'Raconteurs and Roustabouts' Show Hits UCPAC Tonight

Looking for one unusual and fun experience to celebrate the arrival of February? Get yourself to the Hamilton Stage at the Union County Performing Arts Center tonight for "Raconteurs and Roustabouts: Where Culture and Carnivals Collide."

The show is tonight, February 1, at 8 pm, at the theatre, located at 360 Hamilton Street in Rahway. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased online.

It promises to be an evening you won't soon forget (the theatre advises that because of the nature of the event, only those 16 and up should attend.)

Get there early to watch the H.A.T. side show upchuck fifteen foot flumes of flame into the blue black sky outside the theatre and visit The Mythsonian, a Museum of Monstrous & Mythological Oddities: monkey paws and Krampus claws, vulture eyes and vampire hearts, mummified mermaids, freeze-dried chupacabras, and the exsiccated corpse of an eight foot Sasquatch (all nicely arranged inside an indoor circus tent set up in the lobby). Then stay for the carnie stories, the haunted ditties about side show sins, the rockabilly and ragtime, the samurai sword swallowing, the bone-cracking escapism, and the whirring power drill insertion.

In addition to sideshow extraordinaire, Honor Amongst Thieves and The Mythsonian Museum of Oddities, Raconteurs & Roustabouts features vaudevillian tusk tickler (i.e. piano man) and villainous thing, Shayfer James; former Boss couture model-cum-wraithy songbird (think Carla Bruni meets Poe’s Annabel Lee), Francesca Tedeschi; outlaw rocker, gonzo author, former High Times editor, and one time professional wrestler, Mike Edison (accompanied by the weird and wonderful waverings of his own Theremin, and the dental stylings of tooth-toucher Mickey Finn), and rounding out the troupe, freakcentric fabulist and renowned “rodeo clown” Clay Mcleod Chapman, creator of the frequently perverse and occasionally petrifying Pumpkin Pie Show. 

And of course, as always, the shenanigans will be supervised by the Raconteur's resident ringmaster, Alex Dawson, who, accompanied on guitar by musician Bruce Donnola, will also be reading an original story about a Chinese giant and a tattooed ten year old who are, you guessed it, private detectives!

For more information, call 732-499-8226.

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