The Lost Flamingo Theatre Company put on its version of Matt Cox’s play “Puffs or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic,” at Arts West on Nov. 8-9. The 13-person cast and production crew put on a show that had the audience laughing hard and participating along.
“Puffs” is a parody of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series. Similar to the books it parodies, “Puffs” also follows a trio. This trio consists of Wayne Hopkins (Theo Davis), who was raised in New Mexico by his Uncle Dave. Oliver Rivers (Laura Church), is a math prodigy from Oxford, Ohio, and Megan Jones (Ava Torok), who is the daughter of a witch locked in WizPriz and would rather be in the Snakes house.
The trio and the fellow first-year Puffs’ story gets some extra context from the narrator (Kylie Stewart). The play spans all seven years they are at the school and what the group gets up to.
Of course Harry Potter (Caroline Padden) is still there, running around with Ron and Hermione (two mops).
The play uses many opportunities for audience engagement, ranging from clapping, the narrator throwing out objects to the front row and cheering for Cedric (Casey Johnson) during the Three-Wizard Tournament.
The small cast uses its size to its benefit, with cast members playing multiple roles. The cast adapted to each character with ease. Actors changed accents, outfits and adapted their behavior to clearly show they were different characters while still being humorous.
As a comedy, the jokes are the most important part and “Puffs” delivered on the comedic aspect.
The comedic element around not being able to use any specific “Harry Potter” branded things was quite entertaining. One of those highlights was referring to Slytherin as “people who spit their gum on the sidewalk and say it’s fine because it’s biodegradable.”
As expected, there were jokes about book and character titles, such as when they tease year three as being serious in reference to Sirius Black. There is also a bit at the end when in a flash-forward scene where they joke about being cursed children in reference to Rowling's play.
One of the crowd’s favorite characters was J. Finch Fletchley (Bossch) who is portrayed as an out-of-it character actually considered imaginary by fellow Puff Leanne (Quincy Thomas).
Bossch was a great example of one of the unique humor aspects in this play. While Bossch’s main role was J. Finch, Bossch also adopted the personality of the stereotypically obnoxious frat bro Zack Smith, complete with bad knock-knock jokes.
The unique elements of all the characters were portrayed well by the cast making each new character meaningfully different and still entertaining.
Although the set and props were minimal, they were quite well done with items being thrown in at various spell-castings and the narrator hitting a stage crew member with the comically heavy fifth year book.
The costumes were quite fun with students having the classic British school uniforms, but with little flares that accounted for their own personality. One of the most impressive costumes was for Mr. Voldy (Casey Johnson), with long skeletal fingers and a makeup job that made Johnson look like he lacked a nose similar to the character he was portraying.
Putting on a parody can be challenging but the LFC did a great job with it. The jokes hit and had the crowd laughing almost the whole time. References to the original IP were well integrated and not overblown.
LFC will be continuing their current season with their production of Zoe Senese-Grossberg’s play “Boy My Greatness” on Nov. 15, also at Arts West, Tickets are $5 cash for anyone who wishes to attend.
