I never thought I’d see Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner Lin-Manuel Miranda playing a seizure-ridden dog. But there he was last Saturday night at off-Broadway’s Greenwich House Theater, crawling around on all fours, twitching and convulsing like a pup possessed.
This unlikely scenario came from, like pretty much all of Freestyle Love Supreme’s improvised hip hop numbers, an audience prompt: “I had an epileptic German Shepherd named Ramona,” recalled a woman named Mary Alice. And before you could say “roll over,” Utkarsh Ambudkar (aka UTK the INC) was skipping around as 10-year-old Mary Alice, and Miranda was licking Ambudkar’s face as the group retold the story of a girl, her epileptic pooch, and the day she left the front door ajar. Spoiler: Ramona got hit by a car—but she lived!
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★★ review here.]
Sadly, none of you will be able to experience the girl-and-her-dog mini-musical, which vanished just as quickly as it appeared. And I don’t think the FLS crew could ever re-create “Vibrator”—probably not the song’s official title—from which I’m still trying to recover. (Props to Ambudkar for changing vibrator into vibe rater. And to Miranda for his, ahem, extremely honest verse. I’m still laughing/cringing.) Come to think of it, this is probably why everyone has to lock up their smartphones in little pouches at FLS—not because one might ring and interrupt the flow, but more likely because some jerk would inevitably try to film these wonderfully ephemeral moments.
Of course, there’s no telling what—or who—you’ll see at Freestyle Love Supreme. I was as shocked as anyone to see Miranda, who created FLS along with Anthony “Two Touch” Veneziale and director Thomas Kail. (Miranda serves as producer here, and there’s no telling when he’ll pop in as a guest star.) At the performance I attended, Christopher Jackson (C-Jack) also performed; James Monroe Iglehart (J-Soul) and Daveed Diggs (Mr. Diggs) are also on the “special and spontaneous guest” list.
But don’t be bummed if Miranda (aka Lin-Man) isn’t at your show. Yes, it’s pretty cool to see him in his element—The word is highlighter…go! Algorithm…go! But the FLS crew is pretty tight: Veneziale, the evening’s lightning-quick-on-the-uptake host; Chris “Shockwave” Sullivan, who’s essentially a one-man percussion section/sound factory (his instrumental—read: vocal—riff on the word sauté, which ended with serving up a fried kitten, was priceless); keyboardists Arthur “Arthur the Geniuses” Lewis, who also lent his smooth vocals to the aforementioned “Vibrator” song and guest musician Ian Weinberger; and, especially, Ambudkar, an actor/rapper who you might know from the film Pitch Perfect or TV’s The Mindy Project, and plays such as Animals Out of Paper and Modern Terrorism. (Note: These are the guys I saw.) I’ll admit to not loving the song where he turned the annoying son of an audience member into a compulsive masturbator (let’s hope Gustavo wasn’t at the show!), but Ambudkar is hugely talented. Who else wants to see him in a rap battle with Miranda?
Freestyle Love Supreme opened Feb. 12, 2019, and runs through March 3 at the Greenwich House Theater. Tickets and information: freestylelovesupreme.com
