THWAK

"I've been wondering for ages how to drag mime into the new millennium," one of the Umbilical Brothers deadpans into a microphone, "and the answer was -- sound." Sure enough, the Umbilicals' off-Broadway hit THWAK is a brilliant hybrid of mime and what you might call Looney Tunes beatbox. Australians Shane Dundas and Dave Collins have one microphone between them (usually), and what one of them mimes -- cooking on a barbecue, waving away a fly, throwing a dog, firing numerous guns -- the other makes vivid, cartoonlike sound effects for into the mike. Or is it the other way around? After a big introduction stressing that Shane, the "action guy," is the star of the show, Dave makes it clear that holding the mike and producing appropriate noises is a firmer kind of power. "No, not the fly," Shane protests, breaking off midscene. "I don't want to do the fly right now." But Dave insists on the fly. That starts a 90-minute struggle for control of the mike, which stitches together all the skits. The best part of THWAK is the sense that Shane and Dave are just overgrown kids, imitating old cartoons, who just happen, at the same time, to be reinvigorating the tradition of Marcel Marceau. -- Michael Scott Moore