Theatre in Review: The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World (Playwrights Horizons) A parent bent on show business glory at any price. Talentless young girls who are made to perform against their wills. And, when fame arrives, it does so in a wholly unexpected, not entirely welcome form. What -- another revival of Gypsy? We can only wish. As overexposed as that classic title currently is, I'd happily see it five nights in a row rather than sit through ten minutes of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World. This bizarrely misbegotten project is Gypsy for indie hipsters, a downbeat, depressing, and altogether sordid account of parental exploitation and the dissolution of a family, all in the name of dreams too flimsy to warrant a moment's consideration. Like Gypsy, it's based on a true story-- in this case, The Shaggs, the no-talent girl-rock trio that was discovered, years after they disbanded, by the likes of Frank Zappa and Rolling Stone magazine, who lionized them as some kind of authentic expression of something or other. Unlike Gypsy, however, this new musical is the product of people who haven't the faintest idea how to turn their material into anything remotely dramatic or diverting. The Mama Rose of this story is Austin Wiggin -- at one point, he even is made to sing, "I have a dream, girls!" A frustrated New Hampshire factory worker, as well as a husband and father of three adolescent daughters, Austin is haunted by a prophecy made by his mother -- a woman allegedly gifted with second sight -- that his daughters would prove to be his fortune. Despite their collective lack of even one music lesson, he invents them as The Shaggs -- and, despite their inability to play anything like a song, they are soon getting local gigs. Driven to make the girls famous, Austin spends the family's last dime on a record album that is never released because the group's promoter vanishes. By now, the girls are in rebellion, and Austin, his heart broken, succumbs to a heart attack. But fame of a sort comes calling years later -- although, by then, it means little or nothing to the Wiggin girls. It's not the most promising source for a musical, although I suspect that others might get a show out of it. (There is the shining example of Souvenir, the riotous account of the supremely tone-deaf opera diva Florence Foster Jenkins, but that's a show with a strongly articulated point of view.) But the librettist, Joy Gregory, demonstrates no knack for storytelling. She makes little or no attempt to dig into Austin's psyche, and only barely makes the daughters into distinct individuals; they get one trait apiece -- one is daddy's girl, one is sarcastic, and one refuses to speak -- and that's it. Emily Rebholz's costumes -- complete with matching outfits and horrifying, if accurate, wigs -- make it even more difficult to tell them apart. Even more dismaying, the songs -- music by Gunnar Madsen, lyrics by Gregory and Madsen -- are written in a style best described as school-of-the-Shaggs. They're a series of tuneless indie-rock ditties with run-on lyrics that melt into an endless drone; as such, they are incapable of serving as any kind of vehicle for emotion or character revelation. Listening to them is like listening to the Shaggs' album, on headphones, with the sound turned up, and no possibility of reprieve. This flat-affect attitude extends to John Lang's staging, which fails to a find a consistent or compelling tone. The excellent Peter Friedman is wasted as Austin, here depicted as a one-note tyrant who bullies his wife and daughters shamelessly. A feeble attempt is made to depict him as some kind of lost dreamer, but his dreams are so transparently unrealistic that he never comes across anything but an irritant. Annie Golden is even more wasted as Austin's drab doormat of a wife. Kevin Cahoon does his best to inject some zip as the promoter who thinks he has signed up another local bar band, only to later decide that The Shaggs represent something rich and strange. The most appealing performance comes from Cory Michael Smith as Kyle, a local boy who marries Betty, the silent Shagg, on the sly. Based on the assumption that it takes a lot of skill to portray ineptitude, I'm assuming we'll be seeing Jamey Hood, Sarah Sokolovic, and Emily Walton (cast as The Shaggs) again. Mimi Lien's two-level set depicts the Wiggins' basement below and an exterior view of Fremont, New Hampshire above; on the upper level, the upstage walls part to reveal the show's four-piece band. The over all effect is intentionally dreary, which doesn't make it any easier to watch; the same is true of Rebholz's purposely ugly costumes. Geoff Korf's lighting tends to emphasize the setting's squalor. Darron L. West's sound design is surprisingly good, especially given the unhelpful location of the band. As unwatchable as anything produced in the long history of Playwrights Horizons, The Shaggs is the kind of show that throws the contemporary play-development process into question. According to a recent story in the Times, it has been in the works for several years. During all that time, did nobody notice that it never makes a compelling argument for The Shaggs as anything but a bizarre music industry footnote? Ten minutes into the first act, I certainly noticed.--David Barbour 
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