A Kwik Guide To Klassy Musicals

Rent

This Gen-X smash is about the lives and loves of attractive gay New Yorkers, a perfect excuse for musical theatre actors to stop acting straight on stage. Since its creator died, it has skyrocketed to international sucess. Producers are busy looking for another hot new talent on the verge of death that they can exploit next.

 

Sunday in the Park with George

This touching musical centers around a mentally retarded man who loves to enjoy a tasty ice cream every day in New York's Central Park. He learns a touching lesson about love and forgiveness when he is beaten and mugged one day and forced to eat his own excrement to stay alive.

 

West Side Story.

After you pay for your ticket to this experimental masterpiece, you are ushered into a waiting lobby. Then, you are invited into the theatre, only to realize you have left the building and gone to the alley. There you see a sign on the wall saying "Isn't LIFE the real show?" Well, gentle reader, isn't it?

 

Blue Man Group

As soon as the stage is filled with three blue men, drumming wildly, you know you're in for an evening of theatre unlike any other. When the begin to pelt the crowd with marshmallows, you realize just how original this show is. When they begin to systematically torture members of the audience with products of our comsumer culture, you understand the subtle criticism they're introducing. When they fill the theatre with water and unleash sharks upon the unsuspecting theater-goers, you can fully appreciate how special the performance was. Then, you just die. But in an artsy way.

 

Miss Saigon

The producers of this show were sadly mistaken when they thought that an entire comedy could center around the fact that a character named "Miss Sai" was "gone." On Wednesday matinees, however, school groups and senior citizen centers are often so offended at this insult to their intelligence that they rush the stage and beat the actors with the set (which consists of realistic 12 foot representations of the human organs).

 

Carousel

In this innovative piece of avante-garde theatre, the story is cyclic and ticket-holders can enter at any time to catch the entire story. Unfortunatly, this leads to marathon 30-day stretches of acting for the troupe, ending in exhaustion and fatigue. The best times to catch this musical comedy-thriller on ice is towards the end of one cast's run, when they start halloucenating and shouting vulgarities at their fellow actors.

 

A Chorus Line

Here's the deal: a lot of people sing. You're out 50 bucks for the tickets.

 

Chess

Bobby Fisher comes out of his hiding to star with J.D. Salinger in this stunning piece of work. Both of them take the stage with "Deulin' Banjos" for the first act, with the audiences "cheers and jeers" deciding the winner. The second act is improv, where the actors (joined by the Laff Faktory regulars) do zany scenes as suggested by audience members. Then Bobby Fisher throws a fit, punches an old lady, and leaves for five or so years. Catch it if you can!

 

Hoover!

The musical comedy that explains the bittersweet life of the inventor of the vacuum has found a new home in the Roxy Theatre on Broadway, as well as our hearts. Before this, it ran in the Times Square area under the name "Suck!"

 

The Who's Tommy

Each member of the seminal rock band "The Who" has sired children out of maraige. As part of complicated child support agreements, they have agreed to let these children, each inexplicably named Tommy, join forces in this gala mucial about growing up and being gay. There's something about pinball, too, but that's only good because all the Tommys turn around and you can see their young pert asses.

 

Fame

On one level, this musical about a musical can be seen as a postmodern reflection on American society's obsession with the star figure, and the role of the subjective audience in validating the actor's sense of self. On most levels, though, it can be just seen as crap.

 

Will Rogers Folleys

This ill-named musical is actually Ernie Dazmanovich's Folleys, as the part-time janitor takes stage and tells the best dirty jokes that he overheard in his 37 years in the halls of New York high schools.

 

Annie, Get Your Gun

To make it short, she doesn't get her gun in time and ends up splattered all over the stage. There's a new Annie every night, usually bought in the underground slave trade. It's a little "hush hush."

 

The Real Live Brady Bunch

I never saw the stage show but remember when Jan entered her father in the "Best Father of the Year Contest" but it was a secret and she wouldn't tell him why she was sneaking out (to mail the letter) so he wouldn't let her go on the ski trip. I always thought she should have hanged herself becuase when he won that prize and she was dead, boy, would they be sorry.