review
Live! With Pascale & Chantal


Genre: Sketch Comedy
Written by: Leila Gazale, Jana Zenadeen
Directed by: Maha Chehlaoui
Performed by: Leila Gazale, Jana Zenadeen, Sami Mitwasi, Lena Rizkallah, Demond Robertson, Afaf Shawwa, Ryan Shrime, Tamar Vezirian
Running time: 75 minutes
Web site: pascaleandchantal.com

Foreign television programming often exudes an envy of American TV, lapping up insipid nonsense from U.S. airwaves and reproducing it even more inanely overseas. Live! With Pascale & Chantal, Beirut's fictional number-one talk show, stars a lavender power-suited Baba Wawa-esque broadcast journalist and her sequin-clad, former-Miss Lebanon co-host. Together, with Daytime Emmy-winning verve, they earnestly tackle the issues of the day (spousal communication, plastic surgery) and chat with celebs like the Egyptian motion picture industry's "it girl" actress. Originally developed for the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, Pascale & Chantal makes hay of the differences—and the similarities—between the East-West cultural Venn diagram. Stars Leila Gazale and Jana Zenadeen are very funny and at times hysterical. Playing off each other like lifelong cohorts, they revel in their characters' narcissistic showboating, pseudo-intellectual interviews and self-important delusions of grandeur. This comedy of Western media filtered through the Arab eye is almost perfectly executed, hilarious, relevant, and—hyperbolic as it sounds—culturally consequential.—Will Doig

Where: Greenwich Street Theater
When: Tue, Aug 17 at 10:15 p.m.; Fri, Aug 20 at 7:45 p.m.; Mon, Aug 23 at 4:30 p.m.; Wed, Aug 25 at 7:45 p.m.; Sat, Aug 28 at 1:45 p.m.and 11:15 p.m.

 
Published August 23, 2004