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| Are you ready for some 'Football: The Musical'? (B-) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| By Chris Page, Get Out | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| January 9, 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
There was “Buzzard Ball,” a charming comedy about senior softball, and the whodunit dirt dog “Murder at Savings and Loan Ballpark.” He’s even got a golf musical parody, “The Woes of Kilimanjaro ... Country Club.” Stuart’s latest straddles the yard line between what seems like entirely disparate crowds — football fans and theater buffs. That’s right, it’s “Football: The Musical.” Running Thursday nights through January in the banquet room of Patsy Grimaldi’s Coal Brick Oven Pizzeria in downtown Scottsdale, it’s one part musical parody, one part mystery dinner theater. The result is more interesting than the XFL, at least, certainly a shot of testosterone against another musical parody set to play just up the street, “Menopause: The Musical” (read our preview of that show, at Theater 4301, in Thursday’s Arts & Life). Grimaldi’s is certainly the right ambiance for Stuart’s show: Red checkered tablecloths and a four-course, get-it-yer-darn-self pizza buffet — not to mention that audiences are asked to wear their favorite NFL team’s colors — creates a rowdy mood that’s just right for a show as screwy and silly as “Football.” Plus the food, including lip-smacky calzones and a killer little cannoli, bests the simple chicken entrees at rival mystery dinner theaters in town. As typical for the campy genre of mystery dinner theater, there’s more meat on the pizza than in the plot, but here’s the gist anyway: The hardscrabble Arizona Wallabys — think a gridiron “Bad News Bears,” with a preening idiot for a quarterback (played by Matt Morgan) and a beefy idiot savant for a lineman (Garry Myers, oddly, hilariously channeling Marvin the Martian) — might be headed for the Super Duper Bowl when their owner kicks the bucket while boating on Tempe Town Lake. His bleach-blonde floozy of a wife (Rebecca Kalk) demands drastic changes, including sacking pretty much everyone on the team, until she’s mysteriously kidnapped. Whodunit? Who cares! It’s a flimsy pretense for a slew of audience-participation gags (a staged press conference, a throwing competition) and spoofy tunes set to pop songs — from “Hotel California” (“Football Arizona”) to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (“History of Football”), which becomes an impressive rhyming roster of football folks, fusing, for instance, Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Reggie Wayne with Detroit Lions defensive back Dick “Night Train” Lane. (Sadly, Stuart can’t find a rhyme for Larry Csonka. No love for Zonk, huh?) Stuart’s scripts sometimes feel as if they’re first or second drafts of eventual greatness, and “Football” feels that way too: There are about four too many songs, and for the many inspired bits (like the playwright himself, hanging out near a stereo, throwing penalty flags for botched jokes) there are a few clunkers that probably need a red-flag review. I occasionally wished the actors, including a ditzy cheerleader (funny and cute Denise Kelleher) with surgically attached pom-poms, had the freedom to improvise more. Still, Stuart has once again tackled a niche otherwise largely ignored, now appeased: Those rare few who thought what “A Chorus Line” really needed was a little Ickey Shuffle. THEATER REVIEW | "Football: The Musical" When: 6:30 p.m. Thursdays, through Jan. 31 Where: Patsy Grimaldi’s Coal Brick Oven Pizzeria, 4000 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale Cost: $40, includes meal, tax and gratuity Information: (480) 595-7346 or darknightproductions.tripod.com Grade: B- Contact Chris Page by email, or phone (480) 898-5656 |
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