1812 Productions presents Jennifer Childs and Mary Carpenter’s This Should Never Be a Musical

Co-created and co-directed by Jennifer Childs and Mary Carpenter, this intermittently amusing but ultimately tiresome vaudeville lampoons both the outlandishness of modern musical theater and the vapid nature of competition shows like America’s Got Talent. But it does point out that even the craziest idea can set the entertainment world ablaze. Who would have bet on a show about a murderous barber who conspires with his lover to bake the remains of his victims into savory pies?

A game cast

Alas, the results on display at the Arden Theatre’s Arcadia Stage don’t come close to replicating Sweeney Todd—or even Cats, another unexpected reference point. On the night I went, the freshly cooked diversion was something called Sharks Need Love Too, about a harpooning fisherman who gains empathy for the underwater dwellers after briefly turning into a hammerhead. As far as singing anthropomorphics go, I’ll take the Jellicle Ball.

One cannot fault the game cast, who seem to be having the time of their lives turning improv games into song-and-dance spiels. Kelsey Hébert and Eliana Fabiyi flaunt megawatt voices with personalities to match, and veteran ComedySportz team member David Dritsas puts his familiarity with the genre to good use. Shane Roche brings a winning innocence to the least worldly of the contestants, and Kristin Finger, decked out in brocaded costumes by Asaki Kuruma, makes for an appropriately sleazy game show host.

But there’s a reason evening-length improvisation on a single theme doesn’t have much precedent: even the cleverest premise wears out its welcome long before the energy of the performers starts to flag. And at a certain point, it starts to seem like the people on stage are having more fun than those of us sitting in the audience.

A history of revues

This Should Never Be a Musical harkens back to the kinds of shows that put 1812 on the map: revues that honored the legacies of Ruth Draper, Laurel and Hardy, and George Burns; endlessly witty one-person shows; and, of course, the perennial This Is The Week That Is. It also reminded me of Forbidden Broadway and The Musical of Musicals: The Musical, which lovingly parody the genre with charm and bravado.

While these works embraced the spirit of improv—and sometimes the practice—they were ultimately scripted and polished. Here, the results feel scrappy and threadbare, and not always in an endearing way.

So call me when Sharks Need Love Too gets a full treatment, and I’ll decide whether the eleven-o’clock number rivals “Memory”. Until then, I’m sticking with Sweeney Todd.

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