Penny Arcade’s show, Longing Lasts Longer comes with a warning. As the audience walked into the Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill last week, she told them, “A lot of times, people come to my show, and during the show, they start to get angry with me. I need you to understand that this show was written before you got here. This show is not about you.“
Or is it? Is this show about all of us?
Penny Arcade started her performance career in 1968 at age of eighteen at the Play-House of the Ridiculous and by nineteen was featured in the 1972 Warhol/Morrissey comedy, Women in Revolt. Her career spans over fifty years. Every night Penny would go to Max’s Kansas City with Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Andy Warhol, and Patti Smith – well before any of them were famous.
Penny Arcade, at 73 years old, has performed her show, Longing Lasts Longer over 200 times, annoying both the left and right, as she rants about topics ranging from political correctness to fascism, from strollers on sidewalks to the roses in the supermarkets with no scent.
It was a packed house on a Sunday afternoon in Catskill, New York
A (mostly) one-woman show, with her collaborator and DJ Steven Zehentner behind her, Penny Arcade bounces and dances on stage while bemoaning not only the gentrification of neighborhoods, but also the gentrification of the mind. Have we all become consumers?
What is up with people lining up? If they are not lining up for a macaron, they are lining up for an artisanal gelato. If it’s not a cotton candy mojito, it’s probably a cupcake. There are hundreds of dessert shops within a ten block radius of my apartment! The cupcake is the narcotic of the new infantilized masses! And while the cupcake may appear to be innocent, the cupcake is malevolent! The cupcake represents Hannah Arendt’s ‘the banality of evil’. The cupcake is the tool of oppression! It is a culture of wealth that can only consume taste and style. The cupcake hides the brutality of its entitlement. Being a fascist collaborator has never tasted so sweet!
‘Penny, does this mean I cannot eat a cupcake?’
No, stupid person, it’s called a metaphor.
Penny Arcade
Are we all part of ‘banality of evil’? In our everyday lives, with every decision we make, no matter how small, are we part of the solution, or part of the problem?
Questioning ourselves and our intentions triggers many.
The Huffington Post once asked Penny to comment on New York City nightlife for young queers in safe and supportive spaces. But, she asks, can you really have ‘safe space’ nightlife? Isn’t part of growing up being a little bit scared….and triggered outside our comfort zone every now and then?
Penny Arcade makes her audience of a certain age question what happened to their rebellious youth and at the same time asks today’s youth, what are you rebelling? Are you annoyed that you cannot consume as much as the generations before you? Why do twenty-somethings want twenty dollar cocktails and mortgages? She reminds us that she used to eat ramen noodles four-bags-for-a-dollar and that twenty dollar cocktails are for middle-aged adults in their fifties, as a consolation prize for not having as much sex as they did in their twenties.
You can’t call yourself fierce and ask for a safe space in the same sentence.
Penny Arcade
Thank you, Penny Arcade, for over fifty years of shit-kicking!
You can watch Penny Arcade’s show, Longing Lasts Longer for $2 on Patreon, here: https://www.patreon.com/Penny_Arcade/
If we’re lucky, the Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill will bring her back!
1 thought on “Penny Arcade Rallies Against the ‘Banality of Evil’ and the Gentrification of the Mind in her show “Longing Last Longer” at the Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, NY”