Photo from https://www.facebook.com/yorickensemble

Presented by Yorick Ensemble 
Music and lyrics by Jeff Blim 
Book by Matt & Nick Lang
Directed by Kari Boutcher
Music direction by Elias Condakes 
Choreographer & Violence/Intimacy Director: Sydney T. Grant

February 13–22
Boston Center For the Arts
Boston, MA

Review by Kitty Drexel

BOSTON — It’s been a weird month of politics muddling the waking life of everyday citizens. Yesterday was a weird day of weird happenings which continued with a weird mishap at the Boston Center for the Arts. My ticket confirmation email for Thursday’s performance told me Yorick Ensemble’s The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals performance started at 7:30 PM that night. My ticket from the box office said this, too, so I thought I had an extra 40 minutes at 6:53 PM yesterday to mosey over to the theatre. But, the BCA website said The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals started at 7 PM. Not knowing which source to trust, I moseyed faster to Tremont St. Scooting through the BCA’s front doors, I overheard a young man on a headset describe us entering and holding for the house. Was I late? It sounded like I was. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only confused attendee; several others entered the Plaza Theatre after me. The show eventually started around 7:15 PM without a clear answer. 

Let she who hasn’t made a massive production SNAFU effecting the paying audience of their horror/science fiction musical during the youth of their theatre career cast the first stone. (Weirdly, I’ve been there. Twice.) Shit happens. We learn and move on… Hopefully. 

Moving on. The show was an entertaining, necessary diversion from the horrors of U.S. politics that also points fingers at the horrors of U.S. politics. The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals is the mutated horror musical alien baby of the perverted minds who brought us A Very Potter Musical starring Glee’s Darren Criss. It’s not so loosely based on the 1956 horror cult film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In it, anemic everyman Paul (Tom Marsh) lives in Hatchetfield, USA and works at a business with business people Bill (Tim Etzel), Charlotte (Katie IaFolla) and Ted (Kelly McGowan) doing business. Paul hates musicals; it’s his strongest character trait. The highlight of Paul’s day is getting coffee from local “lattè hottiè Emma (Demi DiCarlo) who also doesn’t enjoy musicals despite her barista job requiring her to sing for tips with her overexcited coworker Zoey (Aiden O’Neal). 

Life strolls on in a beigey malaise of normalcy for Paul until a meteor strikes and the Hatchetfield townsfolk suspiciously start singing in harmony. Then they start dancing together in group choreography. Paul and his Office Space band of misfits journey together to get answers from Emma’s old professor, the genius scientist recluse Professor Hidgens (Bradley Boutcher), in his bunker across the city. We watch as Paul, Emma, Hidgens and the others discover if vigilante flash mobs have taken over the city or if something more sinister is at play.

Speaking of sinister, New England audiences are tough. Theatre patrons do everything in their power to withhold laughter and other signs of our merriment until they can’t hold back anymore and quietly chortle behind their hands. Thank goodness for Yorick’s quirky ensemble and its can-do attitude. Although The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals had a rough start with flaccid dancing and spotty mics in the first musical number, the plucky cast found its feet once in the show’s fast-paced, one-liner dialogue. Then, dance moves were sharper and solos were more spirited once the cast knew the audience was on its side. 

The ensemble found joy in Matt & Nick Lang’s script and Jeff Blim’s music. The jokes are silly but fresh in this cast’s mouths. They work best when they are working off of each other. Witticisms manipulating Mama Mia! puns and “Gods peed” from a folk blessing sound new to the room if not new to the audience. 

Sometimes that joy was one-directional, jokes hit the Yorick fans in the audience harder than they did casual observers. Yorick knows its patrons and some patrons know and love Yorick. These moments alienated casual attendees unfamiliar with musical theatre and Yorick’s niche audience. Comedy, jokes, laughter, etc. are devices intended to welcome patrons into the reality of the show. The story isn’t served when its jokes eject patrons out of the show like they did on Thursday evening. 

The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals has more personality than it does brains. But this is true of the best horror-movie musicals: Carrie, Evil Dead, Sweeney Todd, Teeth, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Reefer Madness, Rocky Horror, parts of 35MM: A Musical Exhibition, etc. Yorick Ensemble leans hard into this musical’s personality with spirit and heaps of individuality. If a patron didn’t know this musical was a Starkid brainchild, they’d think Yorick Ensemble improved it together after hitting CBD vapes and the offseason Manischewitz too hard. It’s severely silly, if you let it, it will give you the giggles (and maybe the munchies on the right night). The world is a progressively, maddeningly weird place to exist in. Politics is weird. Inflation is weird. Fortunately, The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals is also reliably weird. For the right person, it’s a perfect fit for a night off from reality. 

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