Word: plot
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...virtues of the score can make up for the sins of the book. For most musicals that does not pose a problem; audiences want big production numbers and catchy tunes to hum as they leave the theater, and are normally willing to suffer the inanities of a trite romantic plot to get what they want. The operative word is "entertainment," and a strong score can usually bring the musical message home...
...plot is par for the musical comedy course: Girl meets hunchback, hunchback falls in love, girl resists seduction by various poets and archdeacons, girl and hunchback meet in the bell-tower to live happily ever after. In between there are enough subplots and romantic interludes to keep the audience pleasantly amused, waiting for the bad guys and good guys to have it out in the final scene. So far so good. But Borowitz's manic idea somehow falters on the way to the cathedral, as the characters find themselves spouting an assortment of intolerable puns, weak jokes about SAT scores...
...those criteria, Gars and Goyles is certainly good entertainment. The numbers are big and brassy, the songs are catchy, and the plot is nothing if not inane. But as good theater, it falls short: the book is too muddled, too much like a reading of the Worst of the National Lampoon, to sneak by unnoticed. The rest of the production is simply too good and the hokiness of the script only glares out at the audience...
...course, in the long run it might not matter. Certainly, few people remember much about the plot of Oklahoma or The King and I; maybe the songs are all that matter after all. In that case, Gars and Goyles is a good bet, at least for an evening's worth of harmless fun. It all depends on what you're looking for: Ya pays yer money, as the hucksters say, and ya takes yer choice...
...liners in Richard Benner's brilliant comedy about a female impersonator's rise to stardom and the whacked-out woman behind his success. Craig Russell's unabashedly gay hairdresser has graced us with a character we will not soon forget, completely stealing the show in the movie's plot and the movie itself. His series of famed singers and actresses belting out "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" will bring down any house, so carefully honed are his Channings and Ellas. Co-star Hollis McLaren is inevitably overshadowed by Russell's stagewise presence but the delicate treatment she gives...