SHYSTER ON STAGE
Spoof on Shkreli hits the right note
PharmaBro Martin scammer Shkreli was never this popular in real life.
Shkreli, who became one of the most hated men in the US when it was learned he bought pharmaceutical companies just to raise the price of its drugs, was a hit when a play about his exploits opened at an Off-Broadway festival Tuesday night.
The play, “Martin Shkreli’s Game: How Bill Murray Joined the Wu-Tang Clan,” a comedy caper, centers on Shkreli’s $2 million purchase last year of “Once Upon a Time In Shaolin,” the album by legendary Staten Island rap group Wu-Tang Clan — of which only one copy was made.
Shkreli allegedly bought it with the proceeds from a financial scam he ran with his now-defunct hedge fund, prosecutors claim.
Shkreli has joked about destroying the album.
In the play, Bill Murray teams up with three members of the Wu-Tang (including the ghost of Ol’ Dirty Bastard) to steal back the album from the alleged Ponzi schemer.
The play, held at the 62-seat Workshop Theater in Midtown, quickly sold out its opening night — and there are only two nights left in its run for the Midtown Theater Festival.
“I am really overwhelmed by how much of an interest people have taken,” Lauren Gundrum, one of the show’s creators, told The Post.
The 70-minute play is an inventive, self-aware, and often hilarious take on Shkreli, who spent most of the performance riding on the ultimate douche-tool: a hoverboard.
“Hello morons, Martin Shkreli here,” are the first words, and one of the few lines printable for a family newspaper.
The cast seemed to have fun with it. Jon Bander, who does a pretty good Bill Murray, and Steven Charles, who plays the ghost of Wu member Ol’ Dirty Bastard, ended up stealing the show with their duet.
The Post first wrote about the play last month after its creators, Gundrum and Joel Escher, created a GoFundMe page to raise $6,000 for paying its cast and crew.
They exceeded their goal, raising $6,520.
Shkreli, 33, rocketed to infamy after he jacked up the price of Daraprim, a life-saving drug for patients with HIV and certain cancers, by 5,000 percent — and then caught flak from patients, Capitol Hill lawmakers and presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The ex-CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals is scheduled to go to trial in Brooklyn federal court next June on allegations of running an $11 million Ponzi scheme where he paid off the debts of two failing hedge funds by looting a second pharma company. He’s denied the charges. Shkreli didn’t seem interested in taking in the show.
“We tweeted back and forth with him, offered him a comp to see the show, and he’s been kind of silent about it,” Gundrum said.