The third time is always the charm, but then again, the first two can hardly be called misses.
For the third straight year, Communication juniors Matt Sax and John Dixon will perform their Dillo Eve comedy show, “Sax & Dixon: This Plane is Definitely Going to Crash.” Their return is inspired by the overwhelming response they received to past shows and to the captivating dynamic that exists between Sax and Dixon.
“The night is going to be a scene, seriously a scene,” says Sax, who met Dixon through a mutual friend at a Roots concert. Sax recently brought his one-man hip-hop musical, “Clay,” to Northwestern. He premiered the show last summer to rave reviews at the 2004 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
This year’s performance is directed by Communication senior Peter McNerney, who has helped the two comedians since the show’s inception. McNerney has collaborated with Dixon in the Mee-Ow show and with Sax in the Titanic Players. He promises that this year’s show will have yet another level of intricacy in its characters.
“By the time everyone reads this article, we will have just finished (writing) the ending of the show,” McNerney says. “This last week is when we pull together all the work that we have been formulating since the beginning of the quarter, and we’re confident enough that we can blast it all out on Friday.”
“Sax & Dixon” includes more than 20 characters whose stories progressively interweave until they all end up on a plane together. In a few scenes, Sax and Dixon simultaneously play three characters each, using alternating accents with as much animation as a circus. Their characters range from a sophisticated British prince and his servant to a dumb-downed British child with his father and grandfather. They even morph themselves into a Velociraptor and Condor at one point and stage an all-out battle of the birds.
“The show starts slow with Sax and Dixon only performing one character each, but then it gets very complicated, very fast,” McNerney says. “They never use technique for the sake of technique.”
There are a number of distinctive changes to the show from its previous years. This year’s performance will take place in the Louis Room instead of its usual locale in Shanley Pavilion. The change of venue, they say, isn’t ideal because the group has only one day to build their set, adapt to the space and perform. In its first year, “Sax & Dixon” used a number of disjointed comedy games and sketches, whereas this year’s production has more of a cohesive narrative. Each scene addresses this narrative and has its own specific direction.
“This year we came in with nothing more than the theme of ‘This Plane is Definitely Going to Crash,'” McNerney says. “We had no idea where we were going. Then (Sax and Dixon) just did a whole bunch of improv games to find characters we thought were interesting. Then we took those characters and slowly pieced them together. This show is all about these relationships between people.”
The focus of the show can be simplified into three parts: creating relationships, expanding these relationships and tying everything together with the scene on the plane. But in all three sections, neither Sax nor Dixon has a definitive script in mind. Each time they rehearse the same scene they incorporate different jokes and scenarios that are all equally funny. The ease with which Sax and Dixon feed off of each other’s movements and speech is astounding.
“(McNerney) helps us during rehearsals by just quickly going over the direction of each scene,” Dixon says. “Where we need to start, and where each scene needs to end up, is all we have in our minds at the beginning of the show, but it isn’t quite all improvisation.”
Sax and Dixon’s characters range from choir boys to terrorists. The jokes can be hit or miss, but the complexity and absurdity of each relationship is the show’s brilliance. The transitions between characters are as quick as a finger snap, but individual gestures clearly define each character they depict. The audience will be able to easily distinguish between the characters in each scene.
“We always like to perform the night before Dillo Day because we can focus and make our priority that one night,” McNerney says. “Also, it’s easier to fill the place when people know they only have one chance to see us.”
Sax and Dixon hope to take their audience on a wild ride, channeling a wide range of emotions through the many characters they portray. The final scene on the plane becomes almost chaotic with all the characters, but it’s a culmination without the banality of most comedies.
“It’s so sad, but so happy at the same time,” Sax says. “The audience will never love so fully, and they’ll also never hate so fully either.”
“Sax & Dixon: This Plane is Definitely Going to Crash” will be performed on Friday, with 8 and 11 p.m. shows in the Louis Room of Norris. Tickets are $5 and can be bought at the door.
Weinberg junior Zach Brennan is a PLAY writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
