Theatre in Review: Something Rotten! (St. James Theatre)

	Christian Borle and company. Photo: Joan Marcus

We've all heard of shows that peak too early, but never so soon as the middle of the first act -- yet that's the dubious new record set by Something Rotten!. We have already been presented with Nick and Nigel Bottom, Elizabethan playwrights who can't get an ounce of respect, much less a production, thanks to the popularity of a certain strutting young popinjay named Will Shakespeare. By Act I, Scene V, things are looking grim for the Bottom brothers: They have lost their producer, they have no money, and Bea, Nick's wife, is pregnant. Desperate for inspiration, Nick wanders into Soothsayer Alley -- in Scott Pask's witty set design, it looks like a downmarket version of J. K. Rowling's Diagon Alley -- where he consults with a filthy old bag of bones known as Nostradamus. Summoning up his best predictive powers, Nostradamus gazes into the far future and sees an entirely new form of theatre. The number that follows, "A Musical," contains bits of a dozen or more Broadway classics, including Rent, Sweet Charity, and Les Misérables (I have no research to back me up, but this is surely the first show ever to spoof "Rock Island," the spoken number that opens The Music Man.) As staged by Casey Nicholaw, a magician when it comes to whipping an audience up into a frenzy, a chorus of high-stepping doxies and cutpurses work their way through a ridiculously incongruous series of song and dance moves. At the performance I attended, it earned one of the longest and most sustained ovations that I have seen in some time; only the response to Andrea Martin's turn in Pippin comes close.

"A Musical" is the best thing about Something Rotten!, and it is also a warning to audiences who are wary of yet another all-singing, all-dancing, all-gagging musical full of inside-Broadway jokes. Clearly conceived as an Elizabethan version of The Producers, it enthusiastically serves up a full menu of the same stereotypes and nudge-nudge, wink-wink jokes about the theatre that were dicey enough 14 years ago without the Mel Brooks stamp of approval. Watching Something Rotten!, I had to keep reminding myself that shows haven't been trying to spoof Fosse dance moves, Jewish producers, and gay chorus boys since 1595; it just seems like it.

The rest of Something Rotten! involves the Bottom brothers tangling with Shakespeare, here seen as a late-Tudor version of Mick Jagger, leading with his pelvis as he crosses the stage, his entourage a couple of steps behind, as he eyeballs the ladies and wave at friends whose names he doesn't know. Nick returns to Nostradamus to get the skinny on the best play Shakespeare will ever write, so he and Nigel can beat him to the punch. Nostradamus' vision is a little hazy that day, so Nick leaves him under the impression that he and Nigel have to write a musical titled Omelette. That this leads to a production number full of chorines dressed as eggs is a foregone conclusion.

You don't need Nostradamus to point out that the book writers, Karey Kirkpatrick and John O'Farrell, and the songwriters Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick, always go for the biggest, broadest idea, whether it is really funny or not. We are told that Shakespeare is writing a play about one of his hangers on, titled Shylock: The Really Nice Jew. Will is introduced as "the man who put I Am into iambic pentameter." Describing the plot of Hamlet, somebody says, "How do you solve a problem like Ophelia?" When Shakespeare makes his first strutting entrance, the number is called "Will Power," naturally. When Nick decides the family fortunes are turning, he launches into a little something called "Bottom's Gonna Be on Top." And when Will complains about the demands of his profession, the number is called "Hard to be a Bard." This is surely the only musical to feature production numbers titled "Make an Omelette" and "The Black Death." One way of looking at Something Rotten! is that it is the biggest, slickest college musical you've ever seen.

That Something Rotten! remains watchable is entirely due to Nicholaw's buoyant, fast-moving staging and a team of crack Broadway pros. Brian d'Arcy James and John Cariani make a fine team as Nick and Nigel, the former brash and impulsive, capable of selling any number to the back row of the balcony, and the latter shy and sensitive, supplying some much-needed warmth. As Shakespeare, Christian Borle is an amusing pillar of self-regard. ("Do you see what I did?" he asks, preening before the adoring crowd after delivering yet another bon mot.) He is the object of some of the most thuddingly obvious jokes, however. For example, he gives an outdoor poetry reading, just so someone can make a joke about Shakespeare in the Park. Surely the world's greatest playwright deserves wittier spoofing.

The delightful Heidi Blickenstaff, as Bea, puts over a charming number, "Right Hand Man," but then disappears for long stretches until the climax, when she appears in male drag as a lawyer to get the Bottoms out of legal hot water. (The libretto spoofily elements from practically every Shakespeare play, short of Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen.) As Nostradamus, Brad Oscar, a veteran of The Producers, seizes his opportunity in "A Musical" and nearly steals the entire show. Kate Reinders is sweet as the Puritan girl who catches Nigel's eye and Brooks Ashmanskas proves to be the most consistent laugh-getter as her father, who can't open his mouth without unwittingly delivering a double-entendre. There are nice contributions from Peter Bartlett as a befuddled patron of the arts, Gerry Vichi as the theatre-loving Shylock, and Michael James Scott, as a genial troubadour, who kicks things off with a catchy number titled "Welcome to the Renaissance."

Pask's sets, which include interiors of the Bottom brothers' cottage and their theatre as well as several street scenes, have the rough, yet lyrical, quality of period woodcuts; he also provides some nice painted drops depicting a bridge over the Thames, the interior, at a party, of Will's VIP tent, and a courtroom. Gregg Barnes, the costume designer, has plenty of fun with the expansive silhouette of ladies' wear; he is in his element with Will's outfits, in which Elizabethan style is crossed with ideas nabbed from the latest edition of Fashion Week. Jeff Croiter's lighting helps to build Nicholaw's numbers to their big finishes. Peter Hylenski's sound design is on the loud side, which may have more to do with the surfeit of uptempo numbers than anything else.

Because the Broadway season provided no other just-for-laughs musical, and because Nicholaw and company have endowed the proceedings with considerable flash and sparkle, you can bet that Something Rotten! is likely to run. But unless you are entranced with endless variations on a single joke -- one that has already been worked to death in other shows -- you should hie thee hence to another of the season's new musical. To give the Bard the last word, what Something Rotten! needs is more matter, with less art. -- David Barbour