The brand-new issue of Mad Magazine, #523, offers four full pages of “Sergio Aragones Presents a Mad Look at the Theatre.” The esteemed “Mad Marginal” artist Aragones offers ten separate gag strips in his inimitable silent style, devoted to the fabulous invalid. As you expect, these touch on such hoary stereotypes as the casting couch, actors’ (and directors’) vanity, the price of Broadway tickets, latent homosexuality, and life imitating art.
Expect these pages to be tacked to doors of high school drama teachers’ doors throughout the nation.
For more advanced theater buffs, the same issue of Mad offers a parody of the TV series Homeland (mocked Mad-style, naturally, as “Humdrumland”). The show co-stars Mandy Patinkin (whose most recent New Haven stage appearance was at the Long Wharf Theatre’s 2013 Gala Fundraiser this past June). The great actor/singer is rendered in the parody thus: