Do Not Kill Me, Killer Robots - Indy Fringe Theatre Review

I'm never quite sure about one-man and one-woman shows. Sometimes they can be very good, and sometimes they're nothing more than a standup comedy routine in story form. Think Mike Birbiglia or Eddie Izzard. And while I love these comedians, there aren't a whole lot of people who can pull off the art form.

So I tend to steer clear of a lot of the one-man shows, although I have yet to see a bad one at an Indy Fringe. (Admittedly, I've avoided a lot of them too.) But when I saw the title "Do Not Kill Me, Killer Robots," by the Great Ben Egerman Theatre AdventureI thought I'd better give it a try.

I think killer robots are going to be the next great threat to world security (as we move out of the Zombie threat and into the Vampire threat, I'm already starting to see early indications that Killer Robots are next).

The premise of the show is that Ben Egerman is the last man on Earth, after everyone else has been wiped out by the killer robots (us, the audience). However, there is a code in our programming that says we are not allowed to kill humans during a solo performance. In other words, as long as Egerman keeps performing his one man show, he's safe. However, we may shout at him (more on that later).

Egerman keeps the humor silly and exaggerated as he describes other, past one-man shows, including "Do Not Bite Me, Evil Vampires" (or whatever he called them. He had about five of them.), a look back at a whole raft of Facebook updates as Day 1 of the Robot-Human wars unfurled, and several sketches of what happened to lead up to Egerman's being the last man on Earth.

One thing that was both interesting and a little annoying was that Egerman encouraged the audience to yell "PUNY HUMANS!" during the show. He gave us a practice try, and then said we could continue to yell it throughout his performance. The annoying part was that people did. A lot.

"PUNY!" someone would shout. "HUMAN!" they would add a second later, having forgotten the second half of their only line. That was the annoying part. The impressive part was that it didn't throw Egerman at all. He took it in stride, responded a few times, and took it all in stride.

Egerman has toured "Do Not Kill Me, Killer Robots" for the last two months at different fringe festivals around the country, and Indianapolis is his last stop. I don't know if that means he is no longer performing Killer Robots, but this is the only time you'll be able to see it here, as Egerman is from Minnesota. So if you haven't seen it, by all means, do.

The humor is exaggerated, silly, and just plain weird. In other words, I loved it. If you enjoyed shows like Kids In The Hall and The State, you'll love it too.