-A drive thru, three blonde women are oblivious and cheerful as they raise their hands to ask an attendant for quicker service: “It’s me, hi! / I’m the problem, it’s me.” Performers Johanna Jowett, Susan Roberts Knowlson, Jonathan de Jesus, and Lucia S. had the audience in stitches.
The audience was in stitches most of the night, actually, as the screens displayed a procession of memes relevant to the sketches on stage. Also credited in the program for PowerPoint design, Kahn’s show-length meme montage has accompanying images changing as often as new lines begin in a song.
The undertaking of “Squawks” is enormous for creators and cast alike. The songs are rich with vibrant, layered harmonies, certainly a testament not only to the work of musical director Bill Congdon, but also the expertise and readiness of the performers on stage. Congdon pulls double duty as the leader of the Charlotte Squawks Band, a tight sextet providing live accompaniment that makes a ticket that much more worth it.
The music is a vehicle for Collins and Kahn’s messages. As Kahn characterizes it, a “no holds barred” cabaret like “Squawks” deliberately pushes the envelope.
I’m not here to rain on the parade: roasts are effective ways to blow off steam for audiences and creators alike. For those who agree with him, Collins’s devil-may-care candor is a delightful departure from his thoughtful interview style on NPR’s Charlotte Talks.
“If you’re an election denier and you ended up at this show,” Collins snarks in his opening monologue, “you fucked up again.”
For those who are the butt of the joke, however, “Charlotte Squawks” plays into the stereotype that liberals are condescending snobs who will never care to understand you. The show doesn’t spend most of its time maligning the political right in general, but it takes up a good chunk. You could be forgiven for leaving with the certainty that “Squawks” feels superior.
For the intended audience, it’s more of a missed opportunity. Good jokes make you laugh, but smart comedy can help you to understand yourself better. There’s no need to call for a sanitizing balance in a revue intended to needle and burn, but a little wry humility - or an increased focus on local affairs - might open minds on both sides of an issue.
It’s my first “Squawks,” so I can’t speak for the full arc of this show, but they didn’t really try that this year. Kahn attributed the show’s increasing “edginess” over the years to a recognition of Charlotte’s appetite for it.
“[We now] know that most Charlotteans are as craven as we are,” he said.
If ticket sales are any indication, Charlotte is eating it up; but, for all the brilliance that fuels this project, its creators could hold us, and themselves, to a higher comedic standard than that.
“Charlotte Squawks” is huge, and the time spent lampooning local issues can be appreciated by the broadest of Charlotte audiences. Tricia Cotham deserves to get dragged for her look-at-me-ism, and it shouldn’t bother anyone to see Congressman Jeff Jackson popping in for a video cameo to joke about his persistent TikToks. Trump’s legacy is a stain on the country, and it should be roundly mocked. Much of the anti-Republican humor was welcome.
What turned the tone bitter for this reviewer, however, was one too many images of toothless poor people used as meme-bait on the show’s three video screens during self-congratulatory numbers like “Woke.” “Charlotte Squawks” succeeds when it punches up, and fails when it punches down. Rural caricatures, like those cooking out and shooting at the ceiling in “Sky Balloon In Flight” (set to “Afternoon Delight”), are the only stand-in for Republicans at the voting level. Taken with every sneer the show has to offer, it begins to feel icky.
Admittedly, the audience didn’t feel that way. Perhaps they could have used a little help getting there, and that help would have to come from the show on stage.
I will certainly attend “Squawks” next year, but for all the extraordinary talent that goes into this annual cultural take down, more energy could be spent criticizing our most tribal tendencies. I look forward to seeing how one of Charlotte’s favorite shows will evolve in 2024.
Charlotte Squawks 18: Barely Legal continues this week and next.