THE BIG SLEEP MEETS BIG
QUESTIONS IN MR. BIG

“Mr. Big” is the final entry in Woody Allen’s Getting Even (1971), his first published collection of 17 tales and essays, most of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. The main character in “Mr. Big” reflects a recurring motif for Allen: Sam Spade. Kaiser Lupowitz, a Spade doppelgänger, would reappear in another of Allen’s film noir homages, “The Whore of Mensa,” in his second collection, Without Feathers (1975). And in Allen’s seminal Broadway play Play It Again, Sam (1969), Humphrey Bogart’s Spade persona takes center stage in a brilliant send-up of Casablanca.

As staged at the Hobgoblin Playhouse by producer-director-actor-adapter Brian Knudson, the tale is straightforward enough. Private detective Lupowitz (Knudson) is sitting around in standard hard-boiled fashion, wondering where his next case is coming from when Heather Butkiss (Catherine Allison) enters with a figure “that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak.” Butkiss has a missing person case for Lupowitz; she wants him to find “The Creator, the Underlying Principle, the First Cause of Things, the All Encompassing,” aka Mr. Big, aka God.

The show runs into some trouble here with the curse of the multi-hyphenate; fortunately, it’s more of a fender bender than a dramatic pile-up. Knudson gives the piece strength as both actor and adapter—he’s a perfect fit for Lupowitz, and his script sharpens the humor on stage. That’s helped along by the addition of an olio preamble in the person of Groucho Marx (Tuba Heatherton), who delivers an engaging primer on history’s great philosophers and their quests for Mr. Big. With a director to keep everyone in their light, push the pace to that of a vaudeville “slam-door” Protean Act, and perhaps bookend the show with Groucho, Knudson could easily expand the half-hour Mr. Big into something bigger still.

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Mr. Big
part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival
Hobgoblin Playhouse
played five performances June 8-29, 2025
for more info, visit Mr. Big