The Gideon and Hubcap Show for Kids, Adults and Everyone Else
A Living Room Near You
Snapshot Review: Undiluted Joy
Jacquelyn Claire, Reviewer

I took my inner child to see Gideon and Hubcap’s soul tickling show. These two wonder wielders perform together in homes across the US and the world. This year they turned their attention to divining a children’s show and expertly broke the genre mold in the process.
It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day but I knew that was going to change because I was off to see these two marvelous music-making fun stokers. You get the address of the apartment, where the hullabaloo is going to happen, the day before. On arrival we where a glorious collection of children of all ages throwing big winter jackets in a pile, walking around on socked feet and making a lot of lovely, noisy social chit chat.
And then it was time to let the wild rumpus start. We were getting “curiouser and curiouser”. We found our perches on sofas, stools, bean bags and benches. In the word of Pooh, “When you see someone putting on his big boots, you can be pretty sure that an adventure is going to happen”. Our story yellers revealed their ‘smartie’ pants (clever clever costume designer –Alice Tavener) and began to sing. Warning: it’s undiluted joy so it can be ecstatically overwhelming at first dose.
They have been performing together forever, even longer, and they are intertwined like an old married couple who finish each others sentences. You don’t know where a Hubcap begins and a Gideon ends –they are simply an amalgam of kindred looney-ticks, hell bent on inducing laughter, love and surprise in any audience. Oh, the thinks they can think up together. It’s all so terribly unexpected. Every musical item, played on every conceivable instrument, is 100% brand spanking new and original.
They cover difficult topics like being on the spectrum, bullying and falling out with friends with a beautiful delicacy that sets butterflies in tummies free. And in between the quirky moral songs there are truthful tunes of sheer happy making hilarity. Their delicious fascination with bugs is also strangely contagious.
Just when you think you’ve got a handle on their brand of brilliance they bring out the ‘crankie maker’, ingeniously made by their friend Coire Williams, that is a kind of a carousel of evocative images illustrated by Iris Gottlieb. The trippy crankie maker soundtrack is slightly soporific and you sort of drift off into a relaxing theta state. It’s a perfect segue towards the end of the show. You’ve had invigrating imagination stimulation, interactive singing, sticking-your-bum out dancing, lyrics to live by and melodies to ear worm…but all good things must come to an end. They found their full stop and the moon went with them.
Why did it have to stop? At least I knew who I was when I got up that morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then. Gideon and Hubcap tend to transform even the stubbornest DNA strands to send you home just a little skew. A favorite day indeed.
Ewen Wright is credited with directing the show/herding cats. He injects a through line that these two chaos creators can cling to as they play in their self-created singing sand pit. I imagine him to be a big anchor of a person holding tightly onto the rope that let’s the two float into outer singing space. The show was made possible with the support of The Mountain School and Craig Cohon, and I would like to give them a grateful squeeze.
The best part of this show is that is never has an end date to the run. You can invite them to perform in your home (especially if you live in NYC or LA). They put out a hat at the end of the show and they charge a sliding scale of between $1-$100 per person. Their payment plan states: “Free for heroes. $500 for villains. Whatever you are willing to contribute to the hat would be great. If you got no money right now, please come anyway. If you have lots of money you can give us a bunch of it!” You can simply drop them an email: itstruemynameisgideon@gmail.com if you want them to come to your home and play.
I didn’t want to leave until my husband had to coax me away saying, “Okay, you’re over-tired, you’re showing off, it’s time for bed.”
Running time 60 minutes
The Gideon and Hubcap Show, for Kids, Adults and Everyone Else plays forever as long as you decide to host them in your home.
For more information, click HERE

© Copyright 2018 by Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.