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| Show | Did He Like It?* |
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An award-winning musical comedy spoof of a fictional Christian pop group (with one nice Jewish boy). This new musical comedy about a Christian boy band includes lyrics such as "Girl, You Make Me Want to Wait" and "Jesus Called Me on My Cell Phone." Click here for tickets. |
Revisiting Those Hunks of Faith Tempted in Manhattan
*By JASON ZINOMAN
Published: December 23, 2005
There are two types of guilty pleasures in New York theater. The first, the disastrous idea so pitifully executed that it's worth an evening just for the schadenfreude, comes along every few months. The second, less common, also involves a laughable idea, but one that is performed and designed so expertly that it almost convinces you otherwise.
"Altar Boyz," a satire about a Christian boy band that makes the Backstreet Boys look like gangsta rappers, is a premier example of the latter. This 90-minute parody seemed like a surefire bust when it opened in March. The boy-band trend had already petered out, and the conceit that a pop group was going to cleanse the souls of its audience - measuring every sinful person with a device called the soul sensor - sounded, well, less than promising. But thanks to five dynamite performances and songs convincing enough to be played on MTV, the show became an unlikely hit.
Nine months later, "Altar Boyz" has an almost entirely new cast of well-scrubbed and nimble-voiced singers, and while the focus of the show has slightly changed, its precision and crowd-pleasing, infectious energy have not. Finally, a dopey Off Broadway musical that actually works.
The songs - written by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker - offer a condensed history of bubble-gum pop music styles over the last 20 years: New Kids on the Block, Will Smith, the Latin invasion. And while lyrics like "Jesus called me on my cellphone" and "Girl, you make me wanna wait" are drenched in irony, one never gets the sense that the actors are winking at the audience. Still, some jokes - like ones about Mel Gibson, or a band member's interest in space travel (a poke at Lance Bass from N 'Sync ) are past their expiration date. Considering the constantly shifting world of pop music, some updating might be in order.
In the original production, the charismatic Tyler Maynard received most of the critics' attention as the flamingly gay (even if he doesn't admit it) singer Mark. His replacement, Danny Calvert, does a laudable job of filling in, if not really making the part his own. Mr. Maynard will return to the cast on Jan. 9, and he will have to compete for attention with a new scene-stealer: Dennis Moench, the nerdy natural comedian playing Abraham, a Jewish singer who proves the extent to which even a Christian boy band wants to make sure every audience demographic is served.
Abraham, who speaks with the kind of nasal voice that usually doesn't drive teenage girls wild (Horshack from "Welcome Back Kotter" will come to mind), is in sharp contrast to the hunky characters. Nick Sanchez brings a sexually ambiguous style to Juan, a Latin-lover character who is a perfect lampoon of Ricky Martin; and James Royce Edwards's Luke, all muscles and no brains, puts one in mind of Mark Wahlberg.
Scott Porter, a blond heartthrob with a golden smile, is the only actor from the original cast, and there are no traces of rust in his shout-outs to Sony records or his dance moves, which range from hip-hop to salsa. The choreographer Christopher Gattelli's sly work mocks MTV bands while capturing the moves with impressive specificity.
Unlike so many other hit shows, "Altar Boyz" is still going strong long after the original actors have left and the initial buzz about the show has died down. How much longer can this act stay fresh? It's unclear, but the producers undoubtedly hope that a character is referring to Dodgers Stages when he sings, "I know a place where God always tops the box office."
"Altar Boyz" continues an open run at New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street; (212) 239-6200.
Click here to buy tickets to Altar Boyz Off-Broadway.
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