The Public Squares poke fun at the faithful tonight in their new sketch-comedy revue, I, Rock’em, Sock’em Robot. In the nine-skit show, the cast takes shots at religious zealots — from Catholics who collect papal trading cards to Muslims who get all worked up over cartoons of Mohammed. “We’ll attack anything,” says director Brett Tryda. “There’s nothing to restrict us. We put no parameters on what we do or what we say. Anything goes, from the silly to the sublime. We’re going to beat them up left and right.”
They’ll also harpoon Wal-Mart’s dominance in the global marketplace and its exploiting of employees (through minimum-wage salaries, among other things). “It really comes down to relationship pieces — brother-sister, mother-father, co-workers — relationships people can relate to,” says Tryda. “If you got a good relationship piece, you can go into anything.” And the troupe has discovered that the more irreverent their sketches, the more an audience will talk about them long after curtain call. “People know they’re stepping into something edgy, and they catch on really quick,” says Tryda. “We obviously hit a nerve.”
Sat., April 8, 8 p.m.
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2006.