‘Work in progress’ musical needs attention

What: BlissKrieg (Spark Festival) Where: Belfry Theatre When: Final show tonight. Spark Festival continues to March 26. Full schedule at sparkfestival.ca

Since 2004, Victoria’s Atomic Vaudeville has staged outrageous cabarets, musicals and more. One of the company’s greatest hits is Ride the Cyclone. It had a critically acclaimed run in Chicago and, playing off-Broadway in 2016, was cited by the New York Times as one of the year’s top picks.

Atomic Vaudeville’s latest offering is BlissKrieg, a 90-minute musical co-directed by Britt Small and Jacob Richmond. The driving creative forced behind Ride the Cyclone, Richmond is also the show’s dramaturge. The show is mostly the creation of Alex Wlasenko, who wrote the bulk of the book and collaborated on a score with Hank Pine.

Before Thursday’s performance, Small explained to the audience that BlissKrieg is a “work in progress.”

Bugs are being worked out; it will be tweaked and prodded and sections will be rewritten.

A festival of new work such as the Belfry’s Spark Festival gives audiences the chance to have a sneak preview.

What we saw on Thursday is a musical that still needs a lot of work.

Certainly there were bright moments. Rielle Braid is a fine singer/actor who can grip us by the lapels with her big — and often thrilling — voice.

Another stand-out is R.J. Peters, imbuing the proceedings with a pleasingly seedy gravitas. Ditto for the charming Madeleine Humeny, a very promising actor who knows how to make a character (notably a 1930s-era Dust Bowl woman) her very own.

However, as it stands, BlissKrieg is a bit of a mish-mash, lacking in focus and, at times, coherency.

Two key characters are Braid, who plays Tilda, and Ming Hudson, portraying Tilda’s daughter Jingwei.

Tilda explains she’s one of the “Jimmy Jammers” — a cultish tribe that, for some reason, is obsessed with Jimmy Stewart.

Jingwei is a gothy teen with black lipstick who dreams of running a vampire sex club.

She’s an odd, brainy kid with fantasy crushes on such unlikely candidates as filmmakers George A. Romero and Werner Herzog as well as surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp.

The introduction of Tilde and Jingwei — who happen to be time travellers — is followed by a disjointed patchwork of scenes. The notion (if I have it right) is that this is Jingwei’s “show,” which she’s showing her mom. Or something like that.

One of the strongest routines is a spoof of The Music Man. Wearing a straw boater and red-striped jacket, Peters plays a Harold Hilllike con-man selling the town on the idea of Walmart. It will, he promises, provide greatest-hits CDs, fast food and discounted tombstones.

Theatrically it works, but in terms of satire, it’s pretty soggy stuff. Elsewhere, a couple who are into kinky sex sing about transgender bathrooms and a certain someone who had a Russian prostitute urinate on him.

A doorman tells of being fired because of his habit of freestyle rapping. He complains of being replaced by “a rock.” There’s also a robot who tells knock-knock jokes, followed by an appearance by Laika the Russian space dog.

Later on, BlissKreig gets more serious, weaving a thread of social responsibility into the skits. A young girl sings about a negative inner voice that saps her confidence.

The rapper has a rap battle with his real adversary: himself. A bullied boy is given advice by a visiting character, Gaylord, who wears a bathrobe and a paper crown. Later, the show jumps the shark with an absolutely mystifying bit in which chess pieces execute a cheerleading routine.

If it all sounds a bit collegiate, that’s because it is. That could be forgiven if the material was funnier, sharper and less obvious. BlissKreig’s attempts at satire seem more of a de rigueur pose than anything else.

Certainly the nihilist wit and absurdity found in such Atomic Vaudeville productions as Legoland and Ride the Cyclone is in short supply.

Some of the songs (backed by a recorded soundtrack and a live bass player) are good. Others are just OK.

Again, it’s important to mention that theatre — and especially musicals — can require a long gestation period. With hard work, and perhaps some luck, it’s possible BlissKrieg will be remoulded and polished into the wild and hilarious humour fest it aspires to be.