I Saw Something Rotten! (NCP Community Theatre Edition)

For this week's episode I saw Something Rotten at the Nebraska Communities Playhouse and dive into the history of this love letter to musical theatre, the story, and my thoughts on the production! Support your local community theatres, they work to make theatre more accessible and you never know who will be the next big thing!

Original Broadway Production Photo Credit: Sara Krulwich & Joan Marcus

NCP Photo Credit: Bronson Gierhan & Nebraska Communities Playhouse

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Time Codes:
00:00 - Opening Act
01:40 - The History of Something Rotten
04:32 - The Story
06:51 - My Experience & Thoughts
21:49 - Final Thoughts
23:39 - Curtain Call: What Comes Next?

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#musical #somethingrotten #communitytheatre #ncp #broadway #review #downoncemorepod

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up everyone? Welcome to another episode of Down Once More. I'm your host, Matt, and this week I saw a community theater production of Something Rotten. So on this week's episode, we are going to be looking at the history of the show, uh kind of how it came to be, talk about the show overall, and then I'll talk about my specific uh community theater production that I saw and what I thought of that. Before I get into it, just want to do a shout out. I I will do, I usually review the national tours, but I'm trying to support community theater more and go see those performances. And I think it's important to highlight those as well because you're still getting to see this show in all its glory, getting the opportunity to see something that you may not be able to either afford to see on a national tour because those tickets can be expensive. You may not be able to afford the opportunity to go to Broadway and see a show there. So community theater gives you the opportunity to experience the live theater aspects and performances from these people from your community pouring their heart and soul into it and still letting you experience this wonderful art form. So I think I'm going to try to do uh make a more concentrated effort to support the local community theater. I've got two very close to me that put on very high caliber performances, and so I'm trying to support those more. Um, but it I'm still gonna be doing uh like in-depth reviews of the show itself on these now. So that being said, let's get into something rotten. Uh, for those of you who don't know, this is a musical satire comedy musical. Um, it has a book by John O'Farrell and Carrie Kirkpatrick. The music and lyrics are by Carrie and Wayne Kirkpatrick, and Carrie and Wayne Kirkpatrick Kirkpatrick, wow, can't say that one, which is gonna make it difficult for this portion of the review. Um, are a pair of brothers. They have been working on this idea since the mid-90s, 1995, and kind of kept kicking the idea back and forth about writing their own musical. Now, who are Carrie and Wayne Kirkpatrick? These brothers, um, they're Carrie's most known for his work as a screenwriter. Uh, he worked on Rescuers Down Under, which was a classic Disney cartoon that I grew up on, as well as James and the Giant Peach, which I have not seen, but they're that was turned into a musical as well, not by these brothers, but by Pasic and Paul of Deerevan Hansen and The Greatest Showman. Um, and Wayne was most known for lyrical contributions. He helped musical artists like uh Garth Brooks, Little Big Town, and contributed to their lyrics of some of their big hit songs. Uh, now these brothers together they wrote 54 songs through all the different iterations and developments of this musical. Uh, and finally, after kind of kicking the idea back and forth for nearly 15 years, they joined with John O'Farrell, uh comedy writer, to help develop this musical more, write the book more, and they presented the songs to producer Kevin McCollum in 2010, and then joined Foy's Forces with Casey Nicola and to put on a workshop in October 2014. So after nearly 20 years of development, they finally got a workshop put out there of this musical. Uh, they were going to do a tryout after the workshop in Seattle, but uh the St. James Theater on Broadway opened up in April 2015, and they decided you know what? Let's go for it. Let's take it right to Broadway. We've gotten good buzz, good feedback based on that workshop. So we're going straight to Broadway. So it opened there in April 2015. After that, it was nominated for 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Book, but the only win was for Christian Borrells. He won for Featured Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of the Bard, William Shakespeare, in this musical. So that's a little bit on the history. It ran uh through 2017, had 708 performances on Broadway, it did a national tour since then, it's had some international productions and license for community theaters high school to be able to put on this show. And I will be talking spoilers about the show as a whole in here as I talk about the story and my kind of thoughts and feelings on it. But it's set in 1595 during the Renaissance. It follows the Bottom brothers, Nick and Nigel. They're struggling to come up with plays and compete in the theatrical space where Shakespeare, uh the Bard, has become kind of king and more prevalent. He's held to the highest regard. Uh Nick goes on a rant at one point saying, Why is he the bard? He's a bard, like I'm a bard. What is it that makes him the bard? Uh, everyone fawning over his lyrics. One of the first songs in the show is God I Hate Shakespeare, which I love. I love that number. Side note. Um, and so they're kind of competing in this space and trying to figure out how to make it, how to come up with the next greatest hit and the next um big thing. And so this causes Nick to go to a soothsayer to find out what's going to be the next big thing in theaters. And he is informed that it is a musical and just songs and dance put together and combined with the stage. And so starts coming up and working with his brother, his collaborator Nigel, to come up with the show, um, kind of struggling still for inspiration and has out uh mounting pressure from outside and ends up revisiting the soothsayer and wanting to steal what is going to be Shakespeare's greatest hit. Now the Soothsayer um mixes a couple things in interpretation uh and tells him it's gonna be omelet, uh, about uh the breakfast food with eggs and danishes, and then pulls in different other plot points uh from Hamlet, Shakespeare's uh well-known hit, and so they start developing this musical and about eggs and omelets and it being a metaphor, and it is a mess all throughout it, and it is just hijinks and Sue. I like saying hijinks and Sue in my reviews. So I went into this musical, having listened to the cast album, the Broadway cast album, a few times, but it's probably been over a year. I didn't uh dive into it like I usually do before seeing live productions, and when I was kind of looking through the album and the songs, nothing after the first act stuck in my head. I had the the main hits like uh God I hate Shakespeare and a musical were the ones that were in my head. Uh I I take it back. I did have the second act opener, It's Hard to Be the Bard, that Shakespeare sings uh on Rotation and in my playlist. But beyond those three, nothing had really stuck with me and nothing jumped out at me when I listened to the cast album, besides some of the clever wordplay and nod to other musicals throughout um a musical and the songs in general throughout this piece. So I've been wanting to see it live and waiting for the opportunity. And when I saw the Nebraska Community's Playhouse was putting it on, I jumped at the opportunity. I was hoping to see it the opening weekend. Uh things happened, so I just saw it on the final performance this past Sunday. And man, this cast, this company was amazing. I think a lot of people think when they think of community theater, think kind of low production value, maybe not getting the best talent out there. But when I go to these national tours and I'm reading through the playbill and these people's experiences, almost all of them come from almost exclusively community theater. That's where they get their experience before they get their big break getting cast on a national tour. And there's some that even after being on a national tour go back to community theater because it is such uh, and you've heard probably in my conversations with Amy on here, just how much of a close-knit community the community theater can be, just those intimate productions bringing the cast together, all the moving parts. It is very much a real theater production, and these people are dedicating their free time. Um, most of them, if not all of them, have full-time jobs or they're full-time students doing these things alongside it, and just taking their time to commit to putting on this production. And I saw some performances here that would rival some of the national tour ones I've seen. And I'm not just saying that tongue in cheek. I'm serious. The love that this cast put into their roles was amazing. And this show as a whole, I like I said, I liked the songs that I had listened to from the cast album, but the whole show didn't really jump out to me as much as I maybe would have wanted it to. For someone who loves comedy musicals like Book of Mormon, they can be hit or miss. And I think this is one that you can listen to the cast album, you can have a good time and appreciate it for what it is, but it is one that you miss a lot just listening to it versus experiencing it on stage. The performances, the choreography, and the dance numbers that work together beautifully. And shout out to uh Hannah Miller's choreography in the Nebraska Community Playhouse NCP. I'm just gonna say NCP for short. Um, this production was outstanding. But the story beyond this, there's entire characters that like Brother Jeremiah uh is a character in this. He is the magistrate, he is one of the Puritan leaders there who thinks uh the theater is a den of iniquities. And his character you don't really get much of in the cast album, and you can't really pick up what's going on with his character, and he is used to such fantastic comedic effect throughout this show. Uh, in the production I saw was portrayed by Christian Cardona, who played Henry when I saw Next to Normal at the NCP, and he was amazing. It was I he got to put his theater uh chops on display in this performance, much more than Henry. Like Henry is a great character, I love Next to Normal, but this the comedic chops were amazing. Um, one of the standout performances for me, for sure. And so getting to experience it live, I had a smile on my face nearly the entire time because this show is really a love letter to theater and musicals as a whole. Uh, is it kind of poking fun at the old Renaissance times and Shakespeare? A little bit, but like any good satire does, it comes from a place of love, like Robin Hood Men in Tights, uh, from Mel Brooks. And this felt very much in that same vein. The there's so many musical tropes that they pull into this and unpack. And in the song of musical, when the Soothsayer is discovering it and explaining it to Nick Bottom, it is just an insane number of other show references that you pick up. That if you are not a musical theater nerd or someone who loves musical theater, you're gonna miss a lot of references throughout this. Um, you could tell in the theater who was a musical theater fan and who's maybe more a casual fan, uh, because of when people are laughing at certain notes. So these are just the musicals that I caught that were referenced, and I have even limited knowledge despite having the podcast. So it references Chicago, Katz, The Music Man multiple times, Phantom of the Opera, Rent, Hare, Cabaret, Annie, The Lion King, Susical, Ragtime, Man of Lamancha, Leserab, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Jesus Christ Superstar, and a chorus line. And those are just the ones that I could pick up off the top of my head like that. Uh, most of those call-outs come during a musical, and then as um the soothsayer, Thomas Nostradamus, very fun uh little play on there, by the way, uh, as he's pulling out these different um moments as he's coming up with the plot for Omelette, helping Nick with it. He's just getting it mixed and pulling different things from different musicals. So he talks about a nun who gets sheltered by the nunnery with this group of children as they're hiding from the Nazis, and they poke some fun at it. Nick's like, Nazis, are they good or bad guys? And Nostradamus is like, I'm not sure, but it seems important to get that one right. Um, that one pulled some laughs, and then later on in the show, when they're doing some of the numbers for Omelette, they're like, ah, it's the Nazis, and then they go, huzzah. So they got that one wrong. But there's a lot of moments in there that, okay, if you're not familiar with Sound of Music, you're not gonna know what the hell they're talking about when they're pulling in the Nazi references and the Maria. Um there's many lines, and so like Black Death and its eggs are examples. They're the first show songs that Nick Bottom is putting on for the musical. Uh, Black Death is what it originally is before he finds out that Omelette is going to be Shakespeare's next hit. Um, they have very heavy Wells Fargo Wagon vibes, so it worked out really well that I saw Music Man not too long ago because I was able to pick up on a lot more references. There were reference River City, um, there's references to You Got Trouble, uh Sha Poopy, so many moments. It is great. But I thoroughly enjoyed this show, and I've long said on here that uh Book of Mormon is the most fun that I've had at a Broadway show just because of the insanity and how catchy the songs are. Something rotten is moving up that list and rivals it for me because I loved all the different musical theater references. That was something I appreciated so much. And it has some very powerful songs, too. It's not just all jokes. Uh, Anna Metzger played B bottom in the production I saw, and her rendition of Right Hand Man was incredible. It was getting uh whoops and cheers throughout it. Some of the notes she hit were amazing, and her performance as this character who is trying to go out and help her family and do what she needs to do in a time when women can't have jobs, women can't be in theaters, they can't do anything. Um, and just kind of how they poke fun of that will also reference a serious matter. Uh, like when she's pregnant, they're like, hey, we got you whiskey to help quiet the baby, and we got you a stick to bite on when you're giving birth. Uh, just things like that that are nods to that time period. I thought was very entertaining. And like I said, she absolutely crushed right-hand man in her entire role. Um, Joe Hansen played Thomas Nostradamus, and it was probably my favorite role in the show. It's one that you don't get to pick up another one, that you don't get to pick up um the personality and character traits as much through just the cast album as seeing this kind of crazed soothsayer who's eccentric, who's quirky, who is hilarious, who's breaking the fourth wall, who's being meta. He was perfect in this role. It was so good. Um, Sam Nyingar played Nick Bottom. Uh, he had played it at the Lincoln Community Playhouse a few years ago when they did that production, and you could tell that he was a vet pulling uh he sounded so wonderful during his performance, his emotion, um, his actions, and his tap number, because there is a tap dance battle between Nick Bottom and Shakespeare at one point in this show. So that is important to note. And during bottom's gonna be on top. Now making the name Bottom and uh the the jokes that obviously come with that. A little childish, sure. Was it funny? Did it get a laugh out of me every time? It was great. Uh, brother Jeremiah's role in it, too. Like I said, that was the one that just took me by surprise most, because that's one that you don't really get most much of in the album. But the lines that he has, the moments that he delivers were amazing. Um, Will Yendrick played Shakespeare. This was his main stage debut at uh NCP, but he's done other theater things before. His Shakespeare was perfect, how I envisioned him. Cocky, a little over the top, but also suave. Um, just kind of this egotistical uh writer. And I thought he was so perfect in this role. How he's portrayed like a rock star in his big introduction in willpower um was so well done. Uh, Xander Baker played Nigel, this little bit more sensitive brother who's full of hope and passion and dealing with falling in love for the first time and still having these goofy moments as well. Uh, so V Fia Bartlett played Portia, who is the Puritan daughter of Brother Jeremiah, who secretly loves poetry and Shakespeare, and just Nigel's words move her, and she inspires him to speak from his heart and to write from the heart. And that's in the Tune Thine Own Self Be True comes from this. Nigel comes up with most of the good parts of Hamlet, and then Shakespeare steals it. But this entire company, including the ensemble, everyone was amazing. The role Shakespeare, his kind of crew are the Bard Street Boys, they have Backstreet Boy vibes during willpower. They come out, they have the ear uh mic headsets, like the Backstreet Boys are in sync, those boy bands from the 90s. Just so much fun. Like I said, the choreography was amazing. Um, the show was directed by JD Madsen, who played Dan in the portrayal of Next to Normal, and I thought his direction and kind of the staging of this performance was amazing. Uh, the costuming and props team did a fantastic job. For like I said, for community theater production, I didn't feel like I was missing anything of the spectacle, the Broadway, the cast of the emotion, um, the songs, the script, everything just sucked me in, and I had such a good time with this show. I think the show as a whole, because you get to experience the journey of Nick and Nigel, uh, these writers and this team of brothers who have faced some hardships in their life, and they're kind of a little bit at odds with each other on what their purpose should be and what they should do next. And you get the character development and growth of what they're going through. Nigel standing up for himself and wanting to be true to himself, Nick just feeling like success is all that he needs, and then at the end, everything kind of culminating in their development and being outed for using a soothsayer and all this stuff that comes to a head, um, that ends with them going to America, being banished to America. Um, oh, I don't even know if I had it in my list of stuff. West side story. There's nods to West Side Story in this as well. Um, just so many great musicals, but uh the story that it told was while being very tongue-in-cheek and truly satirical almost the entire time, um, just so quippy. Um it is a heartfelt story as well, and you feel like you can find things to relate with with almost every character throughout this. And I loved how the characters were written, I love how they were portrayed. I love this story. I would highly encourage you if you have the opportunity to see something rotten in community theater, if there's a touring production or anything, just experience the The show. I don't think you'll enjoy it as much if you're not as into musical theater because you'll miss a lot of the references. Um, so you'll miss that aspect of it, but it is still just very funny and entertaining, and the songs are catchy, even if you don't get all the references. So support community theater, support more like original shows like this. Um, there's so many things that are revivals remakes, which I I love a good revival. I love that next to normal got the West End revival and is getting the love back again. But I love seeing original theater. The this crew did um the Kirkpatrick brothers um and O'Connell. They did Mrs. Doubtfire, the musical. So they uh O'Connell, I said O'Connell, but it's O'Farrell, uh, John O'Farrell. Uh they did an adaptation of Mrs. Doubtfire, the Robin Williams movie, turn that into a stage show. Um that's been touring. I think that's coming up by me soon. And so it's a very fun, entertaining show. You will have a good time at the theater, um, and you won't regret it. So I would encourage you, even if you tried to listen to the album, you're like, this isn't for me. It's a little cheesy. Um, I don't necessarily get it. I'm not connecting with it. I think if you give it a shot live, you will have a completely different view and opinion on it because it is witty, it is clever. I know those are basically the same thing, but the energy and the passion, it is so much fun. So that's kind of where I'm gonna close it out on this week. I don't really have any other notes. I really enjoyed this musical. Great time, support community theater, support the arts just in general. Um, we'll see you next week. Sage is gonna join me. We are going to be talking Mean Girls, the 2024 movie, which is an adaptation of the musical, which is an adaptation of the movie, which was an adaptation of Queen Bees and Quiller, whatever, which was an adaptation of the novel. So lots of adaptation layers here. Um, it's like Inception. And so Sage and I will be reviewing that on next week's episode. If you want to watch the movie, you can check it out on Netflix or Paramount Plus. Um, you can also rent it anywhere you rent things. So tune in next week for that. Comment your thoughts. Have you seen something rotten? What's your favorite number from it? Uh, what's your favorite community theater production in general that you have seen? Uh, let me down know down below in the comments. Um, subscribe, follow, turn on notifications, head over to Instagram at Down Once More Pod. Give us a follow and a like over there. DM me your ideas for what we should do next on the podcast, watch Me and Girls, the movie, the musical, and tune in next week for that review. And until then, have a great week and don't forget to go down once more. Later.