50 Shades! The Musical OFF-BROADWAY REVIEWS

• NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF 50 Shades! The Musical

  

  If a Book Annoys You, Ridicule It in Song. ‘50 Shades! The Musical’ Parodies That Erotic Best Seller

  Andy Webster

  March 14, 2014: When it comes to potential for satire, E. L. James’s she-porn best seller 50 Shades of Grey seems as easy a target as you could shake a sex toy at. That said, 50 Shades! The Musical — The Original Parody, an exuberant takeoff now at the Elektra Theater, handily delivers the goods. Carol (Ashley Ward), Pam (Chloe Williamson) and Bev (Kaitlyn Frotton) are vetoing ideas for their book club — a Martha Stewart collection of soup recipes and The Diary of Anne Frank (“I loved the beginning,” Pam says, “but I hated the end”) — before Pam suggests 50 Shades of Grey.

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• NY DAILY NEWS REVIEW OF 50 Shades! The Musical

  

  ‘50 Shades! The Musical’: Theater review

  Joe Dziemianowicz

  March 12, 2014: 50 Shades! The Musical comes in only two basic tones — filthy and funny. In other words, win-win. It’s not high art, or even middlebrow, and it’s not trying to be. Given that E.L. James’ prose already reads like a self-parody, dirty-minded humor perfectly fits this send-up of 50 Shades of Grey. The plot traces the familiar tale of domination and liberation as seen through the eyes — and the privates — of the dim and innocent Anastasia Steele and the rich and kinky Christian Grey. But the musical adds ballads and tongue-twisting patter songs, classic stuff of the parody genre. An example? When Ana (who’s played with sly gusto and big pleasing pipes by Amber Petty) sings that something’s missing in her life, the lyrics leave nothing to the imagination: “There’s a hole inside of me that I need to fill/A yearning down there/A screw that needs to be drilled.”

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• TIME OUT NEW YORK REVIEW OF 50 Shades! The Musical

  

  50 Shades! The Musical—The Original Parody: Review by Raven Snook

  Raven Snook

  March 12, 2014: Sorry, masochists, there’s no need to suffer through E.L. James’s painful erotic trilogy (I made it to page 69) to get off on this musical parody. Assembled by an orgy of bicoastal comedy writers, the show is more stimulating than you’d expect, tickling Fifty Shades virgins and detractors alike—although sincere fans may leave frustrated.

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• ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY REVIEW OF 50 Shades! The Musical

  

  50 Shades! The Musical: The Original Parody

  Stephan Lee

  March 12, 2014: How do you parody a book series that already contains the sentence “He’s my very own Christian Grey flavor Popsicle”? The minds behind the Off Broadway production 50 Shades! The Musical: The Original Parody apparently decided to make the mega-selling erotic trilogy by E L James — about a young, virginal woman (Amber Petty) entering a kinky relationship with a sexy billionaire (Chris Grace) — louder, tackier, and cruder. That's fine in theory, but the humor goes limp early on. Although there’s some fun, bawdy wordplay in songs like “There’s a Hole in Me,” the typical joke here relies on props, dry humping, or full-volume rather than R-rated wit. Mimed cunnilingus aside, 50 Shades! has all the edge of a theme-park show.

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• THEATERMANIA REVIEW OF 50 Shades! The Musical

  

  50 Shades! The Musical — The Original Parody

  Pete Hempstead

  March 12, 2014: Readers who enjoyed E L James' erotic, S-and-M-themed novel Fifty Shades of Grey will find another guilty pleasure in the outlandish musical parody 50 Shades! The Musical — The Original Parody, directed by Al Samuels and Rob Lindley and now playing the Elektra Theatre, in the Times Square Arts Center. Whether you've read the book or not, you'll be shocked, and at times delighted, by what you see and hear. The theater's red lighting and leather-padded interior suggest a sex dungeon, but once the show starts, that atmosphere brightens when we meet three sexually unfulfilled women (played with pitch-perfect camp by Kaitlyn Frotton, Chloe Williamson, and Ashley Ward), who gather for a book-club meeting and decide to read Fifty Shades of Grey. As they do, the book's characters, or rather preposterous versions of them, spring to life before the ogling women's eyes.

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