Mauckingbird's "[title of show]'

In his recent review of The Understudy, my BSR colleague Dan Rottenberg castigated playwright Theresa Rebeck for focusing on the conveniently narrow concerns of producing a play. He should probably avoid Mauckingbird's current production of Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell's [title of show].

This "meta-musical" tells the story of how composer Bowen and writer Bell, along with a pair of female friends, created the musical itself. The pair decided to submit a piece to the New York Musical Theatre Festival three weeks before the deadline. "What should we write about?" one of them asks. The answer: We'll write a show about two guys trying to write a show.

Stretches of dialogue and entire numbers reflect nothing more than a "this is us writing a song" mentality. Bell's book devotes passages to looming questions like, "What if we win a Tony?", "Whom should we invite to opening night?" and "Who would you want to play "'you' in the Broadway version?" Early on, one of them voices his concern that "I just don't want this to sound like a self-indulgent series of sketches and songs." (Too late.)

To compound the problem, Bell littered his script with Broadway-insider references. One number rattles off a string of play titles while the cast rummages through a pile of Playbills. A later, more irritating song depicts the quartet arguing about suggested changes to the script. On a pretentiousness scale, [title of show] would rank just above giving yourself a cool nickname and just below a pair of film students shooting a movie about making a movie.

The only surprising thing about [title of show] is that no one came up with this idea sooner. As a product, it mimics the appeal, community engagement and viral marketing success of recent reality-TV shows.

Catching lobsters, loading baggage

Since the mid-1990s, entire TV series have focused on the daily minutiae of restoring motorcycles, catching lobsters, styling hair and loading baggage onto airplanes. Throw in the slew of reality-kitchen dramas, shows about "real" housewives and a pair of programs about the grind of a pawn shop, and this much becomes clear: Audiences already interested in a niche profession will be further interested in learning about what goes on behind the scenes.

Mauckingbird's choice of [title of show] reflects the company's similar niche-driven approach to theater. The company's very narrow mission is limited to gay-themed works or adaptations. (Bowden and Bell refer to their sexual orientation in the libretto). Notwithstanding the musical's self-indulgence, Mauckingbird made a wise choice in selecting a musical that would enable them to extend their already loyal community of patrons interested in both theatre and a gay perspective.

Were those real tears?

In this production, four of Philadelphia's finest musical talents— Kate Brennan, Kim Carson, Ben Dibble and Michael Philip O'Brien— enchant with their voices, charm with their mannerisms, and elicit laughter with their delivery. But mostly they captivate with the chemistry they engender. During one of Carson's solo numbers, I saw Brennan shedding commiserating tears and couldn't decide if she was acting or responding to the genuine heartbreak in Carson's portrayal.

The quartet's rendering of the penultimate number— "I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing, than 100 people's ninth favorite thing"— redeemed [title of show] from its own self-indulgence. Bowden and Bell astutely perceive that niche-driven art, like reality TV, only needs its appeal to be deep rather than broad. I expect we'll see more of it, for better or worse.