By Ernest Kearney — Legendary rocker Joe Cocker was being interviewed once very early in his career when the BBC reporter asked him what he would have done if he hadn’t become a musician, and Cocker answered in that gritty voice of his, “I would have killed someone.”
The BBC reporter glibly laughed and asked, “No, truly, what would you have done?”
Again, Cocker responded, “I would have killed someone.”
Again, the reporter laughed and again he repeated his question.
That BBC reporter was clueless, Matt Ritchey isn’t.
It would be impossible to estimate how much grief and sorrow this world has been spared because some individuals were fortunate enough to have the emotional release of the arts and music to turn to.
It’s easier to imagine how much suffering and sadness this world has had to endure because others were denied or never given access to the arts as a means of relief and liberation from our darker impulses and the tyrannies which life can inflict on us.
It’s easy because we can just turn on the news and catch the latest mass shooting at some school or in some night club.
So it is that Ritchey’s Mr. Malcolm’s Music Factory offers a possible bandage to young, wounded psyches.
Malcolm Moore is the titular “Mr. Malcolm,” and it is his factory that fills the musical needs of people around the globe.
“We grow beats on a tree,” he tells us, “And ship them off worldwide.”
He’s assisted in this by his puppet friends, a cat named Lord Boom Boom Stick (Victor Yerrid,) a weasel who answers to Willow (Nee Kirshman,) a perky lizard with the hefty moniker of Saandewanda (Christian Anderson,) and THE B.A.D.S. (Alan Heitz.)
Ritchey’s show is a clever conceit that combines an education to the basic elements of musical composition, an introduction to the global musical styles and most important of all the value and potency of music for smoothing a troubled mind. Even if that troubled mind belongs to a six-year-old.
A highly successful joining of the educational and the entertaining for a GOLD MEDAL.
Mr. Malcolm’s Music Factory
Playing During Hollywood Fringe Festival 2022
VENUE:
(The Broadwater) The Second Stage
at The Broadwater | 6324 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90038
***
PERFORMANCE DAYS
Saturday June 4, 11:00 AM | 45 mins
Saturday June 11, 11:00 AM | 45 mins
Saturday June 18, 2:00 PM | 45 mins
Saturday June 25, 2:30 PM | 45 mins
Sunday June 26, 11:00 AM | 45 mins
***
For Additional Information and Tickets Go To:
www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/7410
Venmo and Paypal accepted at door only
