Review: “[title of show]” from the Modern Theater is a fun, funny ode to musical theater
They say you’re supposed to write what you know, and what Jeff and Hunter know best is creative desperation. They’re wannabe playwrights living in New York City, and they’ve got three weeks to produce an original one-act musical for a regional theater competition. After hitting a number of dead ends, they start to wonder if perhaps their struggle to write a play would make for a compelling play. “We could put this exact conversation into the show!” one of them observes.
That’s the setup for “[title of show],” a self-referential, fourth wall-shattering comedy that details its own bumpy creation. The musical, currently running at Ella’s Cabaret Club, is very much aware it’s a musical, and its characters are always conscious there’s an audience watching them. They tweak songs already in progress. They make obscure pop culture references and then panic that the references are too obscure. One scene ends with an abrupt blackout because a character feels that it’s been going on too long.
As a postmodern riff on the formulas and clichés of Broadway musicals, “[title of show]” is clever and consistently funny. But it turns out to be about a lot more than winking, satirical asides: This is a playful, breathlessly paced ode to creativity and individuality, and how it’s much harder to find an audience if you’re desperately searching for one. “I’d rather be nine people’s favorite thing,” the characters sing at one point, “than 100 people’s ninth favorite thing.”
The protagonists of “[title of show]” are obvious surrogates for writers Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell, who also starred in the show’s initial run. Jeff (Jonah Taylor) is a web designer and Hunter (Todd Kehne) works as a caterer, and they’re both hoping their wacky musical, also called “[title of show],” will be their big break. As they’re writing, they call for help from their friends Heidi (Alyssa Day), a struggling Broadway actress, and Susan (Christina Coty), an office worker with a theater background, who eventually become characters themselves.
The first two-thirds of this one-act show, nimbly directed for the Modern Theater by Troy Nickerson, is set in cramped New York apartments as the quartet tinkers with the script. Hunter wants the show to be more than just a series of sketches and novelty songs, and he’s worried that its salty language and inside baseball talk about such ill-fated musicals as “Starlight Express” and “Henry, Sweet Henry” will alienate “average ticket buyers.” Jeff, meanwhile, doesn’t want their voices to get lost amidst the pandering.
“Are we writing for art,” one of the show’s songs asks, “and is art a springboard for fame?” It’s something of a throwaway line – this is a show that’s practically built out of throwaway lines – but it’s a surprisingly profound one, and it’s the kind of question that stories about show business rarely consider. When producing art for public consumption, do you stay true to your vision, or do you sacrifice it to produce something that you know will connect with any audience?
Bowen and Bell obviously lean toward the latter notion: “[title of show]” did get a Broadway run in 2008 and was nominated for a Tony Award, something that their onstage proxies discuss. Even in an era where something offbeat like “Hamilton” can break through to the mainstream, most Broadway productions are glittery, million-dollar affairs based on pre-existing properties. The low-budget, no-frills musical starring actors you’ve never heard of is an endangered species.
But more than anything, “[title of show]” radiates an unabashed love for the basic form of musical theater. Although it pokes merciless fun at the genre’s more obvious conventions – you get the big, splashy opening number (called “Untitled Opening Number”), the passage-of-time medleys, the soul-searching ballad – it’s imbued with a sense of affection for those conventions. After all, you can’t mock what you don’t already know inside out.
I’ve probably made “[title of show]” sound like a too-quirky-for-its-own-good stylistic exercise, and, to a certain extent, it is. None of its songs are particularly melodically memorable, and it feels a little long at only 90 minutes. But as an unpredictable, occasionally lewd comedy, it’s quite successful and contains a lot of big laughs. This is a deceptively tricky show, and Nickerson’s actors rarely get a break. Even when they’re running wildly about the stage, they’re always in complete control of their characters. Watching them seemingly compose this off-the-wall material as they go along is terrific fun.