Salt Lake Acting Company Summer Show theater preview 

• Joseph Branca
• SLAC’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Last year, writer Olivia Custodio created something new to her own creativity that was also new to Salt Lake Acting Company's tradition of summer productions. This year, she and SLAC are trying something new again. And this shifting approach just might be the new abnormal for SLAC in the summer.

After decades of productions focused on satirizing politics and mores on the local and national level with parody songs and broad comedy, SLAC turned to Custodio for a more character-based take under the newer SLACabaret banner. For 2023, Custodio's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood appears with a humorous take on beloved public television programming—and a new designation simply as "SLAC's Summer Show."

"What they learned last year was that the term 'cabaret' made people think of a singing recital," Custodio says. "This was an attempt to have people realize it might be something different."

This particular "something different" moves away from some of the character arcs Custodio introduced in the 2022 show focused on multi-level marketing companies. The framework introduces a fund-raising drive for the "UBS" public television service, with sketches built around shows like Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and Bill Nye the Science Guy. "We're playing off really iconic PBS characters," Custodio says, "our own version of them, like 'who is Mr. Rogers if he's in Salt Lake City.'"

It's definitely an adult show not intended for children, though, both in terms of subject matter and in terms of the comedy. Custodio understands the possibility for audiences expecting something that has already been done in the musical Avenue Q, but she's aiming for her own thing. "Obviously wanted to stay away from anything Avenue Q-adjacent, because it's brilliant," she says "We only have three puppets total. ... We have cutaways to all the iconic shows, that each tackle a specific thing—one that addresses our housing crisis, one that addresses our environmental crisis—through the lens of an educational experience, like we're kids again.

"We have moments in the show where kids realize the gravity of the situation; the line of "children's show" is definitely walked very finely. If anything, the challenge for me has been, 'This is really dark, how do I not go so hard on these issues.'"

That challenge of tone extends to the songs, which do continue at least one SLAC summer tradition of musical parody. In this case, songs familiar from those beloved shows often served as the jumping-off point, though Custodio had to choose carefully. "I wanted to incorporate some of the best-known songs from PBS," she notes. "How do I play on this sense of nostalgia? How do I play with something so simple in this format? ... Those Mr. Rogers songs are so beautiful and sentimental. You don't want to stop the momentum of a comedy with something that slows it down."

Another challenge, when dealing with a show that features topical humor, is what to do when the world throws you a last-minute curveball, as happened last year when the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade came down just a few weeks before the summer production's premiere. "This year, because of the structure, and because of the idea I had for which iconic shows I wanted to use, I put it out into the universe, 'Please don't go to hell,'" Custodio says. "The news never stops, and it is that game of, how do I leave enough space?"

Topical humor, song parodies, even the post-COVID return of the stage-side tables that bring audience members right into the energy of the show—in some ways, it sounds like a SLAC summer show from 20 years ago. Yet Custodio believes that there's an ongoing opportunity for the format to try different things, and be the right show for the right moment.

"Last year, my hope was that people could see themselves on stage, or represented," she says. "This year, what I hope they can take away is a moment of laughter in a time that is very hard for different reasons, and feel motivated to really engage with the community and make things better, and not get complacent and put their blinders on. I hope it's a motivating reminder of all the things weighing very heavily on Utah's shoulders, but that we all roll up our sleeves and get to work."

As for whether she'll have something else new to offer if invited to return again for next year's show, Custodio laughs, "I never feel like I have anything to say. Then I'll have an idea in the car and think, 'This would be funny. It could be a show.'"