Review of Bucket of Mistakes' Question Quest! at Rhino Fest

Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called Question Quest! It was by Zeb Eaton, Sebastian Ffrench, and Peter Stodder. It was written and acted by teens, but they didn't have a director, so everyone made the decisions. It was about Phillip Mayne (Eaton) and he wanted to get his friends back together so they could do this game show called Question Quest! That involves getting Carl (Stodder) out of a coma, Anderson (Menelik Barbarousse) out of a bad-paying job at Starbooks coffee shop, and Fred (Jonathan Young) out of his kingdom of garbage. Question Quest seemed like a pretty normal game show, but their opponents in the game show were not so normal. They were an army veteran (TJ Nakano), an insanely goth person (Nadia Stodder), a boy who had put Carl in a coma (Liam Winchester), and a demon (Eric Edstrom). I thought this was a fun show. It was weird and funny and very creative!

Three of my favorite characters were the war veteran, the goth person, and the host Quincy Quistian (Ffrench) because they were really really hilarious. The veteran was very enthusiastic and kind of yelled everything that he said. I found that hilarious; I couldn't stop laughing about that. The goth person would make very "deep" and sad comments. And sometimes they were so dark that they would disturb Quincy Quistian and he would have to say, "Okay. That's good. We're done." Quincy was funny because he got so agitated with his job because it got pretty weird. And when the war veteran would launch into his stories, Quincy would do the same kind of "I don't want to hear that, so let's keep going!" He would say something along the lines of,"I don't want to hear that" in a very serious way and then go back into gameshow-host mode for "So let's keep going!" I thought that was very funny.

At the end, their prize was getting to go to a water park, which was their favorite thing to do. But it ended up just being a giant kiddie pool. How excited they were about the kind of dumb water park was very funny without being super complicated. All of the humor was not super complex, but it was super enjoyable and I did laugh a lot. There was a long moment of just the squeaking of the kiddie pool being taken onstage, and that built hilarious suspense. And then the lights come up and there is the kiddie pool there, and they are all sitting in it. They had been building up suspense about how great this water park is, but then once all the suspense was built up and it was time to be revealed you learn that it is just a kiddie pool with really cheap tickets. But they are so excited about it even when they are there. They make a huge deal about it and I found that very funny.

There was a garbage kingdom where everybody was made of garbage. They placed garbage all over their bodies and covered the stage with garbage. I thought it was funny how there were people running around with garbage all over them and garbage all around them. This entire show was basically a festival of absurdity. They don't just find their friend Fred in a garbage dump, they find him in a garbage kingdom where he has become the king. It felt like an idea that you really only think of in a group and then you make it into a whole storyline with your friends because you all find it funny, like a drawn-out inside joke. It wasn't obscure to me though; I could still understand and enjoy it.

People who would like this show are people who like kiddie-pool water parks, garbage kingdoms, and enthusiastic war veterans. I really liked this show, but sadly it had a very short run and is closed now. I still wanted to review it because I thought it was very fun and I'm looking forward to what this company does next.

Photo: Bucket of Mistakes