Something Rotten is on Broadway and You should go see it

Recently there has been a hue and cry about the lack of original musicals on Broadway. They are now based on movies or books that are well known in some circles. There are very few surprises because the viewer has seen or read it before. Where are the original works? Where is the Broadway that surprises and entertains without the audience knowing the whole story before they enter?

I can tell you that it is currently in the St. James Theater and it is brilliant to behold.

Honestly the first time I heard about this play was when it showed up in my facebook feed. I liked it and saw all kinds of things they were posting. A lot of these things made me smile or laugh. But I still didn’t really have any idea what the play was about really except it was billed as a new musical of the first musical.

Peter and I decided on a whim to go see it during previews and got really nice seats for a really good price. We sat down and looked at the Playbill.

“What’s this play about?” Peter asked.

“I honestly have very little idea but they don't like Shakespeare,” I replied.

“How do you know that?”

I pointed to the song title ‘I hate Shakespeare’.

The curtain went up, the show began, and I haven’t laughed that hard in an age.

Imagine Shakespeare as a rock god, imagine how the other playwrights felt about Mr. Rock god. Imagine a struggled theater company trying to come up with the next big thing before Shakespeare does. Add Nostradamus (kind of) to the mix and you get Something Rotten. Oh and there are Puritans threating the theater for good measure and a rather nice subplot.

It is a slick production that both makes fun of the musical form and expands upon it. It starts one way and then turns another and then another turn.

The songs are great. There is a show stopper in act one that had everyone on their feet after it was done.

Directing is solid.

And the actors do know all their lines as promised in the promotional material. Side note that three of the four male leads were all in the TV series Smash.

I really don’t want to give more of the plot away than what little bits I have because I want the audience to go in as clueless as I was and walk out with a smile as big as mine was mulling over what I just saw.

So put it on your list of Broadway shows to see for it is the first MUST SEE in my book in quite a long time.

I am grateful that we just happened into Something Rotten.