Vaudeville lives at Pitt

This isn’t your grandparents’ vaudeville.

The New Fangled Old Tyme Vaudeville Company,… This isn’t your grandparents’ vaudeville.

The New Fangled Old Tyme Vaudeville Company, Pitt’s resident troupe, performed for the first time last Friday in the Frick Fine Arts Building.

“We have all these great things in our culture,” said Shoham Zober, the group’s president and co-founder. “But where did it come from? It was all together [in vaudeville].”

“And I think it would be neat to see that all together again.”

The show began with Zober reading a forged letter of cancellation from the University’s administration, then jumping into a pair of jazz renditions, including The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love,” accompanied on piano by the Company’s vice president, Yakov Chodosh.

Zober served as the night’s master of ceremonies, with Chodosh playing his faithful sidekick, usually from behind his keyboard.

After Zober’s crooning, two girls in red took the stage for a dance routine that elicited several hoots from the audience.

The show then switched to an eight-person melee of swing dancing, while the Pitt Men’s Glee Club director, Richard Teaster, seized the keyboards from Chodosh, who was also dancing.

“My uncle kind of inspired me to pursue this kind of music,” Chodosh said. “And my grandmother got me into jazz music.”

Next, a juggler from the Campus Fools launched three green balls into the air, at one point rolling them down the back of his head while continuing to toss them in front of him.

The juggler worked his way up, one ball at a time, to five, drawing applause from the audience.

In vaudeville form, a satire group called Despised Oligarchies Perform Everyday lampooned George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and the war in Iraq.

The plot of the skit revolved around a parody of “The Wizard of Oz,” in which Bush and Rumsfeld were on a quest for the Wizard of Oil.

Filled with songs, the act contained several unflattering portrayals of the current administration, including Rumsfeld manipulating an inflatable sex toy dubbed “the American people.”

However, not all of the acts were so barefaced.

Erik Roth, a tap dancer extraordinaire, according to Zober, glided and shuffled across the stage with an effortless countenance.

Chodosh sang two solos while Zober rested before returning to close out the show with three consecutive songs, all with his own personal, old-fashioned styling.

“I have a lot of influences – Groucho Marx first. Second is Conan O’Brien,” Zober said. “And then third is guys like Jimmy Durante, just guys who sang and did their own thing.”

Chodosh said he hopes to have another show in the spring.

Zober added, “This summer, I said I want to play a space – if five people show up, whatever. This is unbelievable; I can’t believe it.”