Today is Saturday, October 25, 2025. I know I’ve been absent from this site for the last two days and the reason being was that, on Thursday, Elliot and I were entertaining our young friend “Taylor” over meatballs and minestrone soup. He left close to 10 p.m. and yesterday, I was with my friend “Seth” seeing this crazy, madcap parody of The Parent Trap at the Orpheum Theatre called Ginger Twinsies. My friend was more impressed with it and I was less so, possibly because I have not seen either films, the latter starring Lindsay Lohan and Natasha Richardson. I’ll have to cite some reviews of it to familiarize yourselves – and myself – with the zany objectives of the one-man writer/director phenomenon, a man named Kevin Zak, behind this 80-minute lollapalooza in which I basically couldn’t hear many of the gags that richocheted off the characters’ lips (we were sitting in the last row of this theater). More of that later.

Going through some of my old blogs, I came across one I wrote exactly two years ago in which I denounced the promotion of Louisiana MAGAt Mike Johnson to the Speakership of the House. An opinion piece written then by Julian Zellzer for CNN laid out in stark terms why putting Johnson as Speaker of the House would bode badly for this country, and boy, has his prognostication proved true. Zellzner said that Johnson’s victory would be a win for MAGA and that fact, sadly, has come true in the two years since Johnson has catapulted into Americans’ consciousnesses. His positions are as far right as any could be in that he has been a staunch opponent of LGBTQ+ rights (I truly think he’s a closeted homosexual, but don’t ask me for any proof, though), an opponent of reproductive rights, and has opposed funding for Ukraine’s war against Russia. He also worked closely with the Orange Turd in opposing the certification of the 2020 election results, which certainly places him in a top Dump lapdog position. Thus Johnson’s ascendancy to House leadership has been an unmitigated disaster for this country, and the last twenty-four days of this government shutdown just proves how terribly bad he is for this country. Let’s hope and pray he is thrust aside in 2026 if this Orange Turd doesn’t suspend the midterms for whatever insane reason he chooses.

As for those reviews of Ginger Twinsies, one was written by Lane Williamson for exeunt and it was written on July 29. She comments that almost a decade ago, two creative geniuses, Josh Sharp and cocreator, Aaron Jackson, staged their own parody of The Parent Trap, a musical called Fucking Identical Twins (which I didn’t see) at the Upright Citizens Brigade (a venue no longer in existence) and that it was adapted into an independent film retitled Dicks: The Musical, which I did see but never knew it was an adaptation of that 1961 Disney film starring Hayley Mills in a dual role.

This parody that I saw yesterday “sticks closely to the 1998 remake into a canny bit of elder-Millennial nostalgia.” And forty years later, Nancy Meyers remade the film with Lohan as the title character, and Meyers herself shows up in the play last night, and both of us were saying, “Who is Nancy Meyers?” In the play, the gags come at you a mile a minute, and since we were in the back, the shouting and catcalls of the audience sometimes drowned out the dialogue for me.

In this loony version of the classic film, Russell Daniels and Aneesa Folds play Annie and Hallie, one a white man, and the other a Black woman, far from twins except for their red hair and are “instantly” recognizable as opposites, but which the play capitalizes on to great effect.

The plot, as it were, concerns the twins first discovering themselves at the same summer camp, learning they were separated at birth, and where they then concoct a fantastic plan to reunite their single parents, with one living in London and the other owning a lavish vineyard in California. They switch places, where Hallie goes home to her mother in London, while Annie returns home to their father in California, there portrayed by Jimmy Ray Bennett as Martin, who uses a recurring joke to refer to Hallie as his “squirt.” This is used quite a number of times to the delight of the young audience who roared their approval in guffaws and shouts.

In standout, riotous performances are Grace Reiter in the role of Hallie’s nanny or housekeeper, no one really knows, and Philip Taratula as Meredith Blake, a rival to the twins’ getting their parents together, as she woos the twins’ father in California and is about to get married to the rich businessman. One of the reviews mentions there are many references to Harry Potter in this parody, which I missed since I barely saw these films when they first came out. When the girls eventually get together, they scheme against their potential stepmother who gives a classic bitchy stepmother type of performance. In another review for New York Theatre Guide, Austin Fimmano writes her review on July 14, 2025, in which she writes, “Ginger Twinsies is pretty much 80 straight minutes of raucous laughter. The jokes are never-ending and they’re never dull, especially when Taratula, as Meredith, is on stage. It’s a compliment to the writing and acting, but the laughter also drowns out some of the dialogue, forcing the actors to project even louder than they already were.”

So, this critic, in her last statement, reinforces what I said earlier about not being able to hear some of the dialogue. I rest my case. Anyway, this play is definitely one that would be appreciated more by people in their 30s, I’ve realized. Sadly, the play ends its run at the Orpheum tomorrow.

Tomorrow Elliot and I are venturing to Brooklyn to meet our friend “Deborah” for a film and dinner. I’m not sure if I’ll be present here later in the evening, depending on what time we get back. I’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

Have a good Sunday.

And so it went!