The Biggest Crowd-Pleaser of the Festival
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
“Fleet Week: The Musical” might be the biggest crowd-pleaser at this year’s Fringe.
This campy production bills itself “a gay salute to the patriotic musicals of yesteryear,” so it’s no surprise that “Fleet Week” has a wonderfully jazzy score, about as many “seaman” puns as an audience can stand, and a silly plot in which the Statue of Liberty falls in love and Martiniquean terrorists attack New York. What you might not guess is that it’s also sweet, old-fashioned, and fun for straight people.
“Fleet Week” follows the lives of four sexually desperate (and confused) Coast Guard sailors on shore leave. They’d resigned themselves to the necessity of homosexuality while on the lonely seas, but what if their chummy songs and seductive jigs fail to woo the opposite sex on shore? Is it back to their old ways? Was it really just necessity that brought them together in the first place? As one song goes, “You’re only queer at the pier – or so all the sailors say.”
As “Fleet Week” opens, the gay story elements are so subtle that it seems the musical might hark back to the old days, when gay themes were merely a subtext for a knowing audience. But this is the sort of musical where the good guys overhear a dastardly plot, then put their hands to their ears while looking back and forth and up and down with shocked expressions. Only a few lines miss their mark, however, and the dialogue ranges from clever to forgivably pandering – one character calls the Statue of Liberty “You magnificent slut!”
A couple of subplots are amusing enough, even if they feel a little tacked-on. A romance between the Statue and the captain of the ship – who is rarely seen with his mates, alienating the story from the rest of the musical – provides the main straight love story. Anyone who has fallen in love in his golden years, or juggled his career with his relationship to a statue, will relate.
A far weaker story line involves terrorists from Martinique who have teamed up with a homophobic redneck named Tex to blow up the Statue. The terrorists’ French accents are incomprehensible, and their motivation isn’t clear until the end; it doesn’t really matter, though, because neither the writer nor the characters, who continue obsessing about their love problems while their lives are on the line, care much about what the terrorists are up to.
At least “Fleet Week” deftly avoids September 11 overtones. This is first plot relating to blasting a New York landmark I’ve seen in a comedy since the day irony died.
One of the best songs, “Sort of at Sea,” is sung by two men reasoning that the bathhouse they’re in resembles the salty air of the lonely ship, and makes it okay for them to stay together. Homophobes get their comeuppance when Tex, who blames homosexuality on the Statue of Liberty, has to suffer a gay kiss on the mouth and an untimely death. Hilariously, the play lets him redeem himself just before he dies.
“Fleet Week” succeeds in part because it refuses to trap itself with inside jokes directed solely at a gay audience. It is the sort of musical we don’t see much of anymore, unhindered by depth and darkness. Its has a modest innocence that it never subverts, even with bathhouse scenes and a save-the-day gay marriage.
***
“The Banger’s Flopera: A Musical Perversion” has a decidedly more modern flair. Sex is a dark, sinister force here, with blood-red spotlights shining on people who joyously sing about their desperate need to be humiliated and defiled. This is a musical for anyone who loves “A Clockwork Orange” because they enjoy seeing people get raped.
Apparently, this is all a scathing “Brechtian” commentary on President Bush. In the musical’s playbill, playwright Kirk Wood Bromley distances himself from “the brutality and violence-worship” in the text, saying it’s “quite explicitly opposed to those aspects of itself.” You wouldn’t know that from watching the play, which seems to take glee in the random violence and sexual exploitation the characters endure.
Maybe director Ben Yalom, who calls the script “a raw response to a world … in which the greed for profit regularly motivates slaughter and the perversion of democracy,” went astray. Or maybe the actors, despite demonstrating great talent, weren’t in tune with the play’s secret message.
Or maybe I just didn’t get it.
As far as production values go, it’s topnotch. The lighting and set design create an ominous yet slightly giddy mood as a cheerleader escapes from her oppressive father to happily dive into the world of masochistic porn. There are real flashes of brilliance here, like a song in which the evil porn king explains that his neglect is a sign of love, or a funny musical ode to a corrupt cop (“Who puts the rest in arrest? Tiger Brown!”).
This musical is rarely boring, and there does seem to be some sort of point here, though “Banger’s Flopera” can’t honestly claim any sort of moral high ground. If it’s critiquing anything at all, it’s doing so from a perch of moral nihilism. Exchanges like “That’s a dead Evangelical Christian.” “No, that’s progress,” do not a great satire make.
“Fleet Week: The Musical” will be performed tonight & August 26 (121 Christopher Street, between Bleecker and Hudson Streets). “The Banger’s Flopera” will be performed August 26 & 27 (158 Bleecker Street, at Thompson Street). Call 212-279-4488 for all Fringe Festival shows.