Something Rotten!

It's a new season at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts here in Vegas, and the first show was Something Rotten!, a very funny musical that is catnip for anyone who likes Shakespeare and musical theater, or both.

Set in Shakespeare's day, two brothers, Nick and Nigel Bottom (already we've got a Shakespeare joke) are playwrights who live in Shakespeare's shadow. They are going to do a play on Richard II, but find out that Shakespeare is already doing it. Nick is the businessman of the two, and he hears about a prognosticator in the seedy part of town. That turns out to be Nostradamus, or at least his nephew, Tom. Nick asks him to look into the future to find out what the hot thing in theater will be. "The musical!" he says.

Tom turns out to have a fuzzy view of the future, as he interprets bits and snatches of musicals. The number that he sings, "A Musical," is full of quotes from different musicals, and it was literally a showstopper. The cast had to stop for a minute to bask in the applause.

Meanwhile, Shakespeare is portrayed like a rock star, a preening peacock who "put the I in iambic pentameter." He gets wind of the brothers' new form, and goes undercover to investigate. Nick, heeding Tom's advice, has stolen Shakespeare's idea (even if he hasn't had it yet), but Tom tells him the title is "Omelette."

So there's a musical about eggs, which is funny, especially when we get a cast dressed like eggs. It's all silly fun.

There's a subplot with Nigel, who is the poet of the brothers, falling in love with the daughter of the local puritan leader (everything he says is a gay double entendre), and an even more minor one about Nick's wife disguising herself as a man to get a job. That part of the show is vastly underdeveloped.

As with many new musicals (this one is unusual these days for not being based on a movie, or someone's songs) the music is not remarkable. The music and lyrics are by brothers Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick. The book is where the show excels, with lots of great gags that are plays on musicals or Shakespeare, such as when the Omelette show has the line, "Frailty, thy name is egg." The book is by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O'Farrell.

It's a very good cast, the highlights being Rob McClure as Nick (somehow he reminded me of Paul Giamatti), and Blake Hammond as Tom.

Something Rotten! is a theater nerd's dream come true.