"I don't know where to look," the guy next to me said. "You know exactly where to look," I replied.
It was the opening of Naked Boys Singing...without protests, pickets or police...and the eight cast members were without a stitch, men aged 20s-to-40s and none of them boys. For the record, five are lean and muscular, one is stocky and muscular, two are pleasantly average. Seven are cut and one uncut, or is it just a lighting trick? None are hung like porn stars. They wear clothes in almost every number...towels, jockstraps, T-shirts, a tux...which usually come off, revealing the razor as the principal costuming tool.
So much for reportage. As to interpretation, Naked Boys Singing is delightful. It's much more than a gimmick, with 15 clever and catchy songs in the best musical revue tradition, and openly gay, too. Staged by Bailiwick artistic director David Zak, the lively, well-timed show ( at 85 minutes including intermission, it leaves you wanting slightly more ) offers sharp, sprightly musical direction by Robert Ollis ( with Ollis or Jack Short at the piano ) , and choreography by Andrew Delo that is several notches higher than expected or required, providing an athletic adagio couple and parodies of Stomp and Fosse.
Voices were a little ragged on opening night ( we we're told a cold was going 'round ) , but generally adequate to very good and big ( except several songs that were too low for a singer's range ) . All eight cast members are long on personality, if not great actors ( they don't need to be ) , and well-balanced between dancers who sing and singers who dance, thus meeting both the musical and movement challenges.
The original songs, contributed by a dozen writers ( under Robert Schrock's concept ) , "give new meaning to a bare stage," offering showers and steam rooms, a strip poker game, a condo window, etc., where men easily are naked. Although overwhelmingly comedic, the mix includes a beautiful love ballad, "Window to Window," and a song of loss in the Age of AIDS, "Kris, Look What You've Missed." Comic highlights are the opening number, "The Naked Maid," "Bliss of a Bris" ( Jewish circumcision from the baby's viewpoint ) , "Perky Little Porn Star ( from Skokie, Illinois ) ," and the very hummable "Nothin' But the Radio On." Audience members of a certain age ( I'm one ) will appreciate "Robert Mitchum," a tribute to the sexy, smokey-eyed star.
From the rainbow flag-curtained set ( by Ryan McKinty-Trupp, lit by Eric Appleton ) , to the handsome ( but not pretty ) and well-sung cast with great thighs, Bailiwick rises to the occasion with Naked Boys Singing.