Saturday, May 06, 2006

Review: Marijuana-Logues In New Brunswick

This evening, we had the opportunity to see the Marijuana-Logues at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ. This was our second time seeing the show which stars Doug Benson, Tony Camin and Tommy Chong.

In December 2004, we first saw the show at the Actor's Playhouse, a small off-broadway theater in NYC. The show was hysterical. After the show ended its off-broadway run in March 2005, they decided to take the show on-the-road. Unfortunately, the audience frequently smoked pot which was in violation of Tommy's probation. This forced Tommy to cancel the tour.

Last month, they resurrected the tour.

Marijuana-Logues is even funnier now than it was off-broadway. The place was nearly sold out. The venue is near Rutgers University so the audience was awesome. Doug, Tony and Tommy have become a super-tight unit, frequently playing off each other's jokes and laughing uncontrollably while doing so.

Doug is a huge Tommy Chong fan. His eyes are fixated on Tommy every time Tommy opens his mouth. Unlike Doug and Tony, a lot of Tommy's jokes are unscripted. Tommy's improv is incredible. He told a story of Cheech unknowingly smuggling pot from Canada to the US because Tommy hid it in his suitcase. He also spoke of the time he met Jerry Garcia. Jerry kept calling Tommy "Cheech" so Tommy kept calling Jerry "Santana."

Tommy hasn't done stand-up in the NYC area in a long time. If the powers-that-be see this, please have Tommy come to NYC or Northern NJ. We are dying to see him live.

We spoke with Doug and Tony after the show. They said they are looking forward to their upcoming show in Hawaii. It's a shame that although the tour was successful, it doesn't look like any additional dates will be scheduled.

We spoke to Tommy as a large crowd of people lined-up for his autograph. He said both he and Cheech are writing the script for "Up In Smoke: The Play"...separately. Apparently, each will write their own script and they will then choose one. This is disappointing because we were under the impression they were collaborating together creatively on the play script.

Tommy was very friendly and was impressed that Cheech and Chong Dot Com remastered and re-released Sleeping Beauty and Let's Make A New Dope Deal. He hadn't yet received copies so we supplied him with a pair.

Thanks to Doug, Tony, Tommy and the fantastic folks at AM Productions for a fantastic time.

Marijuana-Logues is in Philly tomorrow.

Click here for tickets.

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