VIEWPOINTS – Breezy summer fare: The Main Stem outing of CELEBRITY AUTOBIOGRAPHY and striking while it’s hot with a HEATED RIVALRY musical parody

Those of you looking for breezy summer entertainment without much emotional nor intellectual investment need not look further than a pair of options — the Main Stem outing of Celebrity Autobiography at the Shubert Theatre and Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody at The Culture Club, the newly christened performance space at the former McKittrick Hotel (the longtime home of Sleep No More). As per usual, read on for my thoughts.

Andrea Martin (center) in “Celebrity Autobiography” at the Shubert Theatre (photo by Evan Zimmerman).

CELEBRITY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Shubert Theatre
Through August 2

A good way to cool off on these increasingly warm days is to take in an all-star session of Celebrity Autobiography (RECOMMENDED), which has at long last arrived on Broadway after stints around the globe at the flagship Shubert Theatre. The brainchild of writer-performer Eugene Pack (who co-developed and often stars in the show with Dayle Reyfel), the premise of the 90-minute show is brilliantly simple — to invite celebrities across popular culture (e.g., stage, screen, comedy, sports, politics, etc.) to read from other celebrities’ autobiographies, the point being to highlight the unintended, often vacuous hilarity found therein and to prove that someone’s unchecked reality is indeed stranger — and funnier — than anything you can make up. With an ever-changing cast (which could perhaps include a surprise guest or two), it’s all but guaranteed that you’ll not end up with the same show twice, which encourages repeat viewings. The performance I attended included the likes of Mario Cantone, Jackie Hoffman, Jeff Hiller, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, Molly Shannon, and Andrea Martin. Suffice to say, some skits are funnier than others — I especially enjoyed the “mash-ups” that put the autobiographies in slicing dialogue with each other — largely because some performers are more adept at creating comic moments out of thin air by wielding a simple look or voice inflection. Particularly notable at this were Catone (reading from Liza Minelli’s autobiography), Hiller (Cher), and Kritzer (Gwenneth Paltrow). That being said, stage veterans Hoffman and Martin were no slouches either, although both were relegated to inherently less campy material to begin with, the exception being Suzanne Somers’ collection of inane poetry (!).

Jay Armstrong Johnson and Jimin Moon in “Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody” at The Culture Club (photo by Matthew Murphy).

HEATED RIVARY: THE UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY
The Culture Club
Open run

With its combustible combination of raunchy gay sex scenes and brooding depictions of hunky professional hockey players, the television series Heated Rivalry has somehow become an unlikely cultural touchpoint. Striking while it’s hot, it was only a matter of time until a musical parody — which seem to be a dime a dozen in New York these days — of the show would see the light of day. Enter musical theater writer Dylan MarcAurele’s unauthorized musical parody (RECOMMENDED), which opened Off-Broadway last night in a sixth floor performance venue at The Culture Club in Chelsea. In short, I’m happy to report that the zippy show gets the job done rather well. MarcAurele’s songs are surprisingly well-crafted and push the story along efficiently and often hilariously, succinctly truncating the entirety of the first season of the series in under 90 minutes (the scrappy but surprisingly effective set is by Sully Ross, whose scenic design moves things along clippingly). And like Titanique, which has somehow managed to dock itself under the bright lights of Broadway, there are winking cultural references abound, which keeps the show fresh from performance to performance. In terms of performances, you couldn’t cast the show any better. As Shane Hollander and Ilya Rosanov, respectively, Jimin Moon and Jay Armstrong Johnson are perfectly cast, almost uncannily so. And although they predictably amp up the satire, there’s also a dollop of beguiling sweetness and real humanity in their portrayals that elevate this Heated Rivalry spoof above a lot of musical parodies out there, which are only out there to earn easy laughs, and usually rarely more. To boot, both are legit Broadway-style singers and are easy on the eyes. Under the buoyant direction of Alan Kliffer, the rest of the gane cast work wonderfully together as an ensemble and are comedically on the same page.

Categories: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Theater

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