“Something Rotten!” makes merry at the Buell
You might think creative types wouldn’t want to tempt the fates with a title like “Something Rotten!” Unless, that is, they have something delightful, something absurd, something deliciously clever to share. Heck, the makers of the musical-comedy even added an exclamation point. That’s how brazen their confidence and wry wit is.
★★★¼
In 2015, the show received nine Tony nominations. Its ace national tour is currently smelling up the Buell Theatre -- thanks you very much -- through Oct. 29.
Set in 1595, “Something Rotten!” takes on the Renaissance and one particularly popular Elizabethan playwright. At the show’s center stand the Brothers Bottom, Nick (Rob McClure) and Nigel (Josh Grisetti). (Brothers Karey and Wayne Kirkpatrick wrote the music and lyrics; John O’Farrell and Karey Kirkpatrick penned the book.)
Poor guys. Not only is the Renaissance -- with its newfangled gadgets, its out-of-the-Dark-Ages-into-the-light ideas, its pointy beards and wide petticoats -- passing the aspiring play-making duo by. The hard-scrimping brothers also can’t compete with London’s go-to actor-turned-writer, William Shakespeare.
Nick is in debt to a theater-smitten guy named Shylock (Jeff Brooks) and the brothers’ producer, Lord Clapham (check out Joel Newsome’s gams!), isn’t satisfied with their shows.
Adam Pascal arrives to townsfolk cheers as Shakespeare. This Bard is a rock star, a celebrity and, yes, a bit of a sexy blowhard. He struts, seldom fretting -- contrary to his very nimble woe-is-me number, “Hard To Be the Bard,” in Act II. He is also quite possibly a literary thief. If that be the case, then Nick shall one-up him.
That Nick is older doesn’t make him wiser. The show’s lunatic conceit finds the eldest Bottom consulting a soothsayer. If his and Nigel’s plays can’t compete with the Bard, then he’ll plagiarize Shakespeare’s greatest future work.
While Blake Hammond is nearly perfect as the soothsayer, the seer’s visions
are a bit more fuzzy. One thing he’s right about: Some strange thing called a “musical” will someday be hot, hot, hot. And “A Musical” in which the cock-eyed prognosticator shares this vision with an incredulous Nick is a sterling example of send-up meets homage.
The voices here are full-bodied, pleasing, varied. Maggie Lakis as Nick’s wife, Bea, mixes spunk and pragmatism to charming effect in the role-questioning number “Right Hand Man.” The poetically spirited Nigel finds his soul mate in Portia. There’s a rub, natch: She’s the daughter of London’s reigning Puri- tan, Brother Jeremiah (a very funny Scott Cote). Autumn Hurlbert imbues Portia with a sweet/strong voice that moves from compliance to blossoming defiance.
Throughout the show, the contemporary has its way with the earlier epoch. Directed as well as choreographed by Casey Nicholaw (co-director and choreographer of “The Book of Mormon”), the show mixes and matches dance styles as promiscuously as the writers’ play with language and sample other musicals. There is vamping, chorus-line high kicks and a tap throw down.
The many, many jokes and riffs on Will S, theater and poetry go down easy, and the show’s scribes have an abiding fondness -- sometimes deft, often silly -- for the wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
“Something Rotten!” once again underscores the durability and creative elasticity of Shakespeare, something the Denver Center -- whose Broadway arm hosts this madness -- knows a thing or two about. Workshopped and premiered in Denver last year, Lauren Gunderson’s successful “Book of Will” took it easy on the Bard with a tender tale of the making of the first folio.
Currently across the plaza of the Denver Performing Arts Complex, a gathering of warlocks in leather is retelling Shakespeare’s Scottish play. The raving, at times ravishing, all-male “Macbeth” finds a few of its patrons departing early each show. Just as director Robert O’Hara might like it.
It’s hard to envision an audience member slinking out of this romp. Still, if you’re the sort who likes to muse on amusement (I feel you), then observations about the anxiety of influence, the tensions between gravitas and giggles, the minuet between art and entertainment are here for the cogitating.
If you’re looking for fun — oh, that ol’ thing — there’s plenty, from top to bottom. As the Minstrel (Nick Rashad Burroughs) sings in a big, bold opening invitation, “Welcome to the Renaissance.”