WEIRD MUSICALS
If you think a Broadway show about singing cats or a rapping Alexander Hamilton is unusual, then have we got some musicals for you.
Show: Octomom! The Musical (2009)
Details: Nadya Suleman briefly became a tabloid celebrity and subject of fascination in January 2009, when she gave birth to only the second set of octuplets (eight babies) in American history. The media nicknamed her “Octo-mom,” and less than six months later, a California artist named Chris Voltaire had written a musical about her. When it played in Los Angeles, Voltaire set aside an entire row of seats—14 of them—just in case the Suleman family showed up. (They didn’t.)
Highlights: The show isn’t about Suleman’s life, says Voltaire, it’s about Americans’ insatiable appetite for scandals. That could explain why one of the characters in the cast is financial con man Bernie Madoff.
Show: Urinetown (2001)
Details: There’s a musical for everyone, even bathroom lovers (like Uncle John). But Urinetown isn’t a juvenile comedy—it’s actually a rebuke of capitalism. It takes place in a small town where free, public bathrooms are outlawed, forcing the citizens to use pay toilets installed by a megacorporation called Urine Good Company. After it moved from Off-Broadway to Broadway in 2002, it won Tony Awards (really) for Best Book of a Musical (the script) and Best Score, along with a nomination for Best Musical.
Highlights: Despite the show’s serious theme, the songs have titles like “It’s a Privilege to Pee” and “I See a River.”
Show: Shinbone Alley (1957)
Details: In the 1910s and 1920s, one of the most popular features in New York’s Evening Sun newspaper were columnist Don Marquis’s stories about a romantic cockroach named Archy and an alley cat named Mehitabel, illustrated by Krazy Kat cartoonist George Herriman. (The stories were supposedly written by Archy by jumping on the keys of an old typewriter, but because he couldn’t hit two keys at once, the characters’ names appeared as “archy and mehitabel.”) In 1954 singer and Broadway star Carol Channing recorded two “archy and mehitabel” concept albums, which became the inspiration for the 1957 Broadway musical Shinbone Alley, featuring dialogue by future filmmaker (and The Producers mastermind) Mel Brooks.
Highlights: None. It closed after 49 performances.
Bananas naturally curve because they grow toward the sun.
Details: This musical is set in the company town of Capsulanti—home to Bigelow, Inc., the world’s biggest toy company—where its chief inventor, Sylvester, is about to introduce the company’s biggest product yet: Flahooley, a doll that laughs and shakes. But those plans are thwarted when a delegation from Saudi Arabia begs for the company’s help. Their lucrative oil production only occurs thanks to the help of a magical genie named Abou Ben Atom, who lives in a magic lamp. But the lamp is broken and the Arabians need Sylvester to fix it. (Guess how the genie is finally released: by a rub of the lamp with Flahooley’s tiny plastic hand.) It closed on Broadway after 40 performances.
Highlights: The show’s book and lyrics were written by Wizard of Oz lyricist E. Y. Harburg, who was run out of Hollywood in 1950 when he was blacklisted. He laced Flahooley with his rage and resentment over Communist-seeking Senator Joseph McCarthy and the political cronies Harburg thought were McCarthy’s puppets. The show’s opening song: “You Too Can Be a Puppet.”
Show: Hands on a Hardbody (2012)
Details: It’s a fairly common promotional event: A radio station will give away a car or truck to whichever contestant can hang around and keep one hand on the vehicle the longest. Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife) saw a 1997 documentary film called Hands on a Hardbody about the phenomenon of people standing around a truck, desperate to win it, and thought it would make an interesting Broadway musical. He teamed up with singer-songwriter Amanda Green (daughter of Tony and Academy Award–winning lyricist-playwright Adolph Green) and Trey Anastasio (of the rock band Phish) to write it. The plot: Two dozen characters sing songs about how they really need to win that truck, while also dancing and not letting go of that truck.
Highlights: It played on Broadway for less than a month but still managed to earn three Tony Award nominations, including Best Score.
GLUTEUS EXPELLIARMUS!
One of the most obscure details in J.K. Rowling’s huge Harry Potter universe is a small collective of wizards and witches who hate to wear pants. They claim that magic’s true source is a person’s rear end, and that pants block the natural flow of that force. So they don’t wear pants, and they call their belief “Fresh Air Refreshes Totally”…or F.A.R.T.
When Frisbee inventor Walter Frederick Morrison died, he was cremated and made into a Frisbee.