Playwright: Matt Lang, Nick Lang, Brian Holden, Joseph Walker, Darren Criss. At: StarKid Productions at the Hoover-Leppen Theatre, 3656 N. Halsted. Tickets: SOLD OUT! Runs through: Feb. 23
At its best moments, Starship is reminiscent of the legendary Warp!, the world's first science-fiction epic in serial form, a seminal hit (along with Grease) of Chicago's young, early 1970s off-Loop theater movement. At those moments Starship displays inspired silliness, clever staging on a shoestring and bold parody of the heroic space-opera formula.
Alas, those moments are few and far apart in a repetitive extravaganza that runs a stupefying three-and-a-half hours (with intermission). C'mon, StarKid Productions, get real and cut, cut and cut some more! There's potential here for a wonderful 100-minute or two-hour show if they do the hard work.
Now, the reviews won't matter one iota of space dust because StarKid Productions is an Internet phenomenon that's already drawn more than 50 million YouTube hits for previous theatrical endeavors. Starship is completely sold-out for its brief two-week run, and its audience is solidly teen-aged, wildly enthusiastic and totally lacking in critical faculties. They squeal, cheer, sigh and applaud every moment of this long slog, which will be recorded in HD video and uploaded to YouTube one 10-minute segment at a time.
But one day StarKid Productions (now headquartered in Chicago after being created a scant two years ago by University of Michigan students) may want to fry bigger fish and attempt more mature work, and to do that successfully they'll need discipline Starship doesn't display. There's plenty of talent onstage and some sharp writing, but the effort is inconsistent, sometimes childish and loooooooong.
Starship borrows freely from Alien, Avatar, Star Trek and Avenue Q in a story about human Starship Rangers on a planet inhabited by giant, sentient insects. One insect, actually called Bug, has his brain transported into a human body and proceeds to fall in love, experience human emotions (as does a human android named Mega-Girl), and intervene in affairs to the final betterment of both humanity and bugdom. A half-dozen or eight songs are interspersed, but not nearly enough to make it a real musical, and the music itself is ordinary (albeit pleasant) soft rock.
All the bugs are puppets, and the puppet work is worthy and notable. However, various video and special effects are lame and too often described rather than seen. Several performers are gifted in the show's unsubtle, oversized style (especially Meredith Stephens's Mega-Girl and Dylan Saunders in two juicy roles), while others are weak as actors and singers.
Starship has humor, high spirits and an enviable niche audience but it's inconsistent, far too long, musically uninspired and lacking technical pizzazz. The StarKid kids needs to be ruthless with themselves if they want to take the Next Big Leap, and why bother coming to Chicago if they don't?
