Gutenberg the Musical!

Anyone seen this off-broadway show? I searched and didn't find anything. Anyways, the guys in it are amazing, tickets are cheap, I totally recommend it!

Saw it last night... HYSTERICAL. Loved every minute of it.

Can someone tell me the running time of GUTENBERG?

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Updated On: 5/2/07 at 06:45 PM

I recommend this show to anyone who can get there before it closes. I went in expecting to look down my nose at it, and was soon snorting water through it. I haven't laughed that hard in ages, I hurt for days after. Run, don't walk, to see this show but definitely stop at the Rite Aid on the corner for some Depends. You'll need them! No joke, one lady in my row actually got up and said to her friend, "I have to find the ladies room, I think I peed myself".

If this doesn't win the Drama Desk for Best Book, I will be SOOOOO upset. This is one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. And David Turner is a god!

GUTENBERG is very similar to THE BIG BANG by Jed Feurer and Boyd Graham which played off-Broadway in 2000.

Astonishingly similar, in fact.

THE BIG BANG was negatively reviewed by Bruce Weber of the Times:

"The conceit is that the audience has been invited to a backer's audition for a spectacular new musical that purports to tell the history of the world from creation to the present. Mr. Feuer and Mr. Graham are there to give their potential investors a taste of the impending extravaganza, and they sing songs and act out scenes involving, among other people and events, Adam and Eve, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun (Mr. Feuer doing Frank Sinatra), Columbus and the Irish potato famine. (Mr. Feuer contemplating his last potato: 'Should I have you boiled?/ Should I have you mashed?/ Or should I make you a knish?') Between numbers they race around frantically, stopping now and then for some supplicating show biz patter.

It all takes place in the opulent digs of a Dr. and Mrs. Lipbalm -- he's a proctologist, of course -- who are vacationing in Israel, and the two men employ the curtains, lampshades, slip covers, rolling tables and other household accouterments to suggest the characters they are playing. This is actually the cleverest element of the show.

.....the entire show seems purposely geared to the kind of Jewish middle-class audience that once kept Broadway afloat. This wouldn't be so bad if several portrayals in the show -- Nefertiti as a black soul diva; Queen Isabella as a Latina home girl, among others -- didn't affect inauthentic mimicry; neither of the two performers has the talent to lift these scenes from discomforting racial stereotyping. It's out of date stuff, to say the least; they should know better. The best number in the show, a Marlene Dietrich-like torch song sung by Mr. Feuer as Eva Braun, with the refrain, 'Loving him is where I went wrong,' works because it treats a deserving target with a kind of sympathy.

The show comes to an abrupt end when the Lipbalms phone in from the airport; they're home ahead of schedule. So, except for a catchall finale, the history of the world stops at Woodstock. It makes you wonder where these guys have been for the last 30 years. "

I saw THE BIG BANG and disagree with Mr. Weber's assesment - I thought it was hysterically funny (the Eva Braun song was a little masterpiece of comic writing) and sharp. IMHO, it was better than anything in GUTENBERG.
THE BIG BANG

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Updated On: 5/3/07 at 02:31 PM

I went mainly on hearing that it was similar to [tos], because [tos] is my favorite musical of all time. And while I can see the similarities, I would say that [tos] had me laughing much more often throughout than GUTENBERG did. But, I still had a blast at GUTENBERG! The performers were fantastic, and I love it when writers think outside the box, and this show was a perfect example.

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