The secret word Monday at Greek Theatre was “fantastic,” and that aptly described the “Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Pee-wee’s Playhouse” all-star variety show, which kicked off the 2026 Netflix Is a Joke Festival in Los Angeles.
But another optional secret word could have elicited just as many repeated screams from the audience of 5,900 Pee-wee devotees — many of whom were rocking their spiffiest red bowties, Miss Yvonne bouffants, Cowboy Curtis cosplay, and Jambi turbans, with one best-dressed superfan even donning a suit fashioned from stitched-together Chairry plushies. And that (compound) word was “rock ‘n’ roll.”
One would expect no less from a tribute to the late, great Pee-wee Herman, aka Paul Reubens. A true rock star (and loner and rebel) in his own right, his subversive Saturday morning kiddie series featured a loopy theme song secretly recorded by an uncredited Cyndi Lauper; an indescribably bonkers Christmas special starring Grace Jones; and original scores by Todd Rundgren, Dweezil Zappa, the Residents, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Cliff Martinez, and, most famously, Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, who got his first big break as a screen composer from Reuben, his longtime Groundlings-era pal.
Mothersbaugh served as Monday’s musical director and bandleader (with indie-rock comedian Fred Armisen playing drums!), and from the moment that the beehived diva from one of Reubens’s favorite bands — the B-52s’ Kate Pierson, basically the Miss Yvonne of pop, and probably the only lady fit to take on fellow redhead Lauper’s quirky vocals — opened the show with the Playhouse theme, attendees knew they were in for one big adventure.
But no one could have expected the fantastic surprise in store when another famous red-haired rebel, Playhouse’s freckle-faced marionette bully Randy, skipped onstage and introduced “the world’s greatest redheaded composer”: Mothersbaugh’s fellow new wave pioneer, Danny Elfman.
Elfman also landed his first major movie job through Reubens. Reubens had been so impressed by the Forbidden Zone — a 1980 absurdist musical comedy starring L.A. street theater troupe Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, which later morphed into Elfman’s band Oingo Boingo — that he recommended Elfman to score first-time director Tim Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. And the rest was cinematic history. “He heard the music and he wrote my name down, and five or six years later, he hadn’t forgotten it, amazingly,” Elfman told the Netflix Is a Joke crowd. “It was the first time I ever got to write for orchestra. I’m so grateful to Paul Reubens. Now, 110 films later… thank you, Paul.”
And after Elfman played his iconic “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure Suite,” he shockingly dusted off the cult classic that started it all: the actual Forbidden Zone theme. “I haven’t performed this song in 47 years, so it’s unlikely that I won’t screw it up pretty badly,” he chucklingly warned, before of course pulling off a fantastic performance.
Mothersbaugh later performed a kooky talkboxed version of stop-motion Playhouse garage band the Crinkle Cuts’ “Cold Inside” (ain’t no party like an icebox party, indeed), and was joined by his energy-dome-topped Devo bandmate Gerald Casale for Devo’s “Whip It,” with operatic cabaret clown Puddles Pity Party then lending his surprisingly fantastic booming baritone to Devo’s lesser-played “Beautiful World.”
Other musical highlights of the show (which was associate-produced by Mothersbaugh’s wife, Anita Greenspan) included Armisen, Pierson, and the B-52s’ Fred Schneider taking on the roles of all three Del Rubio Triplets for a rollicking rendition of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” and Pierson and a cowbell-wielding Schneider transforming the Playhouse into a giant tin-roof-rusted Love Shack, as they performed that signature hit and their sci-fi/surf-rock jam “Rock Lobster.”
If Monday’s revue had featured yet another scream-inducing secret word, however, it would have been “moving.” At one point in the evening, host Patton Oswalt (who discovered Herman when he accidentally stumbled into a Pee-wee’s Big Adventure test screening and it “cracked” his brain) paused to glance wondrously at the Greek stage’s lovingly reconstructed Pee-wee’s Playhouse set — which looked exactly like the kaleidoscopic cottage that underground cartoonist/punk musician Gary Panter (with the help of production assistant Rob Cummings, aka the future Rob Zombie) created in 1986. “Everything from my childhood is happening right is front of me!” Oswalt endearingly gasped.
And Oswalt’s childlike enthusiasm was clearly shared by everyone onstage. “I can tell you, I was in rehearsal, and tonight’s guests were so excited to go in and out of that red door. That door is like a portal to childhood,” he laughed. Groundlings alumnus Cheri Oteri grinned broadly during her extended bit with Chairry and Pterri; comic actor Julio Torres rode a metal-flake mini-bicycle while wearing Reubens’s own archival glittery Pee-wee suit; comedian Sheng Wang tearily declared this “the coolest show I’ve ever done”; and bewigged RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Bob the Drag Queen celebrated the “delusional confidence” of Puppetland beauty queen Miss Yvonne while reflecting on how Pee-wee’s Playhouse had been so relatable and important to insecure misfit kids like himself. “No matter who you were, there was someone [on the show] to make you feel seen,” Bob stated. “Even if you were a certain politician who loves furniture!”
But more than any of the other night’s performers, it was the series’ veteran puppeteers — who throughout the night wheeled out Chairry, Conky 2000, Globey, Mr. Window, and the warbling Flowers with the same punk-rock scrappiness that made Pee-wee’s early DIY stage productions so charming — that received the most thunderous ovation. It took the audience nearly two minutes to simmer down enough so that Oswalt could introduce them, marveling, “I am standing next to cosmic creativity!” Then these masters of puppets got their own centerstage musical number: a salute to various minor Playhouse characters, as they voiced the show’s beatnik jazzbos Dirty Dog, Cool Cat, and Chicky Baby.
Perhaps the only Monday cameo that elicited a wilder response was when Jambi granted an uncharacteristically sentimental Randy’s wish that the show’s Playhouse Gang would reunite, and out strutted Cher (Diane Yang), Elvis (Mighty Ducks actor Shaun Weiss)… and an all-grown-up Opal, aka Natasha Lyonne. Yes, that Natasha Lyonne!
And the night ended on an expectably and suitably rockin’ note, when the flesh-and-blood and felt entertainers (among them magician/improv artist Michael Carbonaro, whose wacky shaving-cream shtick was the very definition of good clean fun, and the decidedly less PG comedienne Patti Harrison) all assembled onstage for a “Tequila” dance-off. The spectacle was so joyous that even Mothersbaugh couldn’t resist capturing it on his iPhone; perhaps he figured he should take a picture because it’d last longer, but these memories would last forever.
And as the evening’s exit music, a rare recording of Herman’s lost rock single “I Know You Are, But What Am I,” blasted on the Greek Theatre’s speakers, Oswalt summed everything up perfectly. “There is only word to describe that,” he proclaimed. “Fantastic.”
