Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman team for a 'Summer' night of music, comedy, love and sex
If Philadelphia experiences a small uptick in population in spring next year, celebrity lovebirds Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman won't be surprised. They'll just rest easy knowing that their "Summer of 69: No Apostrophe" tour worked as intended.
If Philadelphia experiences a small uptick in population in spring next year, celebrity lovebirds Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman won't be surprised. They'll just rest easy knowing that their "Summer of 69: No Apostrophe" tour worked as intended.
"Nine months from now, I hope you'll send us pictures of all the show babies," Mullally, of Will & Grace fame, told a house packed with couples at the Merriam Theater on Saturday. Offerman, known best as Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation, meanwhile, told the audience that they should "walk out of this theater ready to make love."
And, really, they may not have been joking. When you're in love, as they appear to be, you tend to want everyone to share in what you're feeling. Physically, at least.
As the title would indicate, the "Summer of 69" tour is a raunchy, over-the-top take on the perception of Offerman and Mullally's decade-plus marriage, which Offerman admits is a pretty big deal. The two-hour show mixes dirty jokes and dirtier songs with healthy doses of tenderness and affection to form a loving, not overly horny, snapshot of one of Hollywood's most beloved couples.
The show opened Saturday with Offerman, 46, carrying Mullally, 57, out on the stage piggyback-style before the pair launched into their first track, "Summer of 69." With Offerman on guitar and Mullally on ukulele, the song helped to frontload the show with sexual humor thanks to references to human anatomy such as Offerman's "pudding stick," and set the bar high (or low, depending on your perspective) for the night.
Sex, of course, was the big topic for the night. Offerman and Mullally, as their roles as Ron and Tammy on Parks and Recreation would indicate, love making love with each other, almost to the point of obsession. Song lyrics in that vein included Hollywood gossip, with the pair noting that "Affleck's a crier," and "a night with Chris Hemsworth would leave you quite Thor." Religion, too, was lampooned, with the tale of "the day we taught Jesus to do it."
Because a comedic couple, no matter how charming they are, cannot rely on sexual humor alone, even in a show ostensibly about it, Offerman and Mullally broke up the dirtiness with absurdist humor.
That absurdist streak carried through to the show's stories, including one in which Offerman claims to have attempted to purchase marijuana from a dealer on South Street back in 1993, which sadly turned out to be a block of "old fudge."
Sentimentality similarly helped balance the night, with Offerman performing "Queen of the Pixies," a song he wrote for Mullally. Mullally, in turn, performed "My Pop," which she wrote for Offerman.
"We're able to do this because we just like each other," Offerman said Saturday.
While the show may not be an aphrodisiac per se, it is hilarious, and it may well inspire couples in the audience to feel as deeply as Offerman and Mullally appear to feel about one another. If it does, Hollywood's funniest couple can expect a lot of baby photos in the mail from Philadelphia-area zip codes.
No other local dates are scheduled.