Playwright: music by Jed Feuer, book & lyrics by Boyd Graham
At: Chicago Theatre Downstairs, 175 N. State St.
Phone: 312-902-1500; $37.50
Runs through: Aug. 20
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
The new speakeasy-chic ( entrance on the alley ) Chicago Theatre Downstairs space will house the resurrected Shear Madness this fall—and presumably, for perpetuity. In the meantime, Jed Feuer and Boyd Graham's irreverent two-man show has been brought in for the theatrical equivalent of a sound check in the new quarters.
The 90-minute revue is framed in the premise of a backers' audition for a gargantuan musical extravaganza encompassing the entire history of the world. The conceit is that the two ostensible authors are performing the show's 'highlights' in a tchotchke-cluttered apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side—a window view identifiable worldwide—for a group of potential investors ( that's us, by the way ) .
As a vehicle for testing the field, The Big Bang evidences the newly-refurbished room to have adequate acoustics, some sight-line problems for the vertically challenged, requisite disability equipage, ill-placed lavatories, a sumptuous lobby with stand-up bar and a fine historical photo-exhibit of the Loop Theatre District in its heyday. As a commercial product in itself, however, the factor that will most determine the success of its seven-week run is the number of playgoers nostalgic for the kind of coarse ethnic-based Catskills humor ( Mel Brooks, Jackie Mason, et al. ) now largely supplanted by more minority-sensitive fare.
This is not to say that Feuer and Graham's ideas aren't provocative ( with Mrs. Gandhi and the Virgin Mary kvetching about their oddball offspring, and Native-American princesses Pocahontas and Minnehaha complaining about the singles scene ) , songs clever ( rhyming 'orient' and 'get bent' ) , or puns ticklish ( a Sinatra-styled Attila the Hun is 'Chairman of the Hoard' ) . Nor can it be said that Tony Braithwaite and Ben Dibble, assisted by phlegmatic piano man Dan Stetzel, aren't capable zanies, scattering patter in Yiddish-mama, Life-With-Luigi, José Jimenez, Butterfly McQueen, Charlie Chan and Inspector Clouseau accents—nobody escapes caricature in this equal-opportunity spoof—with lightning speed, boundless energy and copious charm.
But if the now-exurban Noble Fool failed to find downtown audiences prepared to turn back the clock to 1961, it remains to be seen whether a return to 1931 will prove more lucrative.