Through December 8
SOMETHING ROTTEN! Daemen University/MusicalFare Theatre
By Augustine Warner
Everybody knows Shakespeare, the best-known English playwright, source of endless cliché and symbol of an age.
However, in the years of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I, Shakespeare was far from the only playwright, London was filled with them.
Over his career, Shakespeare worked with many writers
We know many of those writers by name, although often not from any surviving plays.
Do you remember Nick Bottom the weaver?
Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” has Bottom as an essential character.
And, Nick Bottom is an essential character for Karey Kirkpatrick, John O’Farrell and Wayne Kirkpatrick in “Something Rotten!,” a wonderful show with a string of wonderful performances, from MusicalFare.
They have turned Bottom into a competing playwright with a visceral hatred of Shakespeare.
Director Chris Kelly and choreographer Kristy E. Cavanagh have turned the script into the kind of production people will discuss for years.
The script and the show pivot on Anthony Alcocer’s Shakespeare and John Kaczorowski’s Bottom.
Both are arrogant and dance beautifully.
Bottom can’t write a successful play which hasn’t already been done by Shakespeare, here “Richard II,” so he can support his wife Bea (Brittany Bassett-Baran) and impending child.
Nick is working with his brother Nigel (Ricky Needham), who adores Shakespeare.
The script matches the arrogant Shakespeare, filled with his skill, and the desperate Bottom, trying to prove he can do as well.
He reaches into the occult, to (Thomas) Nostradamus (Louis Colaiacovo) to be told what Shakespeare is planning for his next show.
Reaching (badly) into the ether, Nostradamus finds musicals and that the play will be about an “omelet” using Danish cheese.
Yeah, the messages in the occult can get a little fuzzy.
This an age when women weren’t even allowed on stage and many of today’s musical instruments didn’t exist.
This is all constantly filled with names and quotes from Shakespeare and references to his past hits, often from Nigel.
So, while trying to put his musical tale of the omelet together, Bottom is rehearsing his musical performers, while fighting off the man who has loaned him money he can’t pay, Shylock (Jordan Levin), and trying to restore Lord Clapham (Bobby Cooke) as a source of cash to keep his theater company going while rehearsing his musical about the giant egg.
It’s completely gonzo, carried along by the cast and the script.
Overall, the show can make you wonder what that theater world was like four centuries ago.
The songs tell us that story, “Welcome to the Renaissance,” “The Black Death,” the tap extravagance of “Bottom’s Going to be on Top” and “Shakespeare in Court.”
In the end, many pay a price which will be familiar from a film about Shakespeare.
Clearly the religiously oriented government of the time wouldn’t go along with any of this, so you must sit back and laugh as the show washes over you.
MusicalFare has been putting more resources into rehearsals and it shows in how well “Something Rotten!” functions on stage.
Director Kelly has also taken advantage of the area’s deep pool of talent for the major subsidiary roles, Needham’s Nigel, Cooke’s Lord Clapham, Rachael Buchanan’s Portia, Louis Colaiacovo’s Nostradamus and Levin’s Shylock/
For some, this will be an introduction to the words of Shakespeare and some of the playwright’s characters, after all, “The play’s the thing.”
That’s why “Something Rotten!” is a must-see show.
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