We might even expect a full-on musical-comedy fantasy number, replete with sudsy production elements like costumes and choreography.
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Those of us who've witnessed Everett onstage might expect the series to ditch its muted, low-key energy here, to show us a woman rediscovering her voice once and for all - and show us how that moment feels to her: We might expect a dramatic change of lighting, and a lush sound mix that defies the modest instrumentation visible onstage behind her. Pop Culture Happy Hour 'Peacemaker' takes aim at a broad, stationary target - with machine guns Instead, it's a space where queer and queer-adjacent residents of the town can gather to celebrate and - here's where Sam's story comes in - to perform.Įmceed by the charismatic Fred Rococo (drag king Murray Hill), Choir Practice is the brainchild of Sam's co-worker Joel (UCB regular Jeff Hiller), who remembers her - and her astonishing voice - from high school. It does so by having Sam stumble across a gathering of outsiders called Choir Practice which, though it meets at a church space in a dying mall, isn't officially sanctioned by any religious institution. Informed by Everett's life experience (she grew up there), the show seems determined to grant its characters a refreshing self-awareness - one that, crucially, isn't tied to notions of leaving their hometown, and the community it affords, behind. Life in the Manhattan, Kansas of the series isn't idealized, but neither is it condescended to. She dotes on her niece (Kailey Albus), but to do so must put up with the withering disdain of her sister Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison), the worrisome drinking of her mother (Jane Brody) and the beaten-down passivity of her father (Mike Hagerty). She's found work grading standardized tests, but refuses to engage with her co-workers. She's living in her late sister's house, but still sleeping on the couch. The "big city" she recently moved back from? Lawrence, Kansas - the state's sixth-biggest town. But the difference is one of degrees: Her hometown is "the eighth-biggest town in Kansas!" as one character sardonically notes. Yes, the premise bears some passing similarity to the classic sitcom fish-out-of-water trope - we learn that Sam moved away to the big city a while back, and now feels alienated from her hometown.
That's fully intentional, as is the fact that there's nothing broadly or archly comedic about the semi-autobiographical series. As Sam, a woman who moved back to her hometown to take care of her dying older sister and spent the last six months or so nursing her grief, the electrifying performer runs at a low voltage. If you're familiar with Everett's nightclub act, you'll likely spend at least the first few minutes of her new HBO series Somebody Somewhere in a puzzled haze of cognitive dissonance. There's also the fact that to watch her in action on the cabaret stage means watching her in action off of it - she spends a good deal of her act gleefully prowling the crowd to flirt, accost, challenge, embrace and rebuff audience members, one by one. She's hilarious, filthy and so supremely comfortable with her voice, her body and her sheer, scintillating presence that she casts a spell over the audience. It's impossible to watch actor, comedian and singer Bridget Everett in action on a cabaret stage without surrendering to the experience and goggling like a fool. Sam (Bridget Everett) and Joel (Jeff Hiller) bond over student essays in Somebody Somewhere.
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