The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts & Sports
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 — 5A

Lacking ‘Characters’ 

By SHIR AVINADAV

Daily Arts Writer

“The Characters” is exactly 

what it sounds like: a seemingly 
never-ending string of wholly 
inconceiv-
able characters 
brought to life 
under outland-
ish 
circum-

stances. 
The 

new 
sketch 

series highlights 
the talent and 
edge of eight 
up-and-coming 
comedians 
by 

giving them free reign to write and 
perform whatever they want in 30 
minutes. Each comedian acts out 
an array of characters confined to 
an episode, ranging from quirky 
individuals to exaggerated tropes.

In one episode Lauren Lapkus 

(“Orange Is The New Black”) flu-
idly transitions from a pop diva 
searching for love on a “Bachelor”-
esque reality show to an insolent 
teenage boy clashing with his 
mom. Though the premise of the 
reality show frames the episode 
and makes for a humorous parody, 
Lapkus’s personification of the 
washed-out, overly made-up celeb-
rity is quite hollow. Not only is her 
bright orange face (a cross between 
a certain presidential candidate 
and someone from the cast of “Jer-
sey Shore”) distracting, but her 
performance is painful to watch. 
From the nasal giggles to the lines 
screeched out at the show’s con-

testants (all named Ben), I couldn’t 
wait for the episode to be over.

Despite the reliance on heavy 

makeup and the hackneyed per-
formance, Lapkus’s style marks 
the episode as distinctly hers. The 
type of characters enacted are the-
matically dramatized stereotypes 
of their real-life counterparts, and 
her use of detail — even in the bla-
tant advertising spoof suggestive 
of the advertising used on real-
life dating shows like “The Bach-
elor” — lend the episode cohesion 
and style. Otherwise, the series of 
sketches would be a jumbled mess 
of ideas haphazardly brought to 
life.

Lapkus’s episode is one of the 

few containing this feeling of cohe-
sion. With a single mind acting 
as the force behind each episode, 
you would expect there to be an 
inherent coherence. However, the 
opposite is often the case. Many 
of the episodes feel like their cre-
ators tried to do too much with the 
short time they were allotted. John 
Early’s (“Wet Hot American Sum-
mer: First Day of Camp”) episode 
is not only difficult to follow, but 
his tense performance imparts the 
episode with a sense of chaos that 
renders his characters unconvinc-
ing. However, with eight differ-
ent comedians given the the kind 
of freedom they have by Netflix, 
there are bound to be some that 
stand out more than others.

Henry 
Zebrowski 
(“Dirty 

Grandpa”) is one of these, bringing 
a burst of energy following Early’s 
episode in his run in with an igno-

rant passerby at a food cart. After 
reprimanding an oblivious man 
who mistakes him for Jim Gaffigan 
by charging him for a signature, 
then throwing the money in the 
bewildered man’s face, he lectures 
him, saying “Wear better shoes 
before talking to a celebrity.” This 
small piece of arbitrary wisdom is 
emblematic of Zebrowski’s biting 
style.

Moments like these highlight 

the individuality that marks each 
comedian’s writing and acting. 
Zebrowski’s superficial arrogance 
makes his shrewdly delivered lines 
even more hilarious, while Nata-
sha Rothwell’s (Writer, “Saturday 
Night Live”) masterfully diverse 
slate of performances makes her a 
standout in the series.

Though a breath of fresh air 

for Netflix’s comedy category, the 
series begs the question of whether 
a single comedic mind and pres-
ence can sustain an entire episode 
in the sketch format without los-
ing the audience’s interest. In their 
efforts to personify the extreme 
characters they’ve written, the 
show’s comedic cast shed their 
inhibitions and infuse the series 
with panache. And though well-
produced, the show’s sketches lack 
the narrative cohesion desired in 
an eight-part series.

It’s eccentric and it’s fresh, but 

it’s exactly “Saturday Night Live.” 
It’s a bunch of comedians given the 
chance to show what they’re made 
of, and though they’re having fun 
doing it, the audience isn’t guaran-
teed the same feeling. 

COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW
Unique ‘Gutenberg!’

By BAILEY KADIAN

Daily Arts Writer

Two men. One musical. A lot of 

hats. And a lot of laughter.

This weekend, Basement Arts 

presents: 
“Gutenberg! 
The 
Musi-

cal!”

Written by 

Scott Brown 
and Anthony 
King, “Guten-
berg! 
The 

Musical!” 
first appeared 
as a 45 min-
utes one-act 
production, at the Upright Citi-
zens Brigade Theatre in New York. 
Following that, it appeared in the 
New York Musical Theatre Festi-
val in 2005 and 2006.

“Gutenberg!” tells the story of 

two playwrights, Bud and Doug, 
who perform a backer’s audition 
for their newest work — a musi-
cal about Johannes Gutenberg, 
the inventor of the printing press. 
Bud and Doug perform every 
part in the show and sing every 
song, using hats to indicate who 
is switching from one role to the 
next.

Their collective research into 

Gutenberg’s life is less than reli-
able, which makes the play within 
a play just as absurd as Bud and 
Doug’s characters outside of their 
play. The play serves as a parody 
of what you’d find in a “typical” 
musical — a big opening and clos-
ing number, an excess of drama, 
energy, dancing and of course, a 
song about almost anything imag-

inable.

The show is structured around 

Bud and Doug’s commentary, or 
“annotation” sections, with tran-
sitions back into the play they 
are performing. The audience 
and their laughter adds a differ-
ent rhythm to the script, which is 
already packed with humor.

“It’s a technically sparse show, 

there are barely any lights, there is 
no set, just two tables of hats with 
different character names writ-
ten on them and a piano,” Music, 
Theatre & Dance senior Graham 
Techler said, in an interview 
with the Michigan Daily. “It’s one 
of those shows that is theoreti-
cally not complicated, but is actu-
ally very complicated, as we have 
learned. But in a fun way, it’s a fun 
challenge.”

The members of this produc-

tion have been creating visions of 
the show for a while, and when the 
proposal was accepted, they were 
able to start putting ideas into frui-
tion.

“We started piecing togeth-

er this weird production team, 
where Barry and I are acting in 
it, I’m co-directing it with Rob-
ert O’Brian, and Anna is assistant 
directing it, and is here all the time 
doing blocking and comedy stuff,” 
Techler said.

Techler and Music, Theatre & 

Dance Barry Riggins, the Music 
Director, were familiar with the 
work, as they had heard from 
people that it was a piece that they 
should look into. Anna Garcia, the 
assistant director, came across 
“Gutenberg!” in a less convention-
al manner.

“Graham and I were on a road 

trip, and we were driving through 
graveyards in Virginia and to dis-
tract ourselves, Graham put on 
‘Gutenberg,’ ” Garcia said. “I loved 
it so much. Once the proposal was 
accepted, I asked if I could come in 
and help.”

Garcia is also an improviser and 

uses her experience to add come-
dic elements to the scenes, as well 
as adjust blocking. 

Riggins has worked as a music 

director before, he said, but never 
while also acting in the musical he 
is also directing.

“This has been a very unique 

process, in that I’m on both sides of 
the table,” Riggins said. “My first 
love is performing and getting to 
do both has been very fun. This 
show is really just an absolute blast. 
It is a show that in satirizing musi-
cals, it clearly comes from a place of 
deep love for them — as both Gra-
ham and I have.”

Rather than a director staging a 

scene for actors, Techler and Rig-
gins do both simultaneously.

“It’s five or six people all collab-

orating on what is happening at the 
same time. It just works,” Techler 
said. “Things that would normally 
not be so good, if you were stag-
ing yourself in a musical, somehow 
become just right for this show.”

Basement Arts offers the per-

fect platform for this sort of pro-
duction, Riggins added.

“ ‘Gutenberg’ is a perfect exam-

ple of a Basement show because it 
is completely a passion project. It 
could never be done in a normal 
University setting,” he said. “The 
SMTD community, and I think 
everyone, will appreciate the type 
of things it is lampooning.” 

NETFLIX

Listen up fives, a 10 is speaking.

TV REVIEW

By AMELIA ZAK

Daily Arts Writer

I have been writing about music 

for publications for over a year 
now, and here’s what I’ve learned: I 
shouldn’t call myself a music critic. 
It isn’t appropriate.

Why? I do not have the knowl-

edge to provide a reader with a 
full-bodied conclusion as to how 
they should receive a piece of musi-
cal art. I’m not being self-deprecat-
ing; I’m being honest.

Critiquing music, in an accu-

rate and educated fashion, is an 
art that started to die with the 
rise of the digital age. The inun-
dation of artists and their respec-
tive musical projects filled digital 
page after digital page on Spotify, 
SoundCloud, BandCamp and the 
like. And, like with so many other 
things, this started to kill the 
music critics because now, for bet-
ter or worse, the world’s ears are 
constantly occupied.

So with so many comparisons to 

make and so many trends to follow, 
everyone with a keyboard became 
a critic. Niche blogs grew from all 
the digital holes in the wall. The 
power of so many voices eventual-
ly drowned out the power of a few 
truly knowledgable ones.

There are those music critics 

who think they are on top of the 
allegorical ‘all.’ To them, I say: 
stop kidding yourself. There are 
those constantly trolling the music 
sites, listening and re-listening to 
albums and artists of similar or 
non-similar genres to find some 
new trend. To them, I say: stop try-
ing so hard.

I can critique these individu-

als because I am one of them. I’m 
trying to stay on top of it all, to no 
great avail. And I’m trying to find 
something out of nothing, to no 
great success. I wish I would stop, 
and I think the great Alex G would, 
too.

Alex Giannascoli grew up in 

Havertown, Pennsylvania. In high 
school, he studied the stylings of 
Radiohead and Modest Mouse, 
stole the CDs of his siblings and 
had a couple high school bands. 
He followed a route similar to so 
many up-and-coming artists — he 
followed what he felt. He treated 
the music as something precious, 
almost holy.

“To me, I always considered 

music pretty sacred,” Alex said in 
a phone interview with The Michi-
gan Daily. “I love it to the max. So 
it makes me feel pretty strongly 
when people focus on the shit that 
doesn’t matter.”

Alex G is one of the 21st century 

artists whose music grew into the 
digital age. His incredible guitar-
based instrumentations and ang-
sty, but preciously poetic, lyrics 
made it past the modern barri-
ers of quantity over quality. In an 
arena of so many artists and their 
respective aspirational projects, 
Alex G rose up ever so slowly into 
the spheres of popular music dis-
cussion. He wasn’t one of the first, 
but rather one of the few, to rise to 
fame through the random, indeci-
pherable avenues of the Internet. 
There is so much to be gained in 
that ascent, and so much to be lost.

“The positives are pretty obvi-

ous: I gained this following with-
out any promotion on my part,” 
Alex explained. “The downside 
is uh, I don’t know. I don’t like all 
of the coverage of the music. It 
sucks because that’s what helped 
me so much — all these different 
outlets covering my music, but 
now it seems like it is cheapening 
the music in some way. When they 
have so much shit going on, and 
when there are all these publica-
tions writing all these little bits — 
there is all this saturation. There 
isn’t a lot of mystery anymore, 
either. So much of the appeal for 
me is when I find an artist and the 
only thing I knew was their story, 
with what they were saying in 
their lyrics.”

The art of defeating the bar-

riers of the digital age has been 
mastered by Mr. Alex G, though 
he would never accept that praise. 
Alex knows the fight for authentic-
ity, and the fight to stay as true to 
oneself as possible. Because he’s 
still unsure, too, if all this coverage 
is a good thing.

“Maybe it’s a good thing, maybe 

it will make artists more account-
able,” he said. “I don’t know, I 
think we are starting to lose a lot.”

And he’s right. There is no way 

of saying just yet, but there are 
grounds to wonder: what is going 
to be lost in the digital explosion? 
When everything is accessible, 
and when everyone has an opin-
ion, are we gaining everything? 
We have to be losing something, 
right?

Here’s the only way to combat 

it: focus on the music.

Alex G’s early work was record-

ed in his college dorm room. With 
a basic understanding of music 
production via one’s computer, 
Alex nursed a couple tracks to 
indie rock perfection within the 
four walls of his room at Temple 
University. And then he put them 
on BandCamp. And that honest, 

self-satisfying process continued 
as Alex rose to slow, intangible 
Internet fame.

Those angsty swinging guitar 

sounds and unapologetically sto-
ryline lyrics about frustrated emo-
tion, lost people and indescribable 
anxieties hit the web and played 
into the ears of those who still held 
a candle for the dying indie rock 
music world.

“I guess it’s half and half, most of 

the time it stems from a real expe-
rience or something that I really 
have the urge to write about,” 
Alex said. “But I will morph a lot 
of them so that they aren’t direct 
attacks on someone that I know. It 
usually does come from something 
real. I do want to write something 
well, and if it isn’t real I don’t think 
that I can write it as well.”

So Alex dropped out of col-

lege and became one of the indie 
world’s full-time saviors. Alex 
and his band released their most 
recent album, Beach Music, in 
October of last year. They’ve been 
touring the album ever since. And 
they aren’t worried about going 
anywhere too fast, and they aren’t 
too worried about pleasing anyone 
but themselves.

“Yeah, I mean we are trying 

to incorporate some new stuff — 
we’ve got a keyboard now that 
the guitar player is fooling around 
with,” Alex confessed. “I don’t 
know, it’s going to be hard to 
make any drastic changes. Some 
people might say: oh yeah it’s all 
guitar music, but to me it sounds 
completely different. It’s different 
to me. But to some, it could be all 
the same. I guess it’s all the same, 
either mostly guitar-based or pia-
no-based.”

So stop overthinking it, every-

body. Stop obsessively analyzing 
and just sit back and enjoy. Alex 
and his band want you to know 
that you don’t need to let the over-
whelming nature of the Internet 
kill your joy. They’re pouring their 
hearts, personas and experiences 
into something that you can love 
or hate. They can give you some-
thing to hold a candle to, or they 
can give you something to scoff at 
and ignore. They don’t care what 
you think, but you’ll probably post 
about it on some blogger site any-
way. You will paste your thoughts 
onto something, next to three mil-
lion other unnoticed, unimportant 
and unvalidated opinions. Just like 
this one. 

Alex G will be performing at MO 

POP Music Festival this summer in 
Detroit, Mich. Tickets available at 
www.mopopfestival.com.

The rise of Alex G 

MUSIC INTERVIEW

Gutenberg! 
The Musical!

Studio One 
Walgreen 
Drama Center

Fri. & Sat. 7 p.m. 

& 11 p.m.

C

The 
Characters

Season One

Netflix

Ways looks to make leap

By KELLY HALL 

Daily Sports Editor

Michigan 
football’s 
passing 

game coordinator, Jedd Fisch, 
needs another receiver who can 
make 40 to 50 catches next year.

He’s already expecting fifth-

year senior wide receivers Jehu 
Chesson and Amara Darboh to 
be closer to 75 catches apiece this 
season, but a third consistent 
threat would make the Wolverines 
that much more dangerous. And 
after seeing Chesson rack up a 
team-leading 764 yards and nine 
touchdowns this past fall, junior 
receiver Moe Ways is hoping he 
can have a similar breakout season 
in 2016 and become that third 
receiver. 

In 2015, Ways appeared in 11 

games, making just three catches 
for 40 yards. He’s going to need to 
make a leap in order to get to that 
number of completions, but he 
doesn’t think it’s out of the realm of 
possibility after seeing Chesson’s 
season.

“Honestly, for Jehu, it just all 

clicked,” Ways said. “After the 
Utah game, everything clicked for 
him. He just played with so much 
confidence. He knew he was the 
go-to guy, him and Amara, and he 
knew that when the game was on 
the line, like the Indiana game and 
the Minnesota game, it’s time to 
make plays.”

Now, in his third season, Ways 

feels as if everything he has 
worked on is starting to fall into 
place. He goes to Darboh and 
Chesson for advice, getting in 
extra practice with them in the 
meantime, because they’ve been in 
his shoes before.

After an offseason of practice 

and advice, he feels better prepared 
to take on a larger role.

“(This 
spring 
feels) 
very 

different,” Ways said. “I know the 
offense a lot better. I’ve gotten 
better working on my weaknesses 
in 
the 
offseason. 
I’m 
more 

confident, playing confident. I 
know what I’m doing.”

For Ways, the answer to getting 

those extra catches is simple: He 
needs to get to the right place and 
catch the ball without dropping it.

In order to ensure he can 

capitalize on the opportunity 
when the ball comes to him, Ways 
put in a lot of handgrip and forearm 
work. Though he doesn’t think 
dropping the ball was a weakness 
of his, he wanted to get better, and 
according to Fisch, he did just that.

“I’m not sure I can remember a 

drop so far in spring, ” Fisch said of 
Ways. “I think Moe Ways leads us 
with the least amount of drops, so 
(the wide receivers) have all come 
in and they’ve all done a nice job 
coming back and kind of letting us 
pick up where we left off.”

Though 
the 
quarterbacks 

are still receiving even reps, the 
constant rotation hasn’t been a 
difficult adjustment for Ways or 
the other receivers. Ways admitted 
that sometimes he can’t even tell 
who’s playing quarterback when 
they quickly switch out — except 

for when left-handed redshirt 
junior 
Shane 
Morris 
throws 

the ball, because it spins in the 
opposite direction.

Freshman quarterback Brandon 

Peters, who graduated early from 
high school and enrolled this 
semester, has stood out to Ways, 
who conceded that he doesn’t look 
like a freshman at all.

“(Peters’) arm strength is very 

good, his accuracy is very good, 
his knowledge of the game is 
very good,” Ways said. “His age is 
young, but the way he plays is not 
young at all.”

Now that Ways is one of the 

older players on the field, he has a 
better grasp of the learning curve 
of college football. 

“It just comes with time,” 

Ways said. “Like I said, first year, 
you learn the offense and kind of 
struggle a little bit, by the second 
year you have a better grasp of it. 
As you get older, your football IQ 
grows and your body changes and 
you start making more plays.”

ALLISON FARRAND/Daily

Moe Ways is hoping to mirror Jehu Chesson’s breakout campaign last season.

