Theatre in Review: Revolution in the Elbow of Ragnar Agnarsson Furniture Painter (Minetta Lane Theatre)

	Cady Huffman. Carol Rosegg

Well, it's August: How else to explain the presence of Revolution in the Elbow of Ragnar Agnarsson Furniture Painter? As I've noted before, it's during August that a kind of cloud of unknowing often descends on producers, suddenly making them enamored of the most peculiar projects. Last August, there was First Date, which featured a comic Jewish grandma informing her grandson, in song, that if he dated a shiksa, "I'll cut off your matzoh balls!" The very same month we got Soul Doctor, in which an enraged Orthodox Jew, finding his son performing in a nightclub, sang, "So you're gonna do the hora/In Sodom and Gomorrah?" Another August show was Bullet for Adolf, a comedy about stoners and Nazi memorabilia, with the following exchange: "They just found the cause of pedophilia." "What's that?" "Sexy kids." And let us not forget Imperfect Chemistry, a musical in which the search for the cure to male pattern baldness reduces the human race to Neanderthal status, leaving the show's romantic leads to restart civilization on a desert island. Such rich, rich memories I have.

Imperfect Chemistry crossed my mind more than once the other night, because it played out its brief life at the Minetta Lane Theatre, where Revolution in the Elbow... will mostly likely have a similarly evanescent existence. Let me be clear: The title is not a metaphor. The action of the musical -- yes, it's a musical -- takes place in the elbow of an Icelandic artisan. It is the conceit of Ívar Páll Jónsson, who wrote the book and score (he co-conceived the story with Gunnlaugur Jónsson), that inside the body part mentioned in the title lurks "a somewhat naïve backwater named Elbowville," in which a community of microscopic creatures exists by "fishing for gigantic lobsters in the lymphatic channels" of their host. Not that these beings are alone; we are told that there are similar groups living in "Knee York" and "Hips Burg," among others. For reasons I couldn't explain under pain of death, the inhabitants of Elbowville are excessively enamored of Paul Newman and Robert Redford; indeed, they treat the latter like a deity. When upset, they typically exclaim, "Oh, my Bob!"

More details: Brynja, the ingénue, is first seen walking her pet virus, Gunnar. Later, appearing without Gunnar, she says, by way of explanation, "He's at home. He has a bad cold." A young man, interested in her, asks, "Are you going to be around these body parts for a while?" Peter, the show's protagonist, reports at one point, "I had a meeting with a Germ man," which leads to a discussion about the moral reliability of that particular ethnic group. And then there's the Sexything, an unseen creature hidden behind a freak show display, visited by Peter. "Did you get her autograph?" asks his brother, Alex. "No. She doesn't have any arms," Peter replies.

Peter, by the way, is a go-getter, eager to make his mark on Elbowville. He first floats a plan to disconnect Ragnar's brainstem from his spine, using the fluid to fill the town's swimming pools. When this proposal is rejected, he comes up with a Prosperity Machine, which keeps printing money; the town is flooded with worthless cash, creating the kind of financial bubble that nearly destroyed Iceland, and the rest of the world, in 2008. It's at this point you start to realize that Revolution in the Elbow... is a political parable, a Brecht-and-Weill-style economic analysis crossed with the old Milton Bradley game Operation. But, by couching their extremely simple-minded insights in a setting that seems lifted from Dr. Seuss' Whoville, they have all but guaranteed that their message is going to reach an audience as microscopic as the population of Elbowville.

The most bizarrely fascinating aspect of Revolution in the Elbow... is the spectacle of its cast -- a combination of seasoned Broadway hands and attractive newcomers -- maintaining straight faces. As Peter, Marrick Smith impresses with his fine voice and stage presence, never mind that his character is an unpleasant cipher. As the girl of his dreams, the equally appealing Jesse Wildman is made to stand around, complaining about being in the 37th month of pregnancy. Other notables include Kate Shindle, as Peter's acquisitive sister-in-law, and Patrick Boll, who has almost nothing to do as the narrator. Their problems pale next to those of Cady Huffman, however; dressed in a series of outlandish outfits that suggest Jane Jetson by way of Carmen Miranda, she is made to camp and vamp it up as Elbowville's corrupt leader, shouldering some of the libretto's most jaw-dropping lines. Pointing out a work of art on the fourth wall, she says, "That's my uterus. After my hysterectomy, I decided to have it bronzed."

The score includes a few attractive pop hooks, but they aren't sufficiently developed and the lyrics are so bland as to give new meaning to the term "blank verse." (One energetic number climaxes in Shindle and Huffman trying to outbelt each other, followed by a brief catfight.) Most of the time, however, Jónsson applies the same dreamy, trippy musical style to every situation.

It all unfolds on Petr Hloušek's set, a largely bare stage with a second-floor gallery on the upstage wall, which is also covered with pipes that apparently represent Ragnar's veins. Hloušek also designed the projections, which include an enormous image of the flabby, bearded Ragnar, dressed in camouflage pants and white mesh tank top. The costumes, by Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir and Edda Gudmundsdóttir, which are big on tiny miniskirts and fur-and-fringe capes, seem perversely dedicated to making the women in the cast look as unattractive as possible. The lighting, by Jeff Croiter and Cory Pattak, is a solid professional job, creating a number of attractive side-light looks. The Minetta Lane Theatre, with its highly reverberant walls, was probably never intended for a musical, let alone one with electronic instruments, but Carl Casella's sound design does manage to preserve the intelligibility of the lyrics.

As one is repeatedly lectured on the evils of unfettered capitalism, and as the show wends its way through multiple endings, random thoughts may come to mind. For example: At a time when talented writers struggle to find outlets for their work, how did this one ever get produced? The money appears to have come entirely from Iceland, so I guess they're over their fiscal problems. In any case, for connoisseurs of the bizarre -- the kind of people who own multiple copies of Ken Mandelbaum's Not Since Carrie -- this one may be a must-see. For everyone else, it's just a pain in the elbow.--David Barbour