Life in a Box episode 3.0 (on Instagram from Friday, May 1, 2020.)
Background. The wonderful Landon Doak & Matt Finlan are presenting episodes of their apocalyptic-friendship-stoner-musical Life in a Box live on Instagram (@landondoak) every Friday at 4:20pm.
They perform about 15-20 minutes of the show in succession, playing the instruments live and using wifi lightbulbs for the effects, have incorporated some new music, and then after do a talk show-style chat about the show, life, weed, etc. with some good news stories thrown in.
I love the show when I saw it live. Here’s my review of the full show when it played the Grand Canyon Theatre last year.
In this week’s episode Landon Doak and Matt Finlan know their ‘time machine’ works because it has taken them back in time to be able to prepare the future for a conflagration (getting high is the focus of the show, so the mind-blowing story seems about right). They are ready to return to the future only Matt finds that he has returned to someone named Langdon and not his good buddy Landon! Langdon looks like Landon only Langdon wears glasses and it seems has never gotten high. A bit of a glitch there. How to fix this? It’s all part of the cleverness of the story and the creation of the production.
This episode has several examples of the clever word-play in the songs and of Doak and Finlan’s beautiful harmonizing. Their performances are full of energy and dazzling timing. Again, they riff off each other, never miss a beat (until they tell us they did later in the chat section. Even that is expressed with gleeful enthusiasm.) And while Life in a Box is described as a ‘stoner musical’ you don’t have to be high to enjoy the artistry, musicality and wild imagination of the two.
The chat session happens after they (supposedly) have ‘a bowl’ to unwind. There they give their shout-outs to all those who helped put the segment together, or donated equipment. They always end with a bit of good news.
All the episodes are available on YouTube and on their Instagram page. The details are below. Check them out. In our worlds of isolation, Life in a Box is a breath of fresh air even if it might be filled with the fragrance of weed.
@landondoak) every Friday at 4:20pm. May 8 will be the last episode unless these two gifted performers decide to carry on with the story, with a bong.
And their Instagram handle for the show is: @_lifeinabox_