Theatre in Review: Gutenberg! The Musical! (James Earl Jones Theatre)

	Josh Gad, Andrew Rannells. Photo: Matt Murphy

The only thing wrong with Gutenberg! The Musical! is, as it happens, Gutenberg! The Musical! This isn't as sweeping a statement as it looks, but it points to the problem at the heart of a brash entertainment that wears a forced grin of faux innocence, determined to keep the fun going even as its essential energy runs down. It's an ultra-high-concept comedy, and if the title doesn't make you laugh, steel yourself: You'll be looking for amusement in the action's many sidebars and byways. Sometimes, you'll even find it.

For Gutenberg! -- If you're thinking that all those exclamation points feel just a wee bit desperate, you're right -- the writers Scott Brown and Anthony King boldly wield their one-joke premise: Bud and Doug, musical theatre-besotted doofuses from Nutley, New Jersey, have rented the Jones Theatre for one night only, holding a backer's audition for their musical about the inventor of the printing press. (Prominent producers are in the house, we are told.) To accompany them, they have hired "New Jersey's premier wedding band," the Middlesex Six. Alas, they can afford only three, but never mind; they neither spare themselves nor their audience in trying to entertain.

The guys have chosen Gutenberg as their subject in part because the historical record is so thin on the inventor of the printing press, allowing them plenty of room for fooling around. "What is historical fiction?" Doug asks, addressing us like a classroom of slow learners. "It's fiction...that's true," Bud adds by way of explanation. Also, to lend a bit of depth, they intend to address the issue of antisemitism. "It makes our show important," Doug adds. Alas, if Jew-hatred was ever a laugh-riot, this isn't the week for it. A prologue involving a father feeding jellybeans, not medicine, to his dying infant -- thus showing the importance of the literacy with which Gutenberg will gift the world -- is equally oafish.

Still, whenever Josh Gad (Bud) and Andrew Rannells (Doug) instruct us in the ways of modern-day Broadway, Gutenberg! can send you on a laughing jag of an inordinate length. After the supremely untalented Bud essays a female role, Doug assures us, "In an actual production, we would never cast a straight white man to play a woman." "Representation matters," Bud adds, piously. Introducing a song, Bud says, "A hit Broadway musical has to end its first act with a soaring anthem that tween girls will eventually struggle to sing in the shower." He also allows that his dream cast would include "Mister Timothée Chalamet" in a supporting role. In addition, the stars mine bits of comedy gold in their characters' astoundingly drab lives. Doug, who is in his "early-to-mid-to-late-forties," kicks off a getting-to-know-you session, saying, "I live in a studio apartment above an incredibly loud pet store, and I used to own a cat." Their show business experience consists entirely of lip-synching classic pop hits for nursing home residents -- one of whom, Doug proudly notes, was roused out of her catatonic state by one such performance, standing for the first time in years. "I thought she was possessed by the devil," Bud admits.

But there's a Gutenberg in the room and it must be addressed: Every time Bud and Doug slip back into their show -- a wild farrago of mad monks, hearty drinking choruses, and a teary heroine named Helvetica -- tedium sets in. It's not just that the trope of spoofing old-style Broadway musical conventions is so worn out. (Gutenberg! originally managed a six-month Off-Broadway run in 2007, when the concept may have seemed fresher.) It's that the show-within-a-show-scenes are so leaden. If you're going to get away with silliness on this scale, you've got to be light on your feet, but there's no way to come back alive from a song with lyrics like these: "You can eat a biscuit/When you're sick in bed/You can eat a biscuit/When the moon turns red/You can eat a biscuit/When we're all dead! Biscuits and biscuits and biscuits!" At moments like these, the line between the amusingly awful and just plain bad becomes impossible to detect.

The first act holds together, if only just, but, after intermission, the strain of effort is obvious and the stars land notably fewer laughs. They do have one last card to play, however, with the nightly appearance of a special guest "producer." We had Ashley Park, recently released from Death Rattle, the spoof musical featured in the current season of Only Murders in the Building; she was, as always, a delight.

Director Alex Timbers is probably right to use hard-sell tactics with this material, but the effort pays diminishing returns. The action mostly unfolds on Scott Pask's brick-walled backstage set, which is oddly reminiscent of Eugene Lee's basic design for Saturday Night Live. Just before the final curtain, it executes a transformation that must have added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the production budget. Jeff Croiter's lighting is, I suspect, intended to suggest the grandeur of Bud and Doug's dreams but the flood of saturated color, combined with jazzy bumps and hits plus clouds of fog effects, becomes a little wearying. Emily Rebholz's costumes are solidly amusing; check out Doug's argyle sweater vest, carefully tucked into his pants. ML Dogg and Cody Spencer's sound design is as clear as anyone could wish.

And, a dozen years after their initial team, the stars are more comfortable than ever with each other. Rannells, with the face of a slightly corrupt chipmunk, does his best pole dancer imitation while miming the operation of Gutenberg's press, topping himself when ending one number by respectably executing the splits. He does wonders with the most oddball bit, such as Doug's desire to musically adapt the entire Stephen King oeuvre into a single night's entertainment. The sweaty, disheveled Gad, reaching for his asthma inhaler in moments of excitement and tearfully apologizing for not being gay, is an ideal foil. Based on the show's robust initial business, audiences are clearly up for a reunion of the original Book of Mormon boys. Fair enough, as long as they're willing to take potluck. --David Barbour