When a Broadway Baby says goodnight,
it means you've struck out, fella ...
Broadway Beat
by Nels Noodleman
I am delighted to report, folks, that Broadway this year has been nothing less than ELECTRIFYING!
Then again it might also be that my pacemaker is on the fritz.
Seriously, in all my days as a professional reviewer of the Broadway oeuvre, I have never before witnessed as many groundbreaking, innovative, and expensive as all hell plays as it's been my privilege to be comped to this season. It all began with the hip-hop Hamilton, an especially surprising smash hit since throughout his career Alexander Hamilton was always more known for his karaoke than hip-hop.
Here's a trio of three other great plays you should definitely see provided you know who to have sex with to cop a ticket:
Grease, Exclusively Starring a Cast of Baby
Boomers
For the
first time ever, a cast of 60-somethings and 70-somethings present a musical
about a decade most of them hated while looking wholly ridiculous age-wise in the so doing.
Pockmarked and unappealing
former Leave It To Beaver actor Jerry
Mathers as Danny and solidly over-the-hill Sally Struthers as Sandy lead a marginally talented and highly wrinkled cast of washed-up Boomer TV stars whose
limited thespian skills perfectly depict Boomer disdain for the white bread
1950's during which they were incessantly dumped on by their greasy haired older
brothers and sisters while impatiently waiting for the Sixties to start so they could smoke
dope.
GESCBB, as it's conveniently called, also includes some great new age-appropriate songs including Slumber Nights, Look at Me, I’m … I Forget, and We Grow (Old) Together.
At the Miles Lumpkin Theater. Tickets
prices start at $450, but they are very big tickets, at least a foot and a half long.
In another sparkling
reinterpretation of a classic theatrical work, every character in Death of a Clown Man is played by a professional clown, each of whom speaks exclusively by honking a clown horn.
Willy Clownman fears that the
clown business may be ending due to a worldwide shortage of clown and all other makeup since the
advent of Flo from Progressive. Willy’s world becomes even more topsy-turvy when
his son Biff Clownman turns his back on the family business in favor of
becoming President of the United States.
“Anyone want to buy a used horn?”
honks out Willy, painted tears under his eyes growing till they cover his face. If playwright Arthur Miller could
return to life for just one day, this theater critic bets he'd love this new take on the old play just as soon as he first gives up trying to find Marilyn Monroe for one last roll in the mezzanine!
At the Helen Haze Theater. Some discount tickets available if you can juggle and you’re quick
with seltzer.
Bukowski, the Family Musical!
Love the type of bright happy musicals Rogers and Hammerstein used to deliver to our doorstep in days gone by? Then rush right back to Broadway for a tuneful, toe tappin' two and a half hours of drug addiction, alcoholism, deviant sexual acts, cannibalism, and an unnatural affection for licking the backs of U.S postage stamps such as you've never seen!
Yes, from Disney comes the happiest new show on Broadway, Bukowski, the Family Musical!
From the very first moment he throws up on stage, Hugh Jackman so thoroughly inhabits the role of lowlife writer Charles Bukowski you can almost smell it! Actually you can, if you're sitting in the Orchestra seats. The show features eight great new songs including Life in a Shithole, Life is a Shithole, and the rousing showstopper Hello, Shithole!
At the Moe Monkfish Theatre, which is a shithole but still expensive as shit. With Kristin Chenowith and Jerry Stiller.
Also knocking 'em dead on Broadway these days is Avenue Q with the puppet roles all played by undocumented aliens constantly looking over their shoulders, a musical version of Fight Club with an all Jewish cast and no fighting, and Broadway's longest running smash hit, The Book of Orman.
And that's the latest news from the Great White/Of Color Way. (Yep, I'm trying to get the name changed, folks!) See you there, assuming you have a buck or two but hopefully a trust fund.
From your very own Broadway Buddy,
Mr. Nels Noodleman
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Nels Noodleman is a nationally known and reviled theater critic who occasionally writes for Nouveau Old, Formely Cute on the Broadway stage. Whenever he's discovered writing on the stage he's usually thrown out of the theater.
Over the course of his checkered but mostly plaid career, Nels has reviewed all of the major Broadway plays of the last half century. Someday he hopes to see them too.
Oh, by the way, Nels thinks you're cute.
