Songs, Jokes and Twirls? Just Don’t Tell Ayn Rand
A Spoofy Spin on Ayn Rand’s ‘Anthem’
Andy Webster
May 29, 2014: It would be folly to adapt Ayn Rand’s pedantic novella Anthem as a straight stage drama, though some have recently tried. Far better to give that belabored paean to individualism a goofy, spoofy spin, as The Anthem, an exuberant musical adaptation at the Culture Project, does. The source material may be hopelessly schematic, but the show pours on dazzling trimmings, including a critical element absent in Rand’s didactic prose: humor. In a future dystopia called the Grid — where people dress in monochromatic tones; pay fealty to Pandora (Jenna Leigh Green), their “First Citizen”; and intone the mantra “We are one” — Prometheus (Jason Gotay) is assigned to be a legal functionary though he aspires to be a scientist. Worse, he canoodles with Hera (Remy Zaken) in the Forbidden Library instead of the sanctioned Palace of Mating. Such impertinence prompts his mentor, Tiberius (Randy Jones, Cowboy from the Village People), to chastise him, and he is banished to the Uncharted Forest, where he is tempted by Athena (Ashley Kate Adams), the leader of the Golden Ones, rebels who wage war with the Grid.
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