Theater review: ‘The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville’

If you’re planning a trip to the Eisemann Center for the Performing Arts this week to see Tony-winning Broadway star Mandy Patinkin brandishing his trademark wide-ranging vocals, well, you’ll get that — and so much more.

Patinkin, also a star of film and TV, is co-starring with well-regarded New York avant-garde performance artist Taylor Mac in a show they developed together (along with music director Paul Ford and director Susan Stroman), The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville. The show has been performed as a workshop in New York, but this Texas appearance is billed as the world premiere.

The title pretty much sums up the plot: The two are apparently the only humans left on the planet after a major catastrophe, and so they do what makes the most sense to them: sing and dance. Those actions they handle beautifully (or, as the case calls for, comically), but it’s the message in the songs that gives the show a broad narrative that will make you think — and feel concerned for humankind — as much as it entertains.

The songs come from a variety of 20th- and 21st-century music, from operetta (Gilbert and Sullivan’s There Is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast from The Mikado) to musical theater (Stephen Sondheim’s Another National Anthem from Assassins), to traditional (The Twelve Days of Christmas; Row, Row, Row Your Boat) to pop songwriters such as Tom Waits, Patty Griffin, Paul Simon and Gillian Welch.

The arrangements are often stunning, such as a mash-up of Peter Allen’s Quiet Please, There’s a Lady on Stage (performed by Patinkin) and Welch’s My Morphine (Mac, in a slightly up-tempo version).

Their performance on R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) — how could they not? — in which they nail the fast lyrics, and add dance to it, is another highlight.

Mac often performs his own music in his one-man shows and plays, and his tenor can reach the back of a theater; but what’s amazing his how well it blends with Patinkin’s baritone-tenor, as in Griffin’s Making Pies.

The latter song represents one of the changes in tone during the show’s 90 minutes, which begins with Mac arriving on shore in a raft and then assembling a proper dinner setting — we can still be civilized after an apocalypse, after all — until Patinkin makes himself known.

They wear dusty clothes (designed by William Ivey Long) and bowler hats as they set out on a journey of discovery, despair, loneliness, rebuilding, despair, pride and hope with no dialogue — only song, dance (how about that soft shoe!) and clowning techniques from mime to the good ol’ pie-in-the-face.

It’s sort of like James Thurber’s The Last Flower meets Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (there’s a big nod to Godot with a hat-switching scene), but with stellar vocals. Throughout the happy moments there are sprinklings of truth bombs, such as the idea that in order to rebuild the world, you’ll have to deal with other people who are not like you.

That means sharing the world with bigots and racists (Jerry Herman’s Have a Nice Day from La Cage aux Folles and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught from South Pacific).

In the end, despite the whole apocalypse thing, there’s a joyous sense of future as they decide they must go on. They set off in the raft to discover who or what else might be out there. The name of the vessel, revealed in the final moments (we won’t spoil it), says it all.

Yes, it’s the end of the world as they know it — but there’s good reason to feel fine.

This story was originally published February 19, 2015 at 2:19 PM with the headline "Theater review: ‘The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville’."