When I first heard about Off-Broadway’s Fuerzabruta, I was intrigued by descriptions of a 45-foot clear-bottom tilting pool, hung from the ceiling and only partly filled; flying, building-size Mylar curtains; and a moving treadmill.

In his original (very funny) review, Christopher Isherwood noted the lopsidedness of the highly sexually-charged show’s focus:

“Female performers splash and slide around alluringly in the water, like frisky mermaids in a big goldfish bowl. The more aggressive viewers ogle and grope, with only a quarter-inch of plastic to shield them from misdemeanor charges. (There’s something a little sexist about the absence of male performers in this aquatic sequence.)”

After reading his and a few other reviews about the interactive, messy, rave-like atmosphere, my inner prude convinced me I just didn’t have the gumption to spend my $75 there.

Well, my inner prude may now give in to my inner shallow homo, given the news that Fuerzabruta, launches their “Boy’s Night” tonight, May 16th. Says Towleroad.com,

They promise ‘Boys Night’ will “feature remixed scenes and choreography – putting the men of Fuerzabruta in the water and at the fore.” For those of you who haven’t seen it, this is probably a good time.

Other “Boys Night” performances will be June 6 and July 4. There are almost always half-priced tickets to Fuerzabruta at Goldstar.com, so keep checking back there closer to show times.

If anyone sees one of these Boys Night performances, please let us all know what you thought.

Fuerzabruta plays Tuesday - Thursday, 8pm, Friday, 8pm & 10:30pm, Saturday, 7pm& 10pm and Sunday, 7pm at the Daryl Roth Theatre 101 E. 15th St.

Seeing the Encores! production of No, No, Nanette a few days ago brought up a little theatre trivia that stumped even the other four theatre bloggers who were there that night as we shared ridiculously expensive foie gras after the show.

According to her bio, Sandy Duncan has been nominated for three Tony Awards (and contrary to urban legend, does not have a glass eye). Can you name the three Tony nods? I’ll provide the answer later (although I know you’ve already Googled it, cheater) but the one we all got was the 1971 revival of The Boyfriend. According to Rob Fisher’s program notes, No, No Nanette was revived in the same year and ran for 861 performances. And in the same year we also saw Noel Coward’s Hay Fever. Sheesh! That’s a lot of roaring 20s for 1971.

Anyways, Ms. Duncan is still in fantastic form at 62 years old, holding her own in several giant production numbers and delivering the show’s title line (several times) with just enough of a wink to the audience to let us know that no one was taking this fluffy re-revival too seriously.

She also navigates what I thought was the show’s funniest bit, one which always makes me laugh AT it when it happens in old movies without the irony. Paraphrased, it goes something like this:
Sue: (Picking up the phone) “Hello, operator, give me the Atlantic City Hotel (half a second pause) Hello Atlantic City Hotel, give me Mrs. Early’s room (half a second pause) Hello, Lucille, it’s Sue. Get here as soon as you can (click).”

And then in one of many moments of inspired comedic timing, Beth Leavel as Lucille Early glides onstage about five minutes later dressed to the nines in sequins and heels saying, “I got here as soon as I could…”

If Ms. Duncan is the personification of perky in this production, then Ms. Leavel is the countess of class. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a number that literally stopped the show, but it happened Sunday night after her rendition of an otherwise kind of forgettable ballad called “The ‘Where-Has-My-Hubby-Gone’ Blues.” She finished the song, arms draped over head, the applause started, she waited a few seconds, and turned upstage. The actresses for the next scene came on, and the applause just kept going and going and going. She finally turned back downstage to acknowledge the accolades without really breaking character or the momentum of the show, and it finally calmed down and the show went on.

Other stand outs include Michael Berresse, whose athletic dancing (and tight-fitting suit vests) more than once brought to my mind the grace and style of Gene Kelly. Rosie O’Donnell resisted playing the maid, Pauline from Peoria, as Rosie from Queens, which was a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t entirely sure whether Charles Kimbrough’s sometimes stammering delivery was intentional, or a struggle to find his lines, but he was blessed with singing the magical “I Want to be Happy” number about a jillion times, which instantly wins him over to the audience every time.

Worth the price of the Cast Album (should there be one) is the overture by Rob Fisher and The Encores! Orchestra, featuring Joseph Thalken and Todd Ellison on dueling pianos, making four hands sound like eight.

I hadn’t seen an Encores! production since the current Chicago revival started its life there, but I did find it distracting that all of the actors carry their scripts with them through the whole show. I guess it’s some sort of union rule since this is technically a “staged reading” but as far as I could tell, not one actor ever looked at his/her script and they became these little black albatrosses that everyone had to figure out what to do with when it came time to dance.

But little black albatrosses aside, No, No Nanette was completely enjoyable, definitely making a lot of people “Be Happy,” and when it transfers to Broadway (I’m just sayin’…) we won’t have to worry about people carrying around little black notebooks but not looking at them.

And incidentally, the title of the post is a lyric from the Act Two opener, Peach on the Beach, and it elicited giggles from various sections of the audience who would agree with the sentiment on many levels.

BTW–1969 Supporting or Featured Actress in a Musical for Canterbury Tales
1971 Actress in a Musical for The Boy Friend
1980 Actress in a Musical for Peter Pan

Oftentimes when I am among the 30-to-50-year-old, well-appointed, predominantly male audience members at a play, whose journey to their current seat location might have been influenced by a shirtless hunk in a publicity shot or a provocative play title, there is a moment during the show, not unlike the moment when Lucy pulls the football away from Charlie Brown, when I think to myself “Aaaaaargh, I fell for it again!!” as the requisite shirtless (or clotheless) actor has bared the promised goods, the spell is broken, and I realize I have another hour and a half to endure the mediocre acting and sophomoric script.

I’m guessing David Bell has been there too. His latest work, The Play About The Naked Guy, is a hotbed of self-reflective references as it employs the sexy-half-naked-guy-on-the-poster technique to ensnare its audience of predominantly 35-to-50-year-old gay men, and then mocks plays that use this technique as well as the audiences who attend them.

The plot of Naked Guy involves the travails of Dan, Amanda and Harold, three actors who make up the company of The Integrity Players, a tiny theatre company dedicated to celebrating the little known classics in a non-commercial setting. Faced with the possible retraction of their financial backing, the company is forced to decide whether to team up with a successful gay producer, Eddie Russini, and produce an evening of gratuitous, but profitable, gay schlock, or to stick to their principles.

They go for the schlock.

Though it has many of the stock characters one sees in the type of play it both embodies and scoffs, there is a self-awareness in it that allows the actors to comment on the shallowness of the genre while at the same time delivering the shallowness that the genre promises. The skin factor comes in the form of Kit (Dan Amboyer), a popular porn star who is hired to play the title role in Jesus Christ, He’s Hot! Christopher Borg plays the acerbic Russini, who makes Curtains’ Carmen Bernstein look like Mother Teresa and who is usually flanked by ubertwinks T. Scott (Christopher Sloan) and Edonis (Chad Austin).

On the side of Integrity are husband and wife company members Dan (Jason Schuchman) and Amanda (Stacy Mayer), and…err…stradling both sides is closeted company member Harold (Wayne Henry).

On neither side but her own is Amanda’s mother, and the company’s financier, Mrs. Anderson played by Ellen Reilly.

Most of the characters are drawn fairly broadly, and the actors enjoy various degrees of success walking the line between character and caricature.

Most successful in this endeavor is Jason Schuchman, as Dan, battling to stick to the naive mission statement of his theatre company while contemplating the reality of Russini’s statement that “you cannot earn respect and make a profit in the theatre.” Schuchman’s was the only performance I truly believed throughout the entire evening, though it is also the most realistically and sincerely written.

Ellen Reilly and Christopher Borg both play larger-than-life characters, but each in their own way manage to be grounded enough in their roles to find the real person beneath the histrionics.

Reilly gets a laugh with just about every line as she lambastes the success (or lack thereof) of her son-in-law’s utopian philosophy towards theatre making. Though she is sure he has “baffled dozens” with programs like “15 by Brecht,” she is not going to stick around to fiance his Integrity.

Borg chews the scenery from the first time we see him onstage, and though I would have liked to have seen more levels in his performance, he manages to show a soft spot here and there, when his mysterious past is uncovered.

Less successful in overcoming their own stereotypes are Russini’s two henchmenboys, Edonis and T. Scott. A comment is made during the creation of the play within the play that “this isn’t Will and Grace, honey,” and I think that may be what Sloan and Austin have going against them. At times, Sloan seems to be doing a spot-on Jack McFarland, and though Austin’s airheaded shallow delivery is perfect for the role, it seemed to fall flat on an audience to whom the lines and the delivery seem very familiar after so many seasons of W&G. The KISS boots and faux fur probably didn’t help defy the stereotype either.

Amboyer as the title character has the clearest character arc in the play, starting as a complete Narcissus and ending up somewhere closer to Dionysus.

Bell certainly knows his audience, and the inside jokes–both theatrical and homosexual–abound. (”Just so you know, my safe word is ‘Sutton Foster’”) and his script is smarter and funnier than most of the aforementioned homo-magnets. I had a brief Charlie Brown moment after Kit’s first skin-baring scene, but the writing is funny enough, and most of the acting strong enough that I didn’t lament the next hour and a half spent with this zany company of thespians.

The Play About The Naked Guy runs through March 2nd at Emerging Artists at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Avenue—access available on East 25th Street between Lexington and 3rd.

One of the best things about seeing theatre in New York is that virtually every night in one of hundreds of nooks and crannies of performance spaces throughout the city there is some derivative of live performance going on. Many will be seen by only a few diehard theatre geeks (and enjoyed by even fewer) and will disappear into obscurity.

I caught one charming performance last night (well technically it was eight performances) on a spur of the moment trip to NYC that was a marvel of theatrical collaboration and creativity, which I hope will have an extended life after its current very limited run. If you have any sense of theatrical adventure you must attend one of its two remaining performances.

The work, called Museum Pieces, is presented as part of the Prospect Theatre Company’s “Dark Nights Series” (on nights that its main production, The Blue Flower is dark) in the renovated church space that is the West End Theatre (West 86th between Broadway and West End).

The evening consists of eight original ten-minute musical theatre pieces (with eights sets of writers/lyricists/composers/directors) based on works of art that, in theory, can be viewed in NYC, although the creators have since discovered that some of the pieces were only here temporarily.

The book writers, lyricists and composers chose their muses in January, and began writing. The directors and cast had two weeks to rehearse, and performances began Saturday, 2/23, with remaining performances on Monday 2/25, and Tuesday 2/26 at 8pm. The first night was sold out, and Sunday night was pretty close to a sell out, so if you want to catch this gem, be sure to reserve your tickets now (a steal at $10).

The cast, ranging from recent NYU grads to seasoned Broadway vets, consists of David Andrew Anderson, Erica Aubrey, Sarah Corey, Alexander Elisa, Alexandra de Suze, Karla Mosley, Doug Shapiro, Tina Stafford, Blake Whyte, and Michael Winther (Mamma Mia, 1776, Damn Yankees).

Read on if you want more details (they are fairly spoiler-free), or just go armed with the general premise as I did.

Fragmentary Head of Queen (c. 1352-1336 B.C.E.)
Music, Book & Lyrics by Carol Hall (Best Little Whorehouse in Texas)
A mysterious statue of an anonymous Egyptian queen longs for affection from one of her most ardent patrons, much to the annoyance of the lonely docent.

The Lovers (Rene Magritte, 1928)
Music & Book by Marisa Michelson, Lyrics & Book by Joshua H. Cohen
A married couple become blank canvases, creating a Far Eastern fantasy together in a desperate attempt to keep from splitting up.

Diptych with Coronation of the Virgin and the Last Judgment (c. 1260-1270)
Music, Book & Lyrics by Drew Fornarola & Marshall Pailet
Sibling rivalry reins when the reading of a father’s will takes a young man on a Quixotic journey of revenge where he learns that “sometimes in life you get the diptych whether you deserve it or not.”

Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On) (Kara Walker, 2000 - Text from Harriet Jacob’s Diary, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861)
Music by Hyeyoung Kim, Book & Lyrics by Michael Cooper
Slaves mount a violent uprising against an oppressive master as the entire cast recreates this powerful tableau.

New York Movie (Edward Hopper, 1939)
Music by Deborah Abramson, Book & Lyrics by Amanda Yesnowitz
A young usherette working at the premiere of The Wizard of Oz, escapes to a fantasy world where she becomes rising movie starlet, Francis Garlic.

Football Players (Les Joueurs de Football) (Henri Rousseau, 1908)
Music, Book & Lyrics by Michael Mitnick
A museum security guard, whose life is literally at a stand still, is granted one wish from the painting he is guarding.

Come Away from Her (After Lewis Carroll) (Kiki Smith, 2003)
Music by Brian Lowdermilk, Book & Lyrics by Kait Kerrigan
Father Time is enraged when the young woman in charge of keeping time moving forward decides to shirk her duties. (I didn’t really “get” this one, but that’s the gist).

Just got an email in my inbox for free tickets to the 1950s Lesbian Pulp Fiction Drama Beebo Brinker Chronicles playing Off-Broadway at 37 Arts.

Set in pre-Stonewall Greenwich Village, the Beebo Brinker Chronicles celebrates the era when “the love that dares not speak its name” began breaking the old rules. Fueled by booze and furtive sex, the play follows the lives and loves of Laura, Beth and Beebo as they navigate uncharted territories of desire.

The play is based on six novels that are a touchstone of lesbian culture. Written by Ann Bannon from 1957 to 1962, the books were distributed as pulp — meaning they were printed on cheap paper, were peddled at drugstores and bus stations, and received no mainstream press — but sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

Said the New York Times of the show:

The Beebo Brinker Chronicles aggressively goes after laughs, playing with the novels’ more dated and histrionic elements. But it doesn’t settle for caricature. The loneliness yawning beneath Jack’s worldly facade, Laura’s desperation for fulfillment, Beebo’s jealous rages: these complex emotions darkly edge the play’s absurdities, anchoring what could easily have been an exercise in camp.

Here’s the link:

Free tickets to Beebo Brinker Chronicles.

Tickets will go fast, so if it’s sold out by the time you get there, they also have half price tickets to Fuerzabruta.

Half price tickets to Fuerzabruta

It’s no surprise, really, but Frankenstein, The Musical, formerly showing at 37 Arts, played its last performance on Sunday, December 9. I’ve been following the show since the beginning of Man In Chair, so I thought it appropriate that I express my condolences for its demise.

Lambasted by critics, the show lasted just a little over a month. I think the only reason it lasted that long was because of the reputations of its performers (Hunter Foster, Christianne Noll and Steve Blanchard) as well as the lack of Broadway tickets available during the strike. There were so few people there when I saw it that they ushered those of us seated in the mezzanine down to the orchestra and we still barely filled the center section.

Chris Caggiano tells us there will likely be a cast album recorded and there are plans for a national tour. Hmmmm…we’ll see.

As I posted on Chris’ blog, the show was one of those “so bad I actually enjoyed myself” experiences. I’m glad I saw it, because I doubt that there will be many more chances to do so.

Click for Man In Chair’s review.

Click for information on ticket refunds for shows after December 9.

Now is your chance. Stephen Karem’s much lauded play, Speech and Debate, has been extended for another eight weeks, through February 24. Stop whatever you are doing and get tickets now. The show’s first extension, through December 30, sold out very quickly, so don’t miss your chance this time.

The show is playing as part of The Roundabout’s Underground Series, which showcases new playwrights and directors. Full price tickets are $50, but I got mine for $20 at broadwaybox.com. Their current offer is only through December 16, but keep watching their site for updates. You can also get $20 tickets to this or any Roundabout show (if you are 18-35 years old) by joining The Roundabout’s Hiptix program.

Here’s the press release description of the show:
“Even though they go to the same school, misfits Solomon, Diwata and Howie have never met. But when a shocking scandal involving one of their teachers brings them together through an unexpected chain of events, they realize three voices are stronger than one. And since their school has no speech and debate squad, maybe this is their chance to be heard at last – by the school and even the world. Directed by Jason Moore (a Tony® nominee for Avenue Q), the play stars Susan Blackwell ([title of show]), Jason Fuchs (Sea of Tranquility), Gideon Glick (Ernst in the Tony-winning smash Spring Awakening) and Sarah Steele (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie).”

If you were (or are) a speech and debate geek (or really any kind of geek) in high school, then this show is especially for you.

Click for a collection of glowing reviews, or for Man In Chair’s singular glowing review (also featured on the Roundabout’s multimedia page).

So much lightning. So many furrowed brows.

I have been anticipating seeing Off-Broadway’s Frankenstein, the Musical, currently in an open-ended run at 37 Arts, since the second post on Man In Chair last July. Despite not being crazy about the concept CD, and having to sift through the painfully caustic reviews, I have still been rooting for the show and went in tonight with an open mind.

My first misgivings came when those of us who were assigned seats in the mezzanine were all ushered down to the orchestra section because there were so few patrons there. Good for us, not a good sign for the show.

The set was about as sleek and high tech as it could get, consisting mostly of silver metallic staircases and platforms, at which six cajillion lighting instruments pointed from every angle. At the top of the largest staircase was a screen upon which various images were projected throughout the evening either to set a mood, to indicate a change of setting, or in the coolest effect, to create the illusion that the staircase extended even further than it did.

Further upstage were two sliding screens through which characters entered, exited or were lit dramatically from every possible angle. It felt as though this might be a rehearsal space for Justin Timberlake’s latest concert venue.

According to the show’s official website, the creators’ intention was to offer a “bold new experience for modern theatre audiences.”

“To do so, they have broken with many of the conventions of musical theater to re-imagine the classic allegory as a ‘memory play’ in which time and space are fluid, and in which people and places come instantly alive in the mind of the story’s protagonist, Victor Frankenstein–and vanish just as quickly.”

While I am all for boldness, convention-breaking and risk-taking in the theatre, the “fluidity of time and space” in this Frankenstein ultimately results in a lot of unspecific wandering about the stage, and general singing out to the audience, scowling in pools of severe downlighting.

Aaron Serotsky set the melodramatic tone immediately as pseudo narrator, Capt. Robert Walton, explaining the relationships of Victor Frankenstein (Hunter Foster) and his various family and friends, in a breathy singsong delivery reminiscent of Tobias from Sweeney Todd. We know immediately we are in for a high stakes evening.

The first third of the show is focused primarily on Victor Frankenstein’s (Hunter Foster) rise from a prodigious young student of science to a scholar obsessed with the regeneration of dead tissue to the point that he completely alienates his family and childhood sweetheart (Christiane Noll). Mr. Foster has a fantastic voice, and I’m sure the association of his name with the show has helped to keep it afloat, but he is entirely miscast in this role.

With his baby face and youthful frame I’m afraid I just didn’t buy him as the workaholic doctor who has spent a lifetime obsessed with his science. The point is driven home in the final moments of the show when Foster sings to The Creature as a father singing to his son. It’s a tender moment, but just too hard to buy the father/son analogy given Foster’s youthful appearance.

Though partly the fault of Mark Baron’s amped up pop-rock score, I found Foster’s performance to be running in one of two gears for much of the show. He was either in grimacing, scowling, maniacal high gear, or he was singing a tender pop-ballad. Mostly the former, and with very little middle ground.

Christiane Noll also has a beautiful voice, and was also trapped by the “fluidity” of this storytelling, often facing straight out to the house, supposedly singing to her friend/lover/husband, Victor, who was usually somewhere on the other side of the stage in his own pool of downlighting. One of the few times the two actors connected physically during “The Workings of the Heart,” was actually quite moving. Would it had happened more.

Many improvements have been made musically since the concept CD was recorded. Much of the pop rock score is quite exciting to listen to, though it becomes repetitive fairly quickly. Around the fifth electric guitar riff into the first act, that rock concert scenario began to enter my mind again as the show began to feel less like a theatre piece telling a coherent story, and more like a rock concert version based loosely on Shelley’s novel, not unlike the recent British re-imagining of Rent seems to have turned out.

Just as I was tossing around this new way to view the piece, The Creature (Steve Blanchard) appears for the first time, and my new vision becomes even more clear. Mr. Blanchard and the creators of Frankenstein have made some very bold choices in creating the character of Dr. Frankenstein’s Creature. I applaud them for making those bold choices and committing to them fully. Unfortunately, they don’t work more often than they do.

Our first hint of The Creature’s physicality is through his distorted shadow, suggesting a certain Elephant Man-like deformity, in line with the style of the show so far. When the actor appears on stage, however, he seems to have stepped out of of a completely different reality. He wears an artfully tattered coat over his bare, buff torso, and tight pants that look like designer denim. His musical numbers portray a man tortured by his own existence, and their style, paired with Blanchard’s delivery reinforces the rock concert feel even more. Again, the actor has a great voice, but everything about the character took me out of the show I had been watching.

He makes bold physical choices for The Creature–a tic of the head, a crippled arm, a lurching gait that conveys the difficulty required to move his body in its intended direction. He periodically bursts into fits of pounding on his legs and arms, giving the sense of a man whose is physically and mentally tortured merely by inhabiting his own body.

Often it’s way over the top, but I give the actor credit for fearlessly committing to the choices he and director, Bill Fennelly have made. When it comes down to it, I’d rather watch actors take risks and occasionally fail than skate their way through a safe, uninspired carnival like this show’s uptown cousin.

Some of the music in the second act breaks out of the sameness of the first act. As I mentioned before “The Workings of the Heart” lets us finally see a physical and emotional connection between the good doctor and his wife, and “The Coming of the Dawn” is a showstopper, though it’s the second song from the end of the musical, and for this audience member, the show had stopped long before it.

In the program notes, there is an interesting tidbit saying that “Frankenstein” is an entry in every major dictionary of the English language, and is generally employed to mean “an agency or creation that slips from the control of, and ultimately destroys, its creator.”

Although I’m certain that the creators of this musical began with sincere intentions to create an homage to Mary Shelley’s classic novel, I’m afraid that the temptation to overproduce and over conceptualize their creation may have slipped from their control, and ultimately destroyed them.

Remember when I said how I love to go theatre that I don’t know a lot about in hopes of discovering an unexpected gem?

Well, the gem of this New York trip is Stephen Karam’s Speech and Debate, playing through December 30 at the Roundabout’s “underground” Black Box Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre on West 46th. 

You’ve got to see this show.

The play is about three high school outcasts linked by their particular affiliations with a local sex scandal whose introduction results in the school’s first Speech and Debate team.

Diwata, the theatre geek (Sarah Steele) publishes a video blog insinuating that she knows something about the scandal, Howie, the gay one (Gideon Glick) leaves his phone number on her site, insinuating he knows something more, and Solomon, the too-eager school reporter (Jason Fuchs) contacts them both to get the scoop. As more and more of their individual secrets are willingly and unwillingly revealed, the stakes get higher and their bonds grow stronger.

Not once did I feel like I was watching actors performing someone else’s script, so perfectly suited are all three students to their roles. And as a former too-eager gay high school theatre geek, I should know.

Ms. Steele instills Diwata with a wisdom beyond her teenage years, and an insecurity perfectly suited to them. The cheesy intro to her DI (dramatic interpretation) of The Crucible took me right back to being a flighty 16 year old trying to pull off George to my friend Janelle’s Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. (Me: Our son…, Janelle: Our imaginary son…)

Mr. Glick fills Howie’s lithe effeminacy with a proud strength. He reminded me of Chris Crocker, only without the eyeliner and tears. Seriously, though, it’s a truly brilliant performance.

And Mr. Fuchs’ Solomon has so much passionate discourse to convey about political hypocrisy that he can hardly get a complete sentence out before going on to his next thought. Though the text of his initial rant on political scandal may border on preachiness, he manages to fill it with a stammering charm that wins him over to the audience immediately.

Susan Blackwell, formerly of Man In Chair fave [title of show] is great in the dual role of Solomon’s teacher and a misguided reporter. Joe summed it up on the way home chuckling, “She was so NPR…”

The Roundabout created this Underground series to cultivate new work by emerging playwrights and directors. Director Jason Moore has pretty much emerged after Avenue Q’s success, but Speech and Debate should definitely put its playwright, Stephen Karam on the map.

Did I mention you’ve got to see this show? Click for tickets. They’re only 20 bucks!

The apartment we are staying in for part of our New York trip is in Manhattan Plaza, which provides low-cost housing for theatre professionals in Manhattan. The tenants are colorful characters, many of whom have spent their lives in the theatre, some leaving well-known legacies, some retiring into obscurity.

It is that fear of going down the path of obscurity that haunts Flaminio Scala (Marc Kudisch), the central character in Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens’ heartfelt and sincere new musical, The Glorious Ones.

The show is a bawdy but ultimately touching look into a 16th century commedia dell’arte troupe plucked by Scala from their ordinary lives into a life in the theatre with all of its dramatic ups and downs. If I had a dollar for every phallus, pelvic thrust and crotch grabbed in the show, I could retire peacefully and just write reviews for Man In Chair.

Presented on Dan Ostling’s simple wooden platform proscenium set, the piece gets back to the basics, focusing more on storytelling, and less on spectacle.

Flaherty and Ahrens employ historical characters, like Scala, and Francesco and Isabella Andreini (Jeremy Webb and Erin Davie), who were actual commedia actors, and create fictional actors to fill out some of the stock characters that always appeared in the commedia scenarios: the quack doctor (John Kassir), the miserly old man (David Patrick Kelly), the sexy maid (Natalie Venetia Belcon).

Scala is the captain of this ship, steering the troupe through calm seas and stormy waters alike until faced with what he perceives as a mutiny. Along the way, Kudisch reveals layer by layer the many roles that this swaggering leading man plays in his life: a horny lover, a passionate artist, an aging actor willing to forgo anything for the craft he has spent his life nurturing, living in fear that he will be forgotten when he is gone.

Each member of the small cast is strong. Julyana Soelistyo plays a pint-sized Armanda Ragusa, so in love with Scala that she collects any castoff trinket or worn out sock that may have come in contact with him. Soelistyo’s subtle smirk belies her joy for performing here, and the innuendo-filled “Tarentella,” in which she portrays a young woman determined to learn a new “skill” every day is hilarious.

Jeremy Webb is also a standout as Scala’s apprentice-turned-nemisis, Francesco Andreini. In fact, it was at his entrance, as a street performer juggling two different personalities, that I really became engaged in the show for the duration. As the plot develops, Andreini insists that the improvised, bawdy structure of the commedia scenarios is growing stale and pushes the troupe to experiment with more refined scripted pieces, forcing Scala to defend everything he stands for as an artist and as a man and leading to some of she shows most engaging conflict.

The show’s 100 minutes is packed with a couple dozen songs, There are emotional ballads like Webb’s heartfelt, “Absalom” and “My Body Wasn’t Why” in which a former prostitute compares the oldest profession in the world with being an actress, as well as comedic turns like “The Comedy of Love” and songs that are incorporated into the troupe’s performances within this performance.

Kudish’s defiant reaction to the troupe’s snubbing by the French aristocracy is felt in Ahren’s lyrics:
“They do what they do,
They say what they say.
I’d rather be me
At the end of the play.”

And by the end of the play, Scala has accomplished exactly that.

Despite his character’s fears of ultimate anonymity, Kudisch, the supporting cast, and the creators of The Glorious Ones, have in this show created one more great opportunity to forge a legacy that will live on long after they are gone.