Animal Cracker Genocide

by Phillip Andrew Bennett Low | 8/4/09 • I’ve been following Ben’s work since he first started doing stand-up. Seriously. As someone who frequents open-mics, I think I was in the audience as far back as his first time onstage. I don’t follow the local stand-up scene closely, although I do have some awareness of it; and he stood out immediately as an appealing, self-deprecating newcomer with an unusually cerebral streak. While his material was golden from the get-go, his stage presence could be stiff and off-putting.

Three years have passed, and while in this show his tics haven’t vanished — he still mumbles, he’s still furtive — he’s now taken those liabilities and turned them into assets. His persona is relaxed and polished, and the night I was there he shone.

Of course, that may not be a fair assessment — it was a sold-out house, and it’s hard not to give a great performance with an audience like that. Not that you’ll likely find out otherwise, since he’s sold out his first two performances, including a Monday night slot(!).

His material’s as strong as it ever was — indeed, much of it is maintained from previous shows, albeit tightened up considerably. The difference now is that he’s developed a sufficiently approachable stage presence that everyone can reach that material. It was one hell of an hour of entertainment, and I’m honored to have the opportunity to work with him.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low (maximumverbosityonline@gmail.com) is a playwright and poet, storyteller and mime, theater critic and libertarian activist, who lurks ominously in the desert wilds of St. Louis Park, feasting upon the hygienically-prepared flesh of the once-living. His main claim to fame is probably as co-founder of the Rockstar Storytellers, and as founder/producer of Maximum Verbosity, a garage-band-like theater troupe that is in a state of constantly re-defining itself.