Altar Boyz. Photo by Michael Brosilow. Playwright: Music by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker, book by Kevin Del Aguila. At: Drury Lane, Water Tower Place,
175 E. Chestnut. Phone: 312-642-2000; $45-$55. Runs through: Jan. 6
With harmonies that are tighter than, oh, a virgin's butt and dance moves as irresistible as a big ol' slab of sirloin on the last Friday of Lent, the Altar Boyz could probably turn the Apostles' Creed into a TRL hit. Both a send-up of the pop-tastic wonders of boy bands and a satire on the genre wherein prettiness is more important than vocal chops, the Altar Boyz roars from start to finish in a blaze of delightfully superficial glory.
Thanks to Stafford Arima's play-it-broad-as-Mount-Sinai direction and Christopher Gatelli's spectacular choreography, Altar Boyz is so stupid it's smart, and it pops with the kind of athleticism that wouldn't be out of place at an elite-level gymnastics meet.
The plot is communion wafer-thin: The Boyz are giving the final concert of a world tour during which they've been saving souls with the help of corporate sponsor Sony and a fancy ( Sony ) contraption known as the Soul Sensor DX12. At the start of the show, the Soul Sensor indicates ( with plenty of drama-inducing stage fog and neon and shiz ) that a whopping 500 souls in the house are damned. Through song, dance and bad jokes about Mel Gibson, the Boyz bring that number down to zero.
Musical director Alan Bukowiecki has the boys miked to sonic-boom levels, which means that Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker's hookalicious score slams into the eardrums and sets them pounding like you're in the front row at an Alice Cooper concert—which is a good thing. And while the Boyz mesh vocally into a single entity during ensemble numbers, each member has a distinct personality.
Matthew ( Nick Lachey doppelganger Devin DeSantis ) is the blindingly earnest lead singer, an All-American Eagle-Scout-on-white-bread heart-throb. Mark ( Brian Crum, prettier than Miss America—and I mean that in a good way ) is the fantabulously flaming homo whose soul-baring, coming out anthem, Epiphany, makes one proud to be a Catholic. Luke ( Tyler McGee, channeling his inner K-Fed ) goes for Vanilla Ice-style street cred, rapping about bling for the King and busting one jaw-dropping dance move after another. Abraham ( Nick Verina ) is the Jew in the group and the lyricist behind such pro-abstinence ballads You Make Me Wanna Wait. And Juan ( Adam Zelasko ) is the hot-tamale Mexican senor whose dance moves are as spicy as his Frito Bandito accent.
If you're offended by any of this, you might want to leave before the Boyz bring out the rosary beads, crucifixes ( crucifixii? ) and Stars of David for the big dance off/exorcism.
'We are the Altar Boyz/and we're gonna alter your minds,' they warble in one wondrously lame lyric. If they don't exactly succeed on that front, they do offer up 85 minutes of the most fun one can have this side of the seven deadly sins.