Theater Dance Dance Revolution: the Musical
posted by on November 10 at 11:12 AM
No, seriously, and it will star Van Hansis, a soap-opera actor who plays a gay teenager on As The World Turns.
Sounds so awful it has to be good, right?
Except it’s by Alex Timbers and his New York company Les Freres Corbusier, the same people who gave the world A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant (with 8- to 12-year-old children playing out Hubbard’s mad life and theology), Boozy: The Life, Death, and Subsequent Vilification of Le Corbusier, and, More Importantly, Robert Moses (which featured a bunch of live rabbits and Freemason dance numbers), Heddatron (about a housewife abducted by robots and forced to replay Hedda Gabler over and over again, starring actual robots), and so on.
The only full project I’ve seen of Timbers’s is Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, an emo-rock musical/comedy about populism, manifest destiny, genocide, erotic bloodsports, rock stardom, and the country’s seventh president. (And is part of the rebirth of the American musical, as heralded by The Drowsy Chaperone, discussed in this week’s theater section.)
You can listen to some lo-fi cast recordings of Bloody, Bloody here:
Sometimes you have to take the initiative
Sometimes your whole family dies of cholera
Sometimes you have to make your own story
Sometimes you have to shoot the storyteller in the neck
Sometimes you have to take back the country
Sometimes you have to kill everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone.
What I’m saying is: Dance Dance Revolution is probably going to be actually awesome:
Les Freres transforms the Ohio Theater into a fully immersive, bombed-out discothèque as it fuses unmerciful Japanese rave music with deeply regrettable sophomoric comedy in the futuristic dance spectacular, Dance Dance Revolution.
Riffing on fizzy dance musicals like Flashdance and death sport movies such as Rollerball, Dance Dance Revolution is set in an Orwellian society where dance is illegal. A group of local street toughs harbor no hope of overthrowing the fascistic no-fun government—until a mysterious dance prophet named Moonbeam Funk arrives.
It opens December 3.
Wonderful, exciting news - thank you!! It will capture the leading edge musical theater fans and the stoners - that's an audience I can't wait to be in - though the stoners may miss opening night.
Andrew Jackson was our seventh president. Rutherford B. Hayes was the 19th.
Not that this nitpick has anything to do with the post.
Pardon me. I have no idea how that happened.
All I want to know is when will the soundtrack come out? I'm already excited...
This could be a sweet bday present for me. FMT and I might just have to go opening night.
So... they're going to make a theatrical performance based on a silly video game?
Lame.
And if you don't know Van Hansis, check out As the World Turns, as his storyline heats up. He just stuffed the ballot box to win his student government election, which cost him his boyfriend and got him expelled. But wait until you see what happens with his grandmother's new husband. Set your Tivos!
Van really is a gem, even if the writing is terrible. He was good in Die Mommie Die!, too.
God, I hope it's playing when I am in New York in April. I LOVED "A Very Merry..." Les Freres Corbusier are twisted geniuses -- so twisted they turn back on themselves like a theatrical Moebius strip.