(L-R): Christian Borle and Brian D'Arcy James as dueling playwrights in Something Rotten.
You won't be happy, exactly, when you leave the St. James Theatre after sitting through a performance of Something Rotten (although "sitting through" is a bit of a harsh term -- it's quite fun in places). You probably will have expected more out of the material, given the production's ten Tony nominations -- including, surprisingly, Best Score. (Really? Ten for this and nothing for Honeymoon in Vegas?) You won't have learned anything, really; the book doesn't teach cliched lessons as much as it acknowledges its daffy, dizzyingly busy plot doesn't really have anything to say at all and then runs with it. But you'll be wonderfully proud of the actors on stage -- especially Brian D'Arcy James and Christian Borle, two of the greatest actors of musical comedy who have ever lived -- and equally talented director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw. They've clearly found something they, for whatever reason, love, and think is worthy of their time and talents, and they're having a hell of a time. More power to them; it's not hurting anyone.
Wildly inconsistent, pleasantly simple and guaranteed to leave you smiling if not laughing for most of its two and a half hour-running time, Something Rotten concerns the Bottom brothers, Nick (James) and Nigel (John Cariani, whose mincing nerd stereotype gets old fast), two unsuccessful playwrights. Nick's married to a supportive proto-feminist, Bea (the strong-voiced Heidi Blickenstaff, playing a nothing role) and needs a hit fast to support his growing family. But life ain't easy for all Elizabethan dramatists -- as the score puts it, in a dazzling display of wit, "If your name is Shakespeare, you're hotter than hot / But if you're any other playwright, then you're not." So Nick goes to a less-than-talented soothsayer, Nostradamus (the wonderfully funny Brad Oscar), who predicts both that the next big thing in theater will be musicals and that Shakespeare's greatest play will be called "Omelette." Shakespeare himself (Borle) naturally figures into the ensuing brouhaha of prognostication and plagiarism.
If only it really were as funny as it seems to think it is. There are far too many jokes left on the table, mostly thanks to the uneven lyric-writing of Karey and Wayne Kirkpatrick (Karey also wrote the book, with John O'Farrell). A number like "God, I Hate Shakespeare" is plainly representative of their problem. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to hate Shakespeare's plays, if you were so inclined -- even for his day they're cliche-ridden, exposition-heavy, and occasionally narratively incomprehensible -- but thanks to the structure the Kirkpatricks lock themselves in and their lack of creativity, the song is bland and unmemorable. Like most of their lyrics, it has no sting. Only in three places does their brilliance rear its head -- "It's Hard to Be the Bard," because it's objectively a great song, and "A Musical" and "Make an Omelette," because they're shot through with references to modern musicals, clearly the Kirkpatricks' real passion. It's only in those last two, and especially "Make an Omelette," that the high-energy cast achieves the chaotic, lunatic liftoff the Reduced Shakespeare Company did in "The Complete Works of Shakespeare: Abridged" -- the definitive and final Shakespeare parody. The book, meanwhile, is passable but apt to substitute puerility for intelligence. It also bypasses so many narrative inconsistencies that it collapses in on itself halfway through the second act. (Why is everyone so okay with Shakespeare's blatant plagiarism? Why is plagiarism via soothsayer punishable by death? Why is banishment to the wastes of sixteenth-century America such a great option? Why is Nostradamus's skill as a soothsayer one minute so perfect as to predict the title of "Les Miserables" and the next minute so useless it can't even tell "Omelette" from "Hamlet?" For that matter, if you had a soothsayer the whole time, why didn't he just predict what was going to happen so you could take steps to avoid it? I digress.)
The real joy, as I've said, comes in watching the actors. Borle and James are brilliantly talented, and they make even the stupider numbers seem like joyous fun (especially Borle, who won a Tony for this role, as a glam rock-god Shakespeare who gets the best songs in the show). The incredibly game and energetic ensemble is bent into beautiful, unique, entertaining choreographic structure by Mr. Nicholaw (who is occasionally a little over-reliant on tap numbers, but doesn't quite hit the point of diminishing returns on kick lines). The potent atmosphere of joy is tangible the moment the curtain rises. If all of these people are enjoying themselves so much, why can't we? But it can be a little tough to look past all of the missed opportunities in this cluttered candy store of a show. "There's nothing as amazing as a musical," sings Nostradamus, repeatedly. Depends which one.
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