Pop culture junkies love to talk about celebrities. True pop culture aficionados, however, go one step further and actually quote their favorite celebrities. Michael Martin, creator of Verbatim Verboten, recognizes this skill and has turned it into a new kind of entertainment. Verbatim Verboten draws on secretly recorded telephone conversations, witness testimonies, and other records of remarks by celebrities and public figures of lesser repute that have somehow fallen into public domain. It then brings them to life with a cast of local comedians. At this particular performance, the ever-morphing material included re-enactments featuring John Gotti, Jenny Jones, Madonna, Linda Tripp, and everyone's favorite newlyweds, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.
Each performance draws on a rotating selection of 15 to 20 scenes, so there is a certain degree of luck of the draw in terms of which scenes audience members will watch. The night the show was seen, it was billed as "St. Valentine's Day Massacre: Love Stories, Mob Stories" and loosely used that thread to tie its scenes together. Scenes deemed not fit for this show but performed in earlier ones included recordings from Fred Durst, O.J. Simpson, Britney Spears, Orson Welles, and various Enron executives.
One highlight from the show, which plays Mondays at Fez (in the basement of Time Caf
