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OFF-BROADWAY MUSICALS REVIEWS (Teeth; Little Shop of Horrors; Drag the Musical; The Big Gay Jamboree; We Live In Cairo; Mama, I'm A Big Girl Now!)
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Mickey Jo
Come on, come on and listen to the Lullaby of Off Broadway. We are talking about Off Broadway specifically. These are Off Broadway shows. I'm talking about off oh my God. Hey, welcome back. My name is Mickey Jo and I'm obsessed with all things theater. Which is why I recently made yet another return trip to New York City. If you don't know, I'm usually based here in the uk, if you couldn't tell by my Mary Poppins like voice. Recently headed back to New York for two and a half weeks between late October and mid November to see as many Broadway and Off Broadway shows as as possible. We're talking plays and musicals. Now, I've been saying that in a lot of my videos, but I haven't really been bringing you the review content for the Off Broadway shows. And I'm here to rectify that today because I decided pretty quickly that what I wanted to do was to do a whole roundup of all of the Off Broadway shows that I saw so that people who were just interested in one of these and would come to the video for that one would find out about a bunch more shows. Some of you may just be interested to hear about all of them, which is even better. But this is going to be quite fun I think, because on this particular trip I saw more Off Broadway theater than ever before. I saw six different Off Broadway shows. They were all musicals. On this occasion I went to a bunch of new Off Broadway theaters, including the iconic New York Theater Workshop, including the Orpheum Theater where people have been telling me Little Shop of Horrors was produced. People have said that in the comments section. Also multiple new spaces at New World Stages. I saw a whole bunch of shows. I'm going to tell you what I thought about all of them today. Some of these are currently open ended runs, some of them are limited runs, some of them are finishing imminently. So if you find yourself intrigued by the prospect of any or all of these shows, go and check out tickets as soon as possible. Additionally, as always, I would love to hear what you thought of all of these shows in the comments section down below. Particularly if you have a perspective that is a little different to what I thought. Let us know what you thought of these Off Broadway musicals. Finally, if you're just meeting me now for the first time, go ahead and subscribe to my theater themed YouTube channel. Follow me on podcast platforms if that's how you are hearing this review roundup and go and seek me out across the musical theater Internet because I post a whole bunch of different things on different places you can find me on Instagram, on TikTok, on BluesKay Guy, and Threads. In the meantime, though, I have a bunch of different Off Broadway shows to talk through and we're going to do it chronologically with how I saw them on my trip, beginning with Teeth. Now, this was actually my second time seeing this show. I saw the final performance when it was back at Playwrights Horizons. It has since reopened at a new Off Broadway space called New World Stages in a slightly different production with slightly different casting. And Andy Karl has joined the show and the role previously played by Stephen Pasqual, Elise Alan Louis continues as Dawn. And by and large, it seems to be the same material. It's every bit as outrageous, as sexy, as witty as it was at Playwrights Horizons. This is based on the the horror film of the same name about the who has the in her. That one. Yeah, that one. And this is realized in a live musical theater context in a side splittingly funny way that more so than anything else, really satirizes like American youth groups and the concept of religious indoctrination. Because as the pastor of this particular religious community begins to suspect that something may be awry, he really doubles down on the fear of God and the wrath and damnation and all of that terrifying stuff. There's also hints of his prior use of religion to prevent his wife getting medical treatment during her illness. There's a lot of really sketchy, dubious stuff we explore here. Issues around non consent and abuse and sexual abuse, all of which is portrayed and lampooned pretty damn well with the tone that this show carefully manages to achieve. The writing is fantastic, the script having been written collaboratively by Anna K. Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson. She also wrote the score, he also wrote the lyrics. You will know his name from being the Pulitzer Prize winning writer of A Strange Loop. And there are definitely moments in this that feel similarly tonally outrageous, which is kind of what I love about teeth. The fact that they have these teenage characters being played by older actors gives them a lot of license to do a lot of shocking stuff to go to a lot of wild places. There is a splash zone that I believe has recently been extended to the front five rows of the theater. They are distributing ponchos at New World Stages because you might get stage blood on you. The source of which is not. It's not. It's not Shakespearean blood, I'll put it that way. And if my visible discomfort in relating the exact nature of the events of this plot is any indication to you, you will realize that this is. It's. It's a little bit saucy. It goes to. It goes to some places. We have multiple different scenes depicting romantic liaisons on stage. There's also an entire subplot with our main protagonist's stepbrother. I'll tell you about her in just a minute, cuz I' skipped over the whole nature of the narrative there. But there's this subplot around him venturing into dark parts of the Internet and finding this cult of incels who have all mutually convinced themselves that women are the enemy and that they have this misandrist goal. Our protagonist, meanwhile, is a young woman of faith named Dawn. She is the most devout and disciplined and dedicated of the Promise Keeper Girls, which is why she is their leader. One of the first musical numbers that we hear is this really hilarious, wonderful one where they are performing as the Promise Keeper Girls and it's Precious Gift Time, a number that is also being simultaneously live streamed from the church. And they're singing all about how they have this precious gift meant only for a husband. The lyrics are completely tongue in cheek, but it's also a little bit girl group esque. It's very wittily staged. It's really funny. And dawn has no reason to question her relationship with God or with the church or with the pastor, who also happens to be her stepfather. Until she begins to get irrepressible urges for her really hot boyfriend. And he feels the same way after an admission to her that he hasn't been pure his entire life and is feeling increasingly conflicted about it. They end up acting on those feelings only when dawn tries to enact boundaries this isn't necessarily respected, and her body responds by clamping down on the situation with, shall we say, secret powers she didn't know she had, but may have laid dormant within her her entire life. This is where the teeth come into it. If you're not following me at this point, I can't help you. And I'm not going to now. As well as dawn and her boyfriend Toby, who together sing the hilarious romantic duet Modest is Hottest, which has just the most wonderful lyrics. We get a whole bunch of Hyster supporting characters, all of these different Promise Keeper girls, who all shame dawn for this behavior and then emerge to have these adolescent transgressions of their own that are increasingly shocking. There's also the character of Ryan, who is responsible for, like, a lot of the tech and live streaming that happens within the church, who gets outed for meeting up with men online for casual sex. He gets some of the funniest lyrics in this show, which is filled with funny lyrics, when he sings a song called Born Again, stating in no uncertain terms all of the things that he's been getting up to. And there are some real bops in this score as well. Just some really compelling compositions. The song Teeth, the song Dentata, the song, according to the Wiki, in what I was going to call the second act. It's not the second act because the whole thing is done without intermission. This is a trend that you will hear a lot about in many of these shows, and I don't know why specifically for Teeth is one of them, because there's such a great place where you could put the intermission. I think it's probably after the song Teeth. Let's talk about some of the other creative elements. Adam Rigg's set design is slightly reconfigured for this space. I think I probably prefer it to the version that they had at Playwrights Horizons. And it continues to do some very exciting things as we head towards this reckoning where dawn really embraces her powers and this new identity that she finds in this version, it feels a little less like she is in combat with this force that is taking over her and more like she reaches a turning point and she's like, fine, let's do it. Essentially, she ends up utilizing her abilities, her anatomical abilities, to take a bite out of local misogyny, shall we say. Choreography is from the brilliant Raja Feather Kelly. Direction is by Sarah Benson. The tone of the thing, this could so easily go off in the wrong direction because we're dealing with serious topical themes and we're dealing with, like, sexual non consent. We're dealing with a lot of really difficult, potentially traumatizing stuff. And they managed to satirize it in a way where they have a clear perspective on what they're saying is problematic and what they're saying is wrong. But it also situates the audience to be able to agree with that and then to also laugh at their take on it as well. It doesn't belittle any of these themes, but it's still a really great, outrageous, fun night at the theater. Another factor of which is the brilliant performances. Andy Carl, I mentioned having joined the cast, there are parts of his performance where I preferred Stephen Pasquale a little. I like Andy Carl's take specifically on the gynecologist that he plays in Singing the song Girls like you. He is disgusting in that number, which is everything that he needs to be. His version of the pastor is a little more extreme. Stephen Pasquale played it like he was doing like a legitimate American play and so dedicatedly believed in everything he was saying. Was just like a man haunted and possessed by this religious quest by the end of it. And Andy Carl kind of gives it's. It's again, something of a comedy character here. But I've heard other people say that they prefer Andy Carl to Stephen Pasquale's version. So this feels like. This feels like a real matter of preference. Elise is giving you far and away the strongest performance in this show. She is fantastic and entirely oblivious to the humor of it tonally, as her character needs to be throughout much of the thing because she's just traumatized by everything that's happening to her. But plays that broad kind of a trauma where we can laugh even at that. And she has brilliant support. Jared Loftin, hysterically funny as Ryan. Jason Gote is really charmingly adolescent and foolish as her boyfriend Toby. Will Connelly also giving a real committed performance as this indoctrinated and radicalized incel stepbrother. It's wild, it's demonstrably adult, but it's fun, it's campy, it's sexy, it is satire in the best possible way. I loved teeth. I love teeth. Go and see Teeth off Broadway. Next up, staying in that kind of a horror musical realm, we have Little Shop of Horrors at the Westside Theater. This was actually a legacy Playbill variant cover. Let me show you the regular one. There you go. There you go. I love this production of Little Shop of Horrors. This has been running for a few years now Off Broadway at the west side Theater. This is a revival which originally opened with Jonathan Groff. Now Tony award winner Jonathan Groff playing Seymour Krelborn opposite Tammy Blanchard with Christian Borrell as the dentist. And they've been adopting this really genius casting approach in the years since those performers left the production, where they've been bringing in all of these high profile names. And it's still a very intimate off Broadway space. It's not this big, splashy theater, but they've been getting movie stars to do this. Constance Wu did this. Corbin Blue did this. Darren Criss did this. Andrew Barth Feldman and Sarah Hyland from Modern Family did this. Jinkx Monsoon has done a run in this show. I saw Maud Apatow in it the first time that I saw the show and that's been working really well for them. It's not a million miles from Cabaret at the Kitkat Club. And their casting approach. And like that casting approach, they find real variety in the pairs of people that they bring in to play Seymour and Audrey. And that's particularly evident in this most recent casting, which is also the reason I had to go back and see the show. I saw it on Halloween, which I thought was a very special night to see something like Little Shop of Horrors. And I had to go back because they cast Nicholas Christopher and Sherry Renee Scott as Seymour and Audrey. And I've been hearing great things about Nick Christopher in a bunch of shows. I saw him in Sweeney Todd, but he's been getting rave reviews in performances like in Jelly's Last Jam and Show. Renee Scott, I think, is a treasured icon of the musical comedy and of musical theatre, harkening back to many brilliant shows in the early 2000s, like Aida, like the last five years, which she originated, For Crying Out Loud Off Broadway. Also the Little Mermaid in dir. Rotten Scoundrels, For Crying Out Loud. There is no way I was missing her New York musical theater return. She hasn't done a musical in New York, I don't believe, since Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which was over a decade ago. And I'll tell you a little bit about why I love this production so much, but if you want to hear my full thoughts on it, specifically with different casting, I made a fuller review video here on YouTube that you can go and check out. What I want to lead with here is their performances. Nick Christopher, not a million miles from Corbin Blue's version of Seymour, which I also loved thoroughly. He is so delightfully dweeby but finds such a freshness in the choices that he makes. He's so contemporary with it. It is familiar of Seymour without being like the classic Seymour Show. Renee Scott, on the other side of that coin, gives you very classic. Audrey gives you that tragic heroine thing, but has such a natural comic inflection and cadence to all of her vocal delivery. She gets irony, which is important for Audrey, who is devastatingly ironic throughout almost everything she says in the show. She lands every single comedy line that she has as she's laughing off the abusive behavior she endures from her aggressive boyfriend, Orin Scavello. She even lands the lines that because of costuming and not necessarily quite as funny in this production, like when she talks about the cheap and tawdry outfits that she wears. Not nice ones like this, which usually is meant to refer to an equally cheap dress that she currently has on, but is like, you know, an actually quite nice black cocktail dress in this version that still gets a laugh. And what's beautiful about her is such as the versatility of her skill as an actress that she can play the whole thing for this ironic comedy and give you this tragic B movie heroine very, very well. She can still break through that and deliver something genuinely heartbreaking and beautiful with her rendition of Somewhere that's Green, one of the best musical theater I want songs that's ever been writt. I mean, the score is full of fantastic music from Alan Menken, brilliant, wonderful lyrics from the late great Howard Ashman. And her voice, which has not been heard for a long time in New York musical theater, sounds remarkable. It's honestly a little like if a young Judy Garland had played Audrey. That's what her characterization of the role feels familiar of. Now, speaking more generally about this show and its material, if you're not familiar with Little Shop of Horrors, it's great, it's cute, it's campy. It's like the perfect off Broadway show. Which is why I love this production so much because it works so well in this setting upstairs at the west side Theater. It pays homage to a lot of like classic horror B movies and that kind of a vibe. It's a romantic story, but it's also a fable in its own way for the character of Seymour who inadvertently comes across this blood eating plant which he names Audrey2 auspiciously after the object of his affection. Audrey, his coworker at a down on their luck skid Row florists run by Mr. Mushnick, played rather wonderfully currently by Stephen DeRosa, did a fantastic job, but charmingly, once Seymour comes across the reality that the plant is craving blood in order to grow. Once the plant does begin to grow, it finds overnight success for the store and for him. It promises fame, fortune and everything that he had ever wanted. The plant begins to talk to him and demands that he find fresh blood for it to consume. It becomes increasingly bloodthirsty and Seymour has to become increasingly murderous in order to sate its enormous appetite. This ends up having deadly consequences for just about everyone in the vicinity. Many of the events of the story are narrated by three characters called the Urchins. Three local girls who are just hanging around the place and give us this fantastic three part harmony like 60s girl group vocal. They are each named Crystal, Renet and Chiffon, named after classic girl groups and the bops, the bops that Alamenken writes for these characters. These are the songs that I forget because I think about downtown and suddenly Seymour and Somewhere that's Green as I'm going into the show and then I remember. You never know. And then I remember. The meek shall inherit. Ah, so good. This particular revival has been directed by Michael Mayer and there are so many charming little touches. It doesn't need to be big, enormous things. It doesn't need to be Broadway and scale and spectacle. It's the little details, it's the moments. The urchins come back on in the red sparkly dresses and they have their first costume change. It's the moment that we see the plant growing out of the different elements of the proscenium set. A brilliant set design, by the way, from Julian Crouch. Tom Broker, responsible for the costume design, who did the puppetry. Puppet design by Nicholas May. An original puppet design by Martin P. Robinson. The puppets created by Monkey Boys Productions, brilliantly puppeteered. Let me tell you, the performers as well. That is Western Ch Long, Melissa Victor and Teddy Udain, who manipulate Audrey 2. We see all these different puppets representing the Audrey 2 plant as it grows in S. Each of them deeply whimsical. When Seymour is operating it himself and it's just this little plant in a pot and they're singing about his overnight success, him and the urchins, and the plant is trying to eat him at the same time. Brilliant, hysterically funny. When the plant gets bigger and is trying to eat members of the audience. Wonderful. The singing voice of the plant giving you these soulful, fantastic, robust vocals is provided by Major Attaway. And James Carpinello is currently playing the dentist Orin Scrivello, but also multiroles as a bunch of other characters that we meet later on as well. A bunch of interested parties looking to convince Seymour to enter into a contract to become very successful alongside his famous plant. If you've never seen Little Shop of Horrors, this is very important musical theatre history right here. And if you've never seen this production of Little Shop of Horrors, this is quintessential Little Shop. I think it's perfect. May it run forever. With a series of successively more exciting performance performers. May it please come to London. I think it would do very well somewhere like the Charing Cross Theater. I don't need for it to go to Broadway. I don't need for it to go to the West End. This scale is perfect for this show. It's so charming, it's so delightful. I love it very much. I would like to go and see it 10 more times. And I probably will also see it right now because Nick Christopher is wonderful in it. Sherry Renee Scott is wonderful in it. Fantastic casting, fantastic show. I love this. It's perfect. Next, from two shows I had seen previously to something I knew nothing about to the extent that it surprised me. I knew it was a musical, but it so felt like I was going to see a play that I forgot until the music immediately began that it was going to be a musical. This is We Live in Cairo, which was at the New York Theater Workshop. This is a new musical with book, music and lyrics by the Lazors. This was fascinating. This was thematically and tonally very rich. I enjoyed this an awful lot. I would say it took me entirely by surprise. What this is is a sort of a rent coded musical. I'll explain why. Momentarily depicting the moments of political change in Egypt in the 2010s protesting and presidential overthrow in response to police brutality and the complicated years politically which followed. Something that I recall being aware of at the time, something that happened within my lifetime, but something that I certainly didn't understand with as much nuance as was conveyed in the musical We Live in Cairo. One of the best things about this is that it talks about that chapter, but does so with considerably more nuance and depth, with multiple different perspectives. Because we meet these characters who are similarly aligned in the first act as they join together in artistic, creative protest. These are artists, these are painters, these are musicians, these are photographers. These are creative individuals. You're hearing the rent codedness of it, I'm hoping, who come together as they are protesting the way that the country is being run, atrocities that are being committed within the country, and they are unified in this goal. Once they achieve this at the end of the first act. The second act is all about the small differences in their political affiliations, in their religious backgrounds, in their cultural identities, the little things that will then set them apart, and the infighting and the indecision about how to navigate the next chapter for the country. On the one hand, you have those who believe strongly in the free and fair elections which they fought for, which they advocated for law and respecting, whatever the outcome of that may be. You have others who believe that the result of the subsequent election is perhaps even more dangerous for them as women in the country than the first, with the possibility of Sharia law being enacted. You have religious conflict, you have all sorts of differences of opinion which end up splintering the group and sending them far apart both emotionally and geographically. And it's a little reductive for me to call this rent coded, but there is a lot of crossover. You have this angsty songwriter character who Is is just trying to write the song that will capture this moment, who is struggling to find the words to put to his music. Our perhaps first protagonist that we meet, though really it is an ensemble cast, is a photographer. It's not dissimilar to a filmmaker. You have them all coming together through their bohemian sense of creativity and art and freedom and youthfulness and vitality. That makes them a family in the first act, a family which dissolves in the second. We get this Goodbye love esque moment. And the second act even commences with a song. Very familiar off seasons of Love, to the extent that I questioned why it didn't begin the whole thing. But it's also a great reflection on, like starting anew after political overthrow. The second act is a distinct chapter from the first. And the writing of this, I think, is wonderful. I love every single bit of the material in this show. It's a question, perhaps, of editing it and choosing to uplift certain moments more than others. It's very difficult to authentically and sincerely tell the stories of all of these different characters while simultaneously trying to tell a story with them that is of something bigger. We are using their stories and their story as a group together to represent this political chapter, this moment of change for the country and this few years. And there is a lot that it needs to do with that. In the first act, this is done really well. But by the end of the thing, it's sort of an unusual conclusion that it comes to. We experience a couple of devastating losses and we never quite come to an ending that feels conclusive for the country, only for a couple of our characters, but not all of them. I thought about Come From Away a lot after I'd seen this. And the difference between telling the story of a moment in history through these different individuals, through an ensemble cast, and telling their story with that in the backdrop. Because they're two very different things and the balance between them is very careful. Only slight changes to the material and to the direction can shift this focus. Ironically, it's like being a photographer and adjusting your settings in terms of what you bring into focus more. And it feels like We Live in Cairo concerns itself more with its characters than the greater story of what's happening. And I feel like there perhaps is an obligation to focus more on the bigger picture because it does that really well. It clues us into it really well. Using their experience as a gateway, we can still feature all of those characters. There are still hints at a couple of romantic subplots. There are still different friendships and relationships. And allegiances and family relationships which fracture, which blossom, which are fascinating to watch. There's a tremendous depth to each of these characters that we're meeting on stage. They're all very fleshed out and realized. I just want them to be able to use that in order to tell us about what's happening. And I do think that the ending needs to be reconsidered. But I liked all of this. I really enjoyed watching it. I could have watched it for a considerable amount longer. I loved living in this world. The direction by Tybee Magar. The choreography and movement direction by the wonderful Ann Yee. The design of all of this. The instrumentation, the orchestrations. My goodness, that sound. That is Tilly Grimes for scenic design, Dina Elaziz for costume design, Bradley King's lighting, Justin Stasiwa for sound design, David Bengali's projections. Oh, my gosh, I'm so glad I read that. The projections, so emotive, so impactful. Using actual screenshots or composed screenshots from social media from the time. So interesting to be seeing a revolutionary storyline playing out with social media and technology as a factor. The orchestrations are credited to Daniel Lazor and Michael Starabin. There were some brilliant instruments that we got to see on stage, and the whole thing had this sense of romance, this sense of inspiration where it needed to, but also this sense of threat and urgency that was in the direction as well and the pacing. I had a great time in this show. I think for this to become the hit that it deserves to be, it can be focused a little better and we can figure out how to tell the story of a nation using the story of this show. But I think it resonates very powerfully right now. There were a couple of really breathtaking moments of staging visually incredible performances. Have I not told you about this fantastic cast yet? Let's talk about some of those. So you may recognize Ali Lewis Borski, who is playing Amir. He starred as Tommy in the. Who's Tommy? I like him even more in this. I enjoyed him in Tommy. His voice is really fantastic, but he gets to be an awful lot more expressive in this and he's incredibly endearing as well. Nadina Hasan plays Leila, our photographer protagonist. She. I think there's just one moment missing in her arc because she is initially indifferent to participating in this. Cause once she finds out that it's political, even being among them at the gathering that she is being invited to at the start of this plot, she is kind of our route into it because she gets introduced to all of these other characters, as she is initiated into this, she also forms half of one of the show's romantic subplots, but they have different religious backgrounds, which in this country at this time is hugely complicated. But there is just one moment of turning point because she suddenly becomes hugely determinedly political alongside a character she meets called Fadwa, played by Ratana Tarabzuni. One of the most compellingly passionate, engaging performances on that stage, I thought. Remarkable. I also thought Michael Khalid Karadash did fantastic work in the second act, with one of the more opposed perspectives to the consensus on of the group giving way to a lot of fascinating debate. And I just really. I really valued this show, going there and having those kind of conversations because that's often an element of these revolutionary stories on stage that we miss out on. And that's some of the most interesting. Drew Alhamdul, hugely heartfelt, beautiful performance as the character of Hassan. And John El Jor was captivating as Karim was theatrical and flamboyant and a little bit tortured as well. And then again, where his trajectory goes in the second act, also grippingly interesting. Like I said, I thoroughly enjoyed this show. It surprised me an awful lot and I'm still thinking about it. It's really haunting, carrying on with a big tonal change in direction. Drag the Musical this was another at New World Stage. And this is everything that you are expecting. This is everything that it sounds like. This is drag queens on stage working at two rival bars run by two drag queens who used to date each other, who dreamt of one day opening the best drag bar in the world, this amazing club. And they broke up for reasons not known to anyone, even throughout the course of the show. And they opened rival clubs across the street from each other, one of whom is super cheap and consequentially always very busy, very popular. The other of which considers itself more of a high art venue and costs a little extra, but doesn't do as good business. As luck would have it, though, both of them find themselves encountering problems. The cheap one hasn't been managing their money very well and they owe a load of back taxes. And the upmarket one, their building is being gentrified by a new owner. The only other aspect of this plot that I haven't told you about is one of the drag queens, the one who is having money troubles. Their brother comes, he's a fantastic accountant. He comes to help out. He brings his young son, who has a visible fascination with drag that his father doesn't feel too great about. But as the brothers mend their relationship, it helps the boy as well. It's all a little bit Priscilla Queen of the Desert, but not quite as compelling. It's a little bit too Wong Fu, but not as heartfelt. The biggest issue I have with Drag the Musical, which is otherwise a very fun, very campy, charming gay night out. I do not know why we have original songs. A couple of them are of value. I like the song Two Bitches Are Better than One. With that kind of a title, how could I not? We don't hear nearly enough of that. It starts out slow and you want for it to turn into this huge number and it's just a little too brief. I could have that go on for longer. Drag Is Expensive has a decent hook as a song as far as these songs go, but one of the best moments musically is a nod to a pre existing song. And you know, those being the bread and butter of drag queens. If you think about, you know, the rusicals on RuPaul's Drag Race, they're. They're fine. Some of them have memorable music. But for the most part, the most iconic moments from Drag Race are the lip syncs, which have brilliant, well written songs. And when you think about the catalog that could go into something like Drag the Musical, you can immediately think of a whole host of compelling options that could tell the same story points that this does. There's a bunch of songs that you could just replace like, for like. And I think you would just get a better version of the story because we'd be then enjoying not only the brilliant script and all of the withering lines from these very funny drag queen characters. They're really very funny. They are deeply charming, they are endearing. It even manages just to almost tug at the heartstrings. It's just not quite written with enough sophistication to do that. But if we. I don't know why we have original songs. I really don't. This is also another one. I don't know why they don't have an intermission. These shows are like two hours. Hour 45. Two hours without an intermission. I guarantee you this is an audience that wants to go get a drink in the intermission and will probably enjoy the second act more for having had that drink in the intermission. You're Drag the Musical. It's not like you're the one act version of Follies trying to maintain the dramatic integrity. This isn't Ivo Van Hove. What the hell are you doing? What I will say which will probably not surprise you. The design of this is incredible. Probably the best set design of any of the shows that I'm talking about here. It's this fantastic club setup with a Runway, with cabaret seating, with the different aesthetics of the two drag bars on either side. It's all very colorful, very neon, very larger than life. There is a fireman's pole that various people descend down. That is Jason Sherwood for the scenic design, Marco Marco for the costume design, of course, the iconic designer Marco Marco. And those costumes and those wigs are the best of drag. They are very modern, upmarket drag, post Drag Race drag performance outfits. But some of them are stylized, so tongue in cheek, so funny, so campy, so vibrant, so so much fun. As are this cast. The drag performers and the performers playing drag queens in this are brilliant. The whole thing is led by Drag Race All Stars winner Alaska and Nick Adams, who is an alumnus of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. He seems to be channeling Britney in both attitude and aesthetic in most of his. I mean, he does a great job doing drag. You also have familiar RuPaul's Drag Race alumni Jujube and J Sport and Lux Noir London, as well as Laguna Blue. And Nick Laughlin, who plays a young drag ingenue named Puss Puss Dubois, a name given to them because their original drag name, Anita Cocktail was considered cringe inducingly predictable. They are a constant source of comedy as drag queen after drag queen is horrified by their eyebrows. And there's so many brilliant moments. There are shady moments between these queens. They are hilarious. Every time you get a group of these drag queens on stage exchanging withering remarks or performing. They're also fantastic vocals, brilliant dance that you're seeing. They're hugely talented, ripe for musical theater, and they could keep this going for months by just like circulating different talented fan favorites from RuPaul's Drag Race. Because some of these tracks really show off comedy skills, which a lot of them have. Some of them show off dance skills, which a lot of them have. Some of them show off vocal skills, which a lot of them also have. Some of them, like Alaska's track, are a little bit more of a princess track. Not that Alaska isn't talented, Alaska who also co wrote the thing, but that's kind of a lot of drag performers can come in and just kind of walk through that with a certain amount of confidence, half sing it and be done. And I say that not to imply that anyone is lazy. Just walking around on stage wearing drag is tiring enough. Oh, and it's not just drag performers in the show. We also have Lisa LaFontaine who was a last minute addition to the cast. I really enjoy her in this. She's very heartfelt. She gives us some fantastic vocals. And Joey McIntyre is playing the straight accountant brother arriving into this world and finding himself a little stunned by it all. Adam Pascal is going to be imminently taking over in that role role. Jimbo is going to be replacing Alaska soon for a time. And Jlaine Marcos, who we don't see for a little while in the show, but then appears as all of these different but eerily similar characters, just about steals the damn thing. She is so hysterically funny. There is no comedy performance you can give in this kind of a show that is too big. There is nothing too wild or campy or ostentatious and it all works. It's a fun time. I would like for us to laugh a little more continuously, a little more riotously. I would like for some of the writing to be a little more clever if we're going to go down this queer youth accepted by his parents. The two brothers coming back together story, which is it's not just Priscilla and Tu Wong Fu. It's also the one about the dinner theater. Oh my gosh, Connie and Carla. It's also the drag subplot from Connie and Carla. We've done this same subplot a bunch of times and I guess for it to be Drag the Musical you're expecting expecting like the most cliched drag queen storyline. But I just think I wouldn't mind that. I wouldn't mind the insincerity of it all if it were bigger, if it were bolder, if it were brighter. And I need for that to be in the musical numbers and the production numbers. I need for us to see the drag performances that they keep talking about. We are spending so much time selling wigs and fretting about employment. They never get out of drag really. They're just living, walking around as drag queens. But they spend suspiciously little of their time actually working and performing. And the numbers that we do see from the club are really not some of the best songs in the show. I don't know why this needed to be done with original music and I kind of wish it wasn't. However, it's a fun time. If you are invested in seeing any of the performers in this cast on stage, that is reason enough to go and enjoy Drag the Musical. Get a drink before the show, for the love of God. If you don't know or necessarily care for any of these performers and this doesn't sound like your thing, then it's probably not. It's not one that's going to take you by surprise. It very much meets expectation, this next one. However, expectation is a challenging thing because I'm not sure people really know what this is. I'm not sure I knew what this was until I saw it. This is the Big Gay Jamboree from Marla Mendel downtown at the Orpheum Theatre. Now, sadly, this has already announced that it's going to be ending its run earlier than originally planned. There's a lot that just never really took off about this show and it had a lot of enthusiasm and hype going into it because this was the award winning Marlon Dell's next project after Titanique. With that having become this unexpected off Broadway cult hit that's doing really well, that's spawning all of these different international productions in Australia, in Canada, opening in the West End, starting its first preview this month actually. And Marla, having been the star of that and the co writer of that, has now co written this new show, the Big Gay Jamboree with the book by her and Jonathan Parks ram image and music and lyrics by her with Philip Drennan. I'm going to have to spoil the plot of the Big Gay Jamboree for you. So if you're intrigued by it, if you want to consider going, it is funny, it is campy, it is deeply gay, it's very Schmigadoon esque. If all of that sounds like something intriguing to you and don't want to know exactly what happens, skip ahead to the last part of this video. For those of you who are still here, we're going to talk about explicitly what this is because this is a classic golden age musical setting with a woman woman trapped inside of it who has no idea why she's woken up in and off Broadway musical. She can see the audience. She is screaming and begging us for help. All of her slightly robotic sisters are all telling her it's the day of her wedding and all of these very peppy townspeople are all preparing for the big wedding day. She has no idea what the F is going on. That's the concept for the show. That's the entire concept for the show. What we come to find out by the end, after we've had several snapshots of her real life outside of the Off Broadway musical that she is trapped in, is that this has all been set up by her wealthy douchey tech investor boyfriend who is Developing this, like, experience software so that you can be inside of. You can participate in an AI created musical at an actual downtown New York venue. And he's done all this for her because he kind of personally destroyed her dreams of getting to be a Broadway actress and never supported her backup plan of becoming a real housewife on any franchise other than Dubai, which is hilarious. And this goes much of the way towards explaining why the songs sound like they are conceived by AI. This isn't really a musical. Hot take. Let me explain. It doesn't behave like a musical. It cosplays as a musical inherently. This is a off Broadway comedy sketch of a show pretending to be a musical until it reveals to you that. That it isn't. This purports to be a musical and dresses like one and acts like one, but sort of functionally isn't. It lacks that authenticity of telling its own musical story. And there's a lot that doesn't quite work about this. It sounds like a winning concept, but it misses the mark just a little bit. One of the biggest problems from a comedy perspective, if we compare this to the brilliance that is Titanique, you find out early on in Titanique, again, spoilers for that show if you haven't seen it, that we are on the Titanic. And apparently so was Celine Dion. She announces that she was in fact on board the early 1900s sailing, and she's going to retell the story from her perspective. That is such a hysterical concept that you have no choice but to laugh for a hundred uninterrupted minutes. And you keep laughing and you know where you are because it plays on the film. It teases even the vaguest familiarity with some of the funny moments from the film, and it makes fun of those. But we know from the beginning we are in Celine Dion's version of what happened on the Titanic. In this show, we don't know where we are for about 90 minutes. We recognize our surroundings, sure, we see the things that it's parodying and the things that it's making fun of, and we get laughs out of that. I'm not saying we're not laughing for the first hour and a half, but there's a discomfort to it as well, because we can't figure out what it is is that we're looking at. This is a tool used in sketch comedy. You get this on things like snl, but it doesn't go on for so long if something is confusing. I'm thinking of that sketch where you find out that the three beautiful singing sisters are actually raccoons. The penny drops eventually and then there's a big laugh, but it just keeps us suspended for too long. Additionally, Marla Mendel has written herself a straight man role in this, which is is not where I want to see Marla Mindel when she was in the unauthorized musical parody of the Devil Wears Prada, which I've seen many videos of on YouTube. Having been following her career for some time, I love her. I think she's great before Titanique. I've been obsessed with Marlon Mendel for a long time and the unhinged talent that she is. She played Emily Blunt's character in that because of course she did. She wasn't trying to give you Miranda Priestley or trying to give you Anne Hathaway. And for her to be the central role in this and to be a straight man who is indifferent to the concert, I mean, the dream is for her to star in musical theater as this character, but even she can't get on board with it because it's so terrifying to her that she doesn't know how she got there. Meanwhile, the best role written in this has been given to Natalie Walker, who plays one of her four sisters, who we can tell quite quickly is just a little different to the other three because she has this voracious romance, romantic appetite, which is scandalous in the golden age musical that she finds herself in. She also has this wonderful little vocal characterization where it's a little bit Marilyn Monroe, it's a little bit come up and see me sometime. Not Bette Davis. Definitely not Bette Davis. Oh, my God, I'm tired. Mae West. That's the one. It's ever so slightly Mae West. She has this whole seductive number where she has tear away outfits being pulled off of her by strings and she's singing about how she just can't get enough. And she clearly has these BDSM tendencies. She and multiple other characters are convinced by Marla's character Stacy to join her in trying to flee to the real world because she tells them about the possibility there. She says that Flora, Natalie Walker's character, could get to be an actual dominatrix and could get to live out her sexual desires. Constantine Razzulli, her Titanique co writer and co star, plays a character who lives in the woods and is considered a monster by all the other townspeople because this is a Golden age musical. You didn't have gay representation. So she tells him about the life that he could lead in the real world. He then does this sensational music in the mirror Parody dance number. I had no idea this man could dance this well. It's a wonderful show stopping moment. He's brilliant. There is also Clarence she meets, played by the fantastic Paris Nix, who is kind of reduced to a racial stereotype. There's being a Golden age musical and that being how they would treat a black man in that kind of a show. And there's a great line where he says, so racism is like fixed in the future because she's just taught him what racism is. And she looks out to the audience. I saw this on the day after the election, by the way. And she says, not saying that. Definitely, definitely not saying that. And if we could play on more of that type of comedy, I think we would get further. It also has a little bit of a sense with her picking up these comparison companions along her journey, trying to get home from this magical realm. It's very wizard of Oz if you're not already hearing it. Hence the there's no place like homo merchandise that they are selling. So much of this I love. But even in the marketing, even in the branding, even with it being called the big gay Jamboree, I don't know that that tells you what this is. And I don't know that that really conveys what this actually is. I also don't know if it's landing as strongly in a post shmigadoon world because it's a very similar concept to that which is known to musical theater f fans. I wonder if what this ought to have been, and this is a very different concept, is an evening of multiple different musical sketches. And for that to have been just one of them, I think. So fascinating is her brain and so extraordinary is her talent that she could do a whole bunch of different things rather than going all in on this one concept that doesn't allow her to shine either as a writer or as a performer as brightly as I know that she can. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Real Housewives number. I loved all of the Real Housewife references. They're very up to date Real Housewife references. We can get a lot of like Salt Lake City up in there. I also, you know, I was initially confused by the big nod to Jennifer Lopez. We see her auditioning to play the block in the Jennifer Lopez musical, as in Jenny from the Block. It kind of mocks Hell's Kitchen, I think, very slightly, or at least mocks the idea of all of those very commercially regurgitated jukebox musicals. Bio jukebox musicals. But thereafter week keep getting Jennifer Lopez jokes. And it just really leans all the way into Marlon Mendel. Clearly being tickled by the notion of Jennifer Lopez's versatile career and her consistently coming back after dubious projects. She jokes that she makes such terrible decisions. Jennifer Lopez, I mean, and they sing this big song that has been stuck in my brain the entire time since, where they're like, jennifer Lopez has a backup. Yes, she does that. Maybe the biggest earworm from my entire time in New York and I saw a handful of new musicals. Regrettably, I could not tell you many of the other songs. I really can't bring that many of them to mind. This is also a thing in sketch comedy. If you're going to go into musical comedy within that kind of a thing, then it needs to be a song that keeps on getting funnier and we keep adding to it. And there are a couple that get progressively more outrageous. Like the song that Natalie Walker does and Constantine's does it with great choreography. But if we introduce a witty concept for the lyric and it doesn't grow and it doesn't change, then it gets old. So I'm sad to see that the big Gay jambray didn't find extraordinary success off Broadway, but I'm not necessarily surprised because I feel like it had something of an identity crisis. It also had another little improv moment like Titanique does, where Marla would pull up an audience member and ask to call someone on their phone, ask to call one of their contacts. This neither at the performance I was at nor at some of the ones I've seen online has ever really landed. It's like, it's like 80% funny and 20% awkward, which is not a ratio that I like. I could keep going about this when I feel like you get the idea that is the big gay jamboree for gay people. It is so filled with cultural references, just like Titanique is. Take a group of people, you'll have a fantastic time. You can go get a drink afterwards. I promise you'll enjoy it. It's not got a huge amount of time left off Broadway. Go and check it out if you're curious. Which brings us to the unexpected favorite of all of the things I saw off Broadway, Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now. Also happening at New World Stages also, I believe not with a huge amount of performance performances left. Only a little off Broadway run. But this is an evening of cabaret style performance from the three original stars or three of the original stars from the Broadway production of Hairspray. Tony Award winner Marissa Jarrett winoka as well as Tony Award nominees Kerry Butler and Laura Bell Bundy, as well as having played Tracy Turnblad, Amber Von Tussle and Penny Pingleton in that beloved show. They are also known for Legally Blonde, where Laura Bell played Elle Woods. She was also in Wicked as an understudied glitch Linda Carrie Butler, known for Beetlejuice, known for a Little Shop of Horrors revival on Broadway, known for Catch Me if youf can, known for Disaster between them. Many different shows, many different projects and they talk about just about everything. They talk about some things I didn't expect to. Laura Bell Bundy acknowledges some Broadway dating history rumors on that stage, which I thought was fascinating. Marissa talks about her time on Dancing with the Stars and Celebrity Big Brother. And they sing from just about all of their best known projects. Laura Bel Bundy gives you a medley of songs from Legally Blonde. Reason enough to buy the ticket. If I was gay going into this, which I was, I came out gayer. Carrie Butler sounds exactly the same she does on every recording she's ever been on, giving you that wonderful, pristine Disney vocal. Of course. Also Beauty and the Beast among her credits. She sings part of your world in this, having recorded the demo for the Broadway production of the Little Mermaid when it was in development for the stage. And Marissa performs numbers from roles she could be auditioning for for right now. She does a little bit of Mama Rose, gives you more like old school show busy character parts. They each sound fantastic, but it's the personality and the warmth that they bring to this as well as the camaraderie between the three of them. They are such a charming trio that makes this delightful. This is a beautiful evening of musical theater. Not only is it so nostalgic for someone, especially if you saw that production of Hairspray on Broadway. My gosh. With the original Broadway cast, this would be so meaningful to to you or any of the other shows that they've done. But even for someone who has loved their work from afar for a very long time, who didn't go to Broadway until recently, this was wonderful. This was absolutely delightful. It is theater history. They read from Britney Spears's biography where she talks about understudying Laura Bell Bundy in Ruthless Off Broadway when they were children. They talk about their time as performers, as children. They talk about Laura Bell doing child beauty pageants. And then we get this added layer of depth because they each talk about relationships and then they each talk about motherhood. And it's a little uncanny. They've each had non traditional motherhood journeys, whether that is adoption, surrogacy or ivf. And they each take time to talk about that and to talk about their kids. And it's so authentic. The relationships that they have had with each other, the friendship that they have preserved over these past, past two decades. That is what they bring to the stage. That warmth and that heart and that sincerity. It's beautiful, it's lovely. And even though this is a non narrative show, I think this affected me more emotionally than any of the others on that pile. This really like filled my heart. And as if that wasn't enough, it's also wildly entertaining. Laura Belbundi is wearing flats for the first 20 minutes and dancing like she's trying to win an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race. She busts out a bunch of celebrity impressions, impressions I didn't know she could do. She is imitating like Celine Dion and just so many things. She does a version of Popular. A lot of stuff is played for comedy. She has a tear away outfit reveal at one point. They have these occasional sassy interactions with each other. They have some brilliant backing vocalists to help them deliver all of the different numbers. There is a lot of hairspray in it. We hear Good Morning Baltimore. We hear here Without Love. We of course hear Mama, Big Girl Now. We hear a bit of you Can't Stop the Beat. They're giving you every single thing you could conceive of in this show. Everything that you want. When you're buying a ticket to this, when you are walking into that theater. Oh, I hope they do. I hope they do this. They don't do Hot to Go, but they do just about everything else. I cannot recommend this enough. If you think you were even slightly in the target demographic of this show, if you didn't know it was happening, get yourself down to New World Stages before the run ends. Buy a ticket, you can get Telecharge Rush. I'm telling you, you, there's no bad seat in that space. It is so lovely. It is so delightful. It put the hugest smile on my face. One of the highlights of my trip. Thank God that I included it. This was a last minute decision. I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. Mama, I'm a big girl now. I am so thrilled I got to see this. And that has been my review roundup of everything I saw off Broadway. I legitimately have no idea when I'm going to be back in New York. So I don't know when next I will be seeing another off Broadway show. But I do know I have more reviews to bring to you very soon, including a couple more from Broadway shows, so stay tuned. If you're not already following me on a podcast platform where you may be hearing this or subscribed here on YouTube. If you're watching this, make sure to do that right now. Turn on notifications so you don't miss any of my upcoming video theater content. I've lost the ability to put words in the right order because I've been filming this video for about 85 minutes and I hope that you have enjoyed. Like I said, make sure to weigh in with your thoughts on any or all of these shows in the comments section down below and let us know if you saw anything else Off Broadway that I haven't mentioned. I feel like I'm slowly figuring out the Off Broadway world a little bit more every time that I go back, and I want to make even bolder and braver theatrical decisions next time I'm in Manhattan. Until then though, thank you so much for listening to these reviews. I hope you've enjoyed and I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey day. Subscribe.