Performer Tom Murrin Gets Reflective in The Talking Show

Tom Murrin, the Alien Comic, has been an altar boy, a teenage magician, an L.A. trial lawyer, a vanguard playwright, an itinerant juggler, a prop comic, and a devotee of the goddess Luna Macaroona, for whom he produces a full moon show every month. Currently, he teaches workshops, constructs masks, pens a column for Paper magazine, and writes "bad-taste sex comedies" under the nom de porn Jack Bump.

LIZ LIGUORI / PS122

Our resident alien: Tom Murrin in "The Talking Show"

Details

The Talking Show
By Tom Murrin
P.S.122
150 First Avenue, 212-352-3101

Related Content

• Gossip! Gossip! Gossip! With Names!
  July 13, 2011
• Letters 7.2.08
  July 2, 2008
• The City Pitted Kids Against Artists in the East Village
  June 24, 2008
• Gray Days
  March 6, 2007
• Brave Bodies
  April 4, 2006

More About

• Tom Murrin
• Luna Macaroona
• Lucy Sexton
• Theater
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

Surprisingly, Murrin and director Lucy Sexton have found sufficient time to create The Talking Show, an autobiographical monologue staged at P.S.122. While a few assistants swirl around re-creating moments from Murrin's performances (though no one dares perform his Spaghetti-O's hara-kiri), Murrin regales the audience with anecdotes. If the piece can seem diffuse, Murrin is one of the most extraordinarily genial men Off-Off-Broadway has ever produced, and it's a pleasure to bask in his avuncular, mildly sleazy glow.

Though there's an alien mask resting at Murrin's feet, he never explains how he acquired his extraterrestrial sobriquet. Indeed, the show tops out some time in the early '80s, suggesting that Murrin has decades of stories left to tell. Perhaps a sequel is in order. Anticipate another Alien invasion.